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SQUARE-EYED SCREENAGERS: ARE PHONES CORRUPTING OUR KIDS? Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.

Digital devices are so omnipresent that sociologists call today’s children ‘Generation Glass’. Our pre-teens have never known a world without tablets and apps. The ubiquity of technology during their formative years risks turning them into ‘screenagers’ with high digital literacy but low socialisation and focus.

In education, devices are routinely distributed to pupils and the gamification of learning is well-established. Yet pushback is mounting. The controversial Online Safety Bill proposes reams of radical measures drafted specifically to quell fears over children’s internet safety. Meanwhile increasing numbers of schools are adopting mobile-phone bans, claiming they improve concentration and mental health while reducing cheating and cyberbullying.

Parents’ lobby group UsForThem is even pressing for a total ban on phones for all under-16s and grim tobacco-style health warnings on devices. The campaign is endorsed by Katharine Birbalsingh, headteacher and former social mobility tsar, who has equated the threat to youth of mobile phones to that of heroin addiction.

But is this all merely a re-heat of the ‘square eyes’ moral panic which once beset television? The BBC thinks so: its high-profile Square-Eyed Boy campaign seeks to reassure parents that screens can be a force for good for children. After all, isn’t greater literacy, be it via screens or paper pages, something to be encouraged? Some teachers argue that phones can enhance schoolwork while others insist banning them is draconian, impractical and futile.

Should we take phones away from kids for their own good, or should the very idea be dismissed as screen-shaming?

SPEAKERS Elliot Bewick producer, TRIGGERnometry

Josephine Hussey school teacher, AoI Education Forum

Molly Kingsley co-founder, UsForThem; co-author, The Children’s Inquiry

Joe Nutt international educational consultant; author, The Point of Poetry, An Introduction to Shakespeare’s Late Plays and A Guidebook to Paradise Lost

Professor Sir Simon Wessely interim dean, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences; regius professor of psychiatry, King’s College London

CHAIR Gareth Sturdy physics adviser, Up Learn; education and science writer

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2021 on Sunday 10 October at Church House, London.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

According to many political commentators, the break-up of the UK is becoming inevitable. When devolution was implemented in the 1990s, one of the aims of its supporters was to head off rising support for separation. But the opposite has happened, with support for Scottish independence and greater Welsh autonomy growing even stronger. In Scotland, for example, the pro-independence SNP has now won four elections on the trot and has renewed calls for another referendum. Some commentators now believe that a politicised sense of Englishness is on the rise, too.

One factor is the differential impact of the Brexit referendum. People in England and Wales voted to leave the EU while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. The situation is full of contradictions and complications. For example, people emphasising a British national identity were more likely to vote Leave in Scotland and Wales but Remain in England. Those supporting the cause of ‘independence’ in Scotland and Wales want to remain within the EU, proclaiming the importance of free movement, yet their borders were imposed during the Covid crisis. The devolved government in Scotland favours rejoining the EU, yet others wonder how that fits with the desire for self-government.

On all sides, there has been a problem of legitimacy. Those who favour keeping the Union have struggled to espouse a convincing sense of what it means to be British. The result has often been a crude attempt to manufacture a sense of Britishness. For example, the Westminster government recently announced plans are being drawn up to protect ‘distinctively British’ television programming and asked Ofcom to provide a definition of Britishness for public-service broadcasters.

Meanwhile, contrary to the tradition that the push for statehood means demanding more democracy and freedom, the devolved assemblies appear to have amplified the illiberal impulses of twenty-first-century politics. In Scotland, for example, the government has devoted much of its energy to devising new ways to monitor, control and restrict people’s day-to-day lives: criminalising football supporters, attempting to impose a ‘named person’ to monitor children’s upbringing and passing a Hate Crime Bill that opponents regard as an attack on free speech.

Forty years ago, writer Tom Nairn said that the break-up of Britain would come, not because of the strength of the independence cause in any particular part of Britain, but because of a more general fading of support for the Union. Has Nairn been proved correct? Is the real issue not a democratic surge to independence but gradual separation by attrition? That said, there are signs that perhaps the break-up of the Union is not a foregone conclusion. In recent months, for example, opinion polls have suggested that support for Scottish independence has weakened.

