Every parent shares some confusion these days over the impact of technology on our children.
There are so many conflicting stories out there. We hear graduate salaries for IT jobs are approaching those for law and finance, and AI is reportedly jeopardising many traditional white-collar jobs at the same time. Meanwhile, some countries are choosing to ban smartphones for under-16s amid reports of children being blackmailed by social media predators.
So what are parents to do? Can we keep children safe from technology’s harms while helping them learn the skills they’ll need to succeed in the future?
Having spent 20 years working with school computing education and now as co-lead of STACS, a government-funded teacher association for Scottish computing teachers, I am deeply concerned with these questions. We believe the key to the conundrum is to separate the use of technology from being able to........