Growing up digital - what does it mean for doubt?
My dear colleague Ksenia Zheltoukhova’s latest blog got me thinking about growing into doubt. I love the idea that doubt is something that we grow into – not out of. It feels right, and strangely empowering. A big inversion of the perspectives of our child selves – where ‘the grown ups’ know everything and offer certainty and stability (perhaps only if we’re lucky with the adults who surround us).
It got me thinking about the contrast between my experience of growing up in the 70s and 80s in a provincial town in the North of England and my children’s experiences of growing up in London now. They’re 17 and 20 – and like Ksenia – I spend time wondering about their relationship to doubt. When I was growing up, if I wanted to know something it was an effort, a mission. What were the sources of knowledge?
About school stuff – teachers, parents (sometimes), theoretically a school library (I say theoretically because pupils were barred from entry at my school – something to do with the risk of getting Tippex fluid on the tables) – and the local library where something called a microfiche (see pic) was on offer: It never appealed and I never worked out how to use it.
A microfiche was meant to help us find out about stuff – I never quite got to grips with it!
About fashion, cool-ness, vibes – once a fortnight we’d pour over magazines like Just Seventeen, Smash Hits and, if you were really cool, The Face. These mags would visit different places and photograph maybe 6 or 7 cool-looking kids (there were usually hats involved) and get them to explain where they got their gear (Top Shop was usually involved).
For hobbies, passions, interests – you had to work really hard. I was a bit of a nerd about George Orwell and read all his books, many of his essays and his biography by Bernard Crick (great story – bonding over this book was how I got chatting to my husband – neither of us having learnt small talk in our first year as undergraduates). That was it. Literally. There was nothing else I could find out about George Orwell. At least not without tackling the microfiche – and that was never going to happen.
I contrast this with my kids’ lives now. Anything they want to know, they can find out instantaneously. I’m blown away by the resources that they find to help them study. (Weirdly, in a comforting retro way, for my daughter this includes finding old, out-of-print study guides in online bookstores). Where I got 6 or 7 pictures a fortnight to stimulate my fashion and cultural senses, they can access millions, immediately, through Instagram, TikTok and so on. And as for George Orwell, well, let’s not disappear into that internet rabbit hole.
But what they can’t answer straight away, but what I feel enormous pressure to be able to answer for them, is ‘what does my future hold?’ I don’t remember ever thinking that that was a question that could be answered, perhaps because most questions couldn’t be answered, even ones as basic as ‘what hats are cool right now?’ Growing up (and still), life was – is – a thing that rolls forward - messy, complicated, glorious, horrible. I wonder if my children’s tolerance for not-knowing is lower? Perhaps because of how much they can find out. As the Doubt Club develops, we want to understand more about the relationship between facts, knowledge and doubt. Hope you’ll come with us on this journey!
