What is Cancel Culture?
Cancel Culture!!!
What comes to mind when I hear cancel culture? SUBMISSION TO SILENCE..
What is our capacity to debate?
Do we fall for mis-information?
Do facts or truths matter?
Does the language (choice of words) we use create “grey areas” because we are considering the consequences of the choice of words we utter?
…..
OK, let me give this conversation an example context.
As a parent who is struggling with managing technology at home and feels like your child(ren) are struggling with screen time – oh and by the way I feel you on this one, hugs
Imagine finding your child consuming age inappropriate and unhealthy content and you get this pit in your stomach coupled with anger and frustration (oh, what a cocktail right) and one of the first things you do is yank they device off their hand and probably the choice words that follow are not repeatable, though understandable in that moment.. and you walk away.
Walking away for you is to avoid more emotional or physical damage but also to re-strategise, but this leaves said child shocked, embarrassed, confused .. or or but generally . Now one of the things I have heard parents say are:
1. Evelyn, take this device and block those bad sites.
2. I withdrew their gadgets – let us see what they will use.
3. I will not pay for the internet.
4. I thwacked them and grounded them for X number of days.
5. I am not sure I know what to do anymore, talk to my child.
… Allow me to say this in the context of cancel culture (I know you probably have your own definitions of it, but hang in here)..
When you withdraw their gadgets and avoid having a conversation on the reasons why, that only DELAYS access it does not STOP neither does it TEACH. This also goes for blocking the sites, is that the only gadget they have access to? Naaaaaaaa!!!
To this I always say, choose the PAIN you want to FEEL.
If you refuse to pay for the internet, whom are you trying to punish and FOR HOW LONG?
I thwacked them, OK and when the pain subsided – then what? Same cycle?
Have you heard of parents who slapped their kids and they returned the slap? Hmmm …
For those of us who don’t know what to do, I feel you but this is not one of those things you can say ” return to sender” we are here at this time parenting children we were blessed to have in our lives and living in a highly polarised world .
We live in a world where social media turbo charges conversations and spews mis -information, dis-information and biases that when we can’t have debates based on facts we begin to make stuff up.
Dear parents,
There is NO ESCAPE to setting rules for our children that allow us to get some desired expectations, I can assure you that even with these concerted efforts our children have CHOICE and we cannot control that.
When it comes to keeping our children safe online you and I have a responsibility we cannot afford to delegate.
It is also prudent of us to learn to seek to understand so that we can be understood then have empathy. I am big on saying USIPANIC, so please don’t panic.
Canceling or taking away does not help us resolve the underline issues, it keep us silent from speaking our minds, from learning, from re-learning, from taking risks but it gets us to rebel, hide, lie, disrespect …
I am here to ask us to pay attention the cancel culture that is heavy around us, and if you need to stop – STOP but get to a place where you re-strategise to RESOLVE.
May you have an amazing weekend.
Signed,
Evelyn Kasina