Learning to Drink from a Fire Hose

Do you ever feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose? We all do—that’s why the analogy has become a cliché. It can refer to different aspects of contemporary life, with all its speed, busyness, and pressure to keep up, but most often it describes the overwhelming onslaught of information pouring in from news, email, messaging apps, and social media. As much as we try to manage this torrent of information, it’s hard to know where to draw the line, since so much of our personal and professional lives are bound up in it.

This is the world our children are growing up in. I am often struck by how differently they relate to it. While I struggle to stop the flow of information coming at me in order to make more space in my life for what’s important, they dive headlong into the torrent. When I think of the endless flood of information, misinformation, and disinformation—not to mention all the content I consider patently absurd—that they are having to manage, process, and make sense of, I feel like ridding their lives of digital devices altogether. But that’s not what they want, nor is it what they need.

If they are going to figure out how to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing and unpredictable world, they need to be able to immerse themselves in it. When we shield them from it as a way to protect them, we tie their hands, and this can leave them unprepared later in life. They need to be able to explore, experiment, and learn how to effectively navigate the world they are growing up in.

My wife and I made a decision early on not to limit our kids’ use of digital technology. We have always talked to them a lot about how they spend their time online; we ask a lot of questions, and we openly and honestly share our thoughts, opinions, and feelings with them. But it’s up to them to choose what they do and how much time they spend doing it.

Our son has always chosen to spend a lot of his time on his computer, but as a full-time Macomber Center member, he also spends all day around other kids, talking about what they are doing and discussing their shared experiences of online culture together. One thing I’ve always noticed about self-directed learners is that they are not passive consumers. Because they are not under the same pressure to conform to dominant online culture as kids in traditional schools, they tend to develop a critical distance from it. They are in it, but not of it. They are constantly analyzing, critiquing, ironizing, and parodying online culture.

This is the only way for kids to gain genuine fluency in the digital world they are growing up in, and to learn how to use the tools of their culture, instead of being used by them.

As much as I try to help them understand and navigate the world made more complex and challenging every day by rapid technological development, I often find that they are way ahead of me. Recently, I was explaining to my kids that language is evolving faster than ever before due to the internet. Words their generation uses casually often carry a history they may not be aware of, and I wanted them to understand that seemingly innocuous words can have different, sometimes hurtful, meanings for different people.

My son, seeing that I was interested in the subject, recommended a TED Talk by a linguist he follows online named Adam Aleksic. In his talk, Aleksic explains how the forces of social media algorithms and online censorship are rapidly reshaping language. After watching the TED Talk and talking to my son about Aleksic’s work, it became clear to me that my son knows a lot more about this subject than I do.

Once again, I was reminded that when kids are put in control of their own lives, they will take responsibility for their own education, and they will equip themselves with the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to thrive in a complex, challenging, and uncertain future.

Letting kids have unlimited access to digital technology and direct their own education through online exploration can feel a little like letting them drink from a fire hose. But maybe that’s what we need to let them do.