I recently had the opportunity to sit down and talk about digital technology with students and their parents at a high school in Sapporo, Japan. And one thing everyone wanted to know about is the age at which kids in the US get their own smart phone.
It’s an important question as this decision marks a rite of passage — something like a digital bar mitzvah. I, like all parents, had to address this matter when raising my own kid. And like most parents, my wife and I had drawn a line in the sand by determining the age that we thought would be appropriate.
But as I admitted to the students and parents in Sapporo, we failed miserably. Even though we fought tooth and nail to hold the line on the age that we thought would be appropriate for our child, we were fighting a losing battle against an elementary force more potent and pervasive than gravity — peer pressure. Once other kids in our son’s classroom got smart phones, there was nothing we could do. It was game over.
By contrast, the Japanese high school approached this in an entirely different way. They came at this challenge as a community, deciding together the age at which students in the school would all get access to this technology. And it seemed to be working, as everyone — parents, teachers, and students — cooperated to ensure its success.
So this is what I learned: the digital bar mitzvah can only work when it is rooted in the shared commitment of community.