Perhaps the real nail in the coffin is if the English lose interest in the Union. In his book How Britain Ends, journalist Gavin Esler argues that the UK could survive Scottish and Welsh nationalism, but English nationalism is the force that will break up the Union. Is he right?

With Brexit divisions and the impact of Covid, are we witnessing the fragmentation of the Union and a new sovereignty by stealth? How substantial are the differences between the UK and devolved governments’ approaches? Do those arguing for independence or more devolution offer the genuine possibility of a democratic future? Or does this trajectory risk creating a Union based on anomalies and a patchwork of competencies, in the process undermining the viability of UK democracy?

SPEAKERS Dr Richard Johnson writer; lecturer in US politics, Queen Mary, University of London; author, The End of the Second Reconstruction: Obama, Trump, and the crisis of civil rights

Penny Lewis lecturer, University of Dundee; author, Architecture and Collective Life

Alex Salmond leader, ALBA Party; former leader, Scottish National Party; author, The Dream Shall Never Die

Christopher Snowdon head of lifestyle economics, Institute of Economic Affairs; editor, Nanny State Index; author, Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

Max Wind-Cowie co-author, A Place for Pride; former head, Progressive Conservatism Project, Demos; commentator

CHAIR Alastair Donald co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; convenor, Living Freedom; author, Letter on Liberty: The Scottish Question

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

The worlds of art and entertainment are wrestling with, and reeling from, the opportunities and challenges posed by ‘generative’ AI – tools that can generate seemingly unique, bespoke creations in response to ‘prompts’ submitted in plain language. Such technology is now having a dramatic impact on almost every profession or art form that involves static or moving images, written or spoken words, sound, music or programming code.

Everything from the fantastical to the photorealistic is affected. AI can generate convincing ‘photos’ of people who have never actually existed, and can create ‘deepfakes’ so good that public figures – whether living or long deceased – can now be ‘filmed’ saying and doing completely invented things. Indeed, a key concern behind this year’s high-profile Hollywood strikes is actors fearing that they will be imitated and replaced by AI creations – losing control of their likenesses not just during their lifetimes, but also after their deaths.

Otherworldly images are no less affected by AI. Polish illustrator Greg Rutkowski – who has made a career out of depicting dragons and fantastical battles – recently found himself demoted (or promoted, depending on one’s perspective) from popular artist to one of the world’s most popular AI prompts, beating Michelangelo and Picasso. The internet is now swamped with AI recreations of Rutkowski’s once distinctive style, while the artist’s own livelihood – and recognition for work that is genuinely his – are in jeopardy.

There are many such examples, spanning different forms of creativity. Some are trying to take a stand against these trends, but solidarity between professions is wanting. Major publishers, including Bloomsbury Books, have recently issued apologies, when it was discovered that they were using AI-generated art on their book covers. Some soundtrack composers – who were already complaining about being reduced to poorly paid, interchangeable and uncredited ‘ghost composers’ in the content-hungry age of streaming – now fear being replaced by machines altogether.

Some creators insist that their consent should have been sought before their work was included in the vast datasets on which AI has been trained. Some are seeking the removal of their work from such datasets even now, although the path from machine learning to AI creations is so intricate that this may be the practical equivalent of trying to unbake a cake. Others, by contrast, revel in the new creative possibilities arising from AI, and approach the technology as an enormous and exciting artistic toolkit.

Who will prevail? And what will be the consequences?

SPEAKERS Dr JJ Charlesworth art critic; editor, ArtReview

Vivek Haria composer, London Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Piatti Quartet; writer on art, technology and culture

Rosie Kay dancer; choreographer; CEO and artistic director, K2CO LTD; founder, Freedom in the Arts

Dr Hamish Todd mathematician; videogame programmer; creator, Virus, the Beauty of the Beast

CHAIR Sandy Starr deputy director, Progress Educational Trust; author, AI: Separating Man from Machine