Generation Text: The Great Rewiring of Children’s Literature
Jake Hayes argues the case for more mobile phones in books for young people
The Netflix drama Adolescence had a seismic impact on how we view young people’s internet habits. Everybody from the Prime Minister down suddenly woke up to the idea that giving children unrestricted access to mobile phones, and specifically social media was not a Good Thing. Who knew?
Adolescence vividly illustrated the potentially catastrophic consequences of allowing rogue algorithms and malign influencers loose on young minds. There have since been calls for a blanket ban on phones in schools and restrictions on social media for under sixteens. Thousands of parents, including Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne, signed up to a pact organised by campaign group, Smartphone Free Childhood, vowing to hold off giving young people a phone until at least the end of Year 9 (ages 13-14).
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The novel I wrote on the Bath Spa Writing for Young People MA, At Home with the Scapegraces, deals with a thirteen-year-old growing in a YouTube family. He’s been on the internet since birth, with phones and social media an integral part of his existence. Spoiler alert: it’s not been great. While Lunar’s experience is an extreme example of the negative aspects of growing up online, the problems he encounters will be familiar to any child with free access to social media. Online bullying, loneliness, ghosting, the perils of AI and conspiracy theories all play a role.
At the start of the writing process, I looked for other titles aimed at younger teens where phones and online culture were represented. Apart from some notable exceptions including works by Nathanael Lessore and Tamsin Winter I was surprised to find there was very little. It was as if young people in contemporary children’s books were living in a parallel universe where the Smartphone Parent Pact had already been enacted.
The stats in the real world are shocking. Research from the media regulator, Ofcom shows the current rate of phone ownership for eight-year-olds is 25%, accelerating to 89% by the age of twelve. Half of children under thirteen are on social media. So why aren’t there more books for children in this age group that reflect their experiences online? Feedback on my novel from a major children’s book prize provided some insight, with a judge commenting that the book’s ‘potential as a conversational piece is lost on a MG audience.’ I would argue the opposite: it is crucial to engage children in this subject from an early age.
Parents are understandably concerned about their children’s phone use. According to Ofcom, 58% of parents of 3-17-year-olds felt that the risks to their child of using social media, text messaging or video sharing apps and sites outweighed the benefits. This widespread worry, particularly over young people’s mental health is persuasively argued in Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling treatise, The Anxious Generation. As parents and grandparents are often the ones purchasing books for children, it’s possible that publishers are simply avoiding an issue that will turn their primary buyers off. Aren’t books supposed to be a refuge from the tyranny of screens?
There is another, more practical reason for the children’s book ban on mobile phones. One of the characters in M. G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman’s Middle Grade crime story, The Highland Falcon Thief makes the case for the prosecution.
‘It's hard to have an adventure with a smart phone in your pocket. It stops you from reading real maps and talking to people. I don't want to stare at a screen. I want to look at the landscape. I want to see the world.’
But I wonder whether this idea of a smartphone free world is an adult utopia, harking back to a pre-internet golden age where life was simpler and children were free to traverse the countryside in search of potentially dangerous jewel thieves. Children’s authors are always looking for ways to put their young protagonists at the heart of their adventures. Typically, this means separating them from the influence of responsible adults. Whether disappearing through wardrobes into another reality or discovering their parents have been trampled to death by a rhinoceros, it’s usually the child who is left alone to drive the adventure. The ubiquity of smartphones makes that job harder, when help from a responsible adult is just a text away.
In the real world, being able to stay in contact with parents is one of the major reasons children own a phone. 2021 Research for the University of Southern Denmark by Nielsen & Arvidsen, found that 65% of the 11–15-year-olds surveyed used their mobiles to stay in touch with home. That’s if they’re going out at all of course. It’s commonly assumed that access to smartphones has caused children’s worlds to shrink, with independent exploration of the outdoors in terminal decline. You might further extrapolate that that young users are more likely to become isolated at home, Adolescence style, as a result.
But could the opposite be true? Nielsen & Arvidsen point out that mobiles enhance many young people’s experiences outdoors. Whether they are staying in touch with friends, listening to music or using their devices to find their way around.
‘Smartphones create favourable conditions for rich and valuable outdoor lives by expanding children’s and parents’ sense of security, children’s outdoor sociality, and opportunities to mould their outdoor experiences.’
One author who has seized on the dramatic possibilities of the smartphone is Sharna Jackson. Her High Rise Mystery series features black, working class kids from an inner city London estate whose phones are extensions of themselves.
A 2022 paper entitled Application of Digital Technology in the Understanding of Young Adult Literature suggests that digital technologies offer a natural extension of young people’s problem-solving abilities. “Use of digital media should be conceptualised as a continuous part of their lives, and their time online as a part of their fluid and dynamic identity development.”
In High Rise Mystery, sisters Nik and Norva, and their friend George, typify this approach. Their phone use is ubiquitous and often highly inventive. They never scribble clues in a notebook and certainly don’t need a magnifying glass to solve the crime. Not with a supercomputer in their pocket.
“George, pull up your video of Hugo at the meeting,” demanded Norva.
“I’ll do you one better!” he said. “I gifed it for you.”
Speaking on the Down the Rabbit Hole podcast, Jackson discussed how she wrote High Rise Mystery ‘in a Google Doc.’ This deceptively casual approach to the complex business of novel writing is something that digital natives, Nik and Norva would undoubtedly appreciate.
Writing At Home with the Scapegraces, mobile communication offered me a distinctive way of presenting conversation and dialogue, with text messages and social media posts created using simple graphics and formatting.
The format proved a particularly useful way of building character and exploring relationships. Despite the restrictions of the form, text conversations are effective in showing time passing (like a movie montage), producing twists and turns in the plot and illustrating shifting character power dynamics.
The replication of digital comms also creates visually striking moments amid great swathes of traditional text. Using the formatting, language and phrasing familiar to phone users it may even be an effective way of reaching children who are digitally literate but turned off by traditional, text heavy books.
This needn’t mean dumbing down either. As Adolescence illustrated in one key scene, digital literacy is no less complex than traditional literacy. A key clue in the case is missed when the adult investigator, played by Ashley Walters, misunderstands the meaning of an apparently innocent emoji. The motivation for the crime suddenly changes and the audience’s perception of both perpetrator and victim takes an important shift.
Netflix
Despite calls for bans, smartphones look likely to become ever more integral in young people’s lives. So it follows that their place in children’s books should also become more prevalent. Children’s publishers should be seeking stories that connect with younger readers. With a worrying decline in reading for pleasure, particularly among younger teens, it makes sense to harness the language and grammar of the smartphone in a way that makes books appear more accessible and attractive.
Concerns over allowing children unfettered access to the internet via their phones are well founded, but there’s little point pretending it isn’t the norm for a significant proportion of young readers – and isn’t likely to change any time soon.
There is huge value in works of fiction that engage with technology and reflect children’s lived experience. Dr Pauldy Otermans, senior lecturer in psychology at Brunel University London says.
‘We are living in a digital age. There’s no way around it. I think it’s our duty to teach children the best way possible to make use of digital tools.’
And where better to explore this than in children’s fiction? It’s a safe space created by adults dedicated to empathising with young readers and helping them navigate an increasingly chaotic and uncertain world.