Some days you see something that tugs at your heart strings and makes you sad. One such day recently was when the Badger walked the leafy lanes where he played as a child. Two vans and three burly men with chain saws were cutting down two magnificent horse-chestnut trees – trees that the Badger and his childhood friends used to not only play beneath, but also climb to find the best conkers! The trees are still healthy, but they are being felled to make way for a new housing development. The sadness at seeing one of his favourite childhood haunts being dismembered was real. It was a reminder that change is inevitable, that progress isn’t always for the good, and that the Badger’s childhood was very different to that of most children today.
Since the time the young Badger climbed these conker trees, much of the world has become healthier, better educated, and wealthier. The internet, computing, communication, and social media revolution has changed both social norms and the nature of childhood. As children, the Badger’s generation routinely climbed trees without adult supervision, ropes, or protective equipment, rode bicycles without wearing a helmet, and interacted with every type of creature in nature on an almost daily basis. We took the scrapes, bumps, and bruises that came with this freedom in our stride. Our freedom was real. We were naturally innovative and imaginative when playing games with playmates, and we problem-solved and learned from each other without thinking about it.
Childhood today is more cosseted, more organised, more risk averse when it comes to unsupervised outdoor play, and it is shaped and heavily influenced by modern tech and social media. The Badger thinks childhood is actually more dangerous today! Why? Well, whereas there was no online world when the Badger was a child, today it is a major aspect of a child’s life, as an OFCOM report illustrates. This exposes them to cyberspace threats that simply didn’t exist when the Badger climbed conker trees and the tech world that we know today was science fiction. Accordingly, the Badger believes the Online Safety Bill , currently in its final stages in the UK Parliament, is a good thing and long overdue.
The values of our country are fundamentally family values, ones which protect children and the vulnerable from those that would do them harm. These were the values when the Badger was a child, and it should still be that way in today’s online world. Our values and our way of life are also determined by us, and not by the huge digital tech corporations that dominate today’s world. John F. Kennedy said, ‘ Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future’. The UK’s Online Safety Bill is thus doing a good thing; it’s protecting the world’s most valuable resource…
