Kids With Smartphones: A Horror Movie Script For the Consumer Singularity

Whether it’s an iPad or an Apple IIe, generations raised on computers always seem to exhibit a fascinating, unquestioning acceptance of the computer’s role in their lives. Even when they can’t adequately articulate it, there is some sense that children simply know its importance — a phenomenon that’s as true today as it was in 1986.

As old barriers of entry crumble in the wake of innovations to user interface, an understanding of the computer’s purpose, and the ability to interact with one, are becoming virtually instinctual. It is unclear how deeply this literacy will penetrate into the human condition. But more importantly, will it give future generations enhanced abilities to create, survive, or just consume?

What has changed about early computer literacy no doubt has to do with the increasingly intuitive and ubiquitous nature of the machines humans are using. Instead of keyboards, mice and desktop PCs, a new generation is now being brought up on motion cameras, voice control and touchscreen devices that blur computer interface with normal human activity. In one sense, this has enabled a more natural starting point; a man-machine collaboration which springboards off known human behavior.

Many at first believed these new technologies could only stimulate and engage children beneficially, in ways seemingly in step with natural child development. In a period where the human brain learns quickest, it seemed obvious to allow kids to gain a familiarity with the electronic devices that so deeply permeate modern life. Hand over your smartphone while waiting in line at the supermarket, the reasoning went, and your 3 year old will be better off for it.

But over time, questions have arisen about how this nuanced literacy affects other kinds of development. One recent study indicates that children are now developing computing skills before developing ‘regular life’ skills, like learning to swim or ride a bicycle. Another reveals that 6 percent of children ages 2-5 have their own smartphone, with many others in that same group knowing how to operate one.

Companies are paying attention. In 2009, 60 percent of the 25 top-selling paid applications in the education section of Apple’s App Store’s were aimed at toddlers and preschoolers, according to an analysis (PDF) from Sesame Workshop's Joan Ganz Cooney Center. This year, the center has updated its findings in coordination with a larger report on digital media’s effects on children from the American Academy of Pediatrics: As many as 72 percent of the top 100 apps in that same category are now being made with preschoolers and elementary school students in mind.

As for the schools themselves, if trends of declining support and inadequate funding for public schools in the United States and elsewhere continue, students may have to get used to a more decentralized, computer-based education, a trend that may prove more distracting than helpful.

The resulting ethical quandary involves questioning the role of parenting in this dramatic re-prioritization of skill sets. But more importantly it also raises moral concerns about the quickening pace of technology and its continued ability to shrink the timeframe between birth and complete integration into the grid. This is alarming for many reasons, but perhaps none more so than when considering how these technologies have helped shape humans into the most voracious and efficient consumers.

We could think of these ever-present, highly intuitive digital devices conditioning humans from increasingly younger ages as a syndrome of a larger machination: a system of obedient consumerism, fully integrated from top to bottom. Much like in the era of television, this well-tempered system of persuasive wealth extraction looks like it is once again inching closer to perfection.

Personalized search, social networking and the associated sale of relevant personal data to advertisers are just a few recent developments that have been created to ensure that the youngest members of the human species can be quickly assimilated into the consumer mainframe. They will be easily and consensually ensnared — after all, they will have been training their entire lives for it. Once humans evolve to have an innate physical need for these stimuli, there will be no turning back from the giant head-sucking parasite of digital marketing.

Soon, a generation raised from birth by the corporate software platform, entranced by the ease with which it operates, living off released dopamine as it lubricates the upward disbursement of currency. The individual will feed and legitimize this digital nation state as it continues to curate the content that passes through its closely guarded gates. Eventually, a massive biological matrix whose individual nodes, learned only in the art of satisfying impulse, needn’t possess even the most basic functions of a fully-grown human being. Human development will no longer need to be parented — it will be programmed.

Or not. In fact, disregard all of this. I’ve just computed a feeling that we’re all going to be just fine.

• The Immortalist, Jason Silva
• The Obscure Art of Social Engineering Films
• Exploring Science As the Fountain of Youth
• The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil