Designing tech for the most vulnerable users
▻https://www.marketplace.org/2018/07/24/tech/designing-tech-most-vulnerable-users
▻https://cms.marketplace.org/sites/default/files/styles/primary-image-900x500/public/GettyImages-135280995.jpg?itok=Z9qJAkqI
Danah Boyd is a principal researcher at Microsoft and the founder of the research organization Data & Society, and much of her research looks at how kids are affected by the digital societies they live in. She talked with Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood about whether blocking kids from technology is really a good solution.
Danah Boyd: I see young people who are crying out for help every day online. And it’s not because they’re online that they’re crying out for help. The idea of blocking young people from technology — what that ends up just doing is making it harder for them to be a part of a broader social world. I want to help them help their peers. And I want adults to come in and think that the solution is more about how to really engage not just their own children, but the network of children that they touch because of their kids, because of their schools, because of their communities and help young people at scale, rather than say if we just block the technology and stop being able to see it, all the problems will go away. We can kick them off of Twitter. It’s not that hard, but that won’t make the problem go away. And I want to get to the root of the problem, and I worry that we just keep thinking that the solution is at the technical layer. And I don’t think it’s at the technical layer.