Hello Podfriend!

Happy New Month! Summer is finally here and the kids are on vacation for three whole months. And, I’m also going home! Home as in: South Africa. It’s been five years since my last visit, and after a period of nervecitedness, I’ve properly toppled over into the excited side of the continuum.

How is life treating you these days?

Life is really good on my end, there are two new episodes of Shades and Layers out, completing Season 8 and bringing us to 87 episodes of the show. Now that, is quite a thing. No? A shout out to our new subscribers. I see you! Thanks for joining the squad.

So I’ll be on hiatus for the summer. While I’m on hiatus, I’ll be re-tooling and re-formatting the show. It will be our first ever re-fresh in the four years of producing the show. Look out for new episodes after the Northern Summer.

Oh, the cutie pie in our lead pic this month is a representation of this month’s topic on kids and screens. Read on to find out.

But before we get into the rest of the newsletter, a reminder to share this edition and ask your friends to join our squad. If this edition was shared with you, please subscribe.

Here’s what we’re doing in this edition:

-Studio Update

-Also This Month

-Kids and Screens: Social Experiments

-Giving me Joy and Pause

Alright pod friends, let’s get to business!

STUDIO UPDATE

REPRESENTATION IN KIDS’ LITERATURE

Ethnikids was co-founded by five concerned mothers in 2016. They were looking for books with diverse characters and narratives. Most importantly, they were looking for books written in indigenous South African, and other African languages. With no solution in sight they set out to create their own product in order to affirm African children and to nurture their sense of belonging and self-worth.

In the latest episode of Shades and Layers, I’m in conversation with bibliophile and co-founder of Ethnikids, Khumo Tapfumaneyi. She and her business partner, Tina Boateng-Akuoko have been on a mission to affirm African children through representation in literature. Their online bookstore and publishing company provides books to South African children in their mother tongue; the books also feature African and other children of color as protagonists.

In our conversation, Khumo highlights the psychological impact on children who see themselves in books and stories that they read. You’ll also learn more about Khumo’s own entrepreneurial journey and the company’s evolution over the years ; from overcoming market challenges, to forming impactful partnerships with schools and libraries to promoting reading for leisure. 

ALSO THIS MONTH

CREATIVITY FOR HEALING

In this episode, I catch up with Denmark-based creative and Founder of RAHA COPENHAGEN, Nsimire Godman. who shares how a humble background in Rwanda and a spark of creativity during the pandemic led her to create inclusive, and aesthetically pleasing soy wax candles. Listen as Nsimire recounts her year-long journey of mastering the craft, overcoming burnout, and discovering a niche market in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. 

As we know, entrepreneurship is best done with support and community, and Nsimire shares how her community has been instrumental in helping her turn her passion into a flourishing small-batch production company. Nsimire shares that her soy wax candle business is sustainable by design – from reusing materials to keep her business eco-friendly to sourcing materials from eco-friendly suppliers and only making products to order….  

As always, this conversation is Shades and Layers’ style – lots of candor and humor. 

ON MY MIND THIS MONTH

KIDS AND SCREENS: SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS

Okay, so we’re all addicted to our smartphones and our children are quickly following suit. There is also an unrelenting pressure on small people to get a smartphone at way too early an age – at least too early in my opinion. This generation already had access to our screens and iPads from toddler days. So, why am I so stressed about screen time? Well, three months of idle time stretches before us in the Northern Hemisphere and you can’t say ‘no’ to screens every single time the kids ask.

Screen time has been a concern for me even before my first born came along. I remember having a conversation with a colleague at a restaurant in Singapore when I was pregnant and we were chatting about how terrible kids’ cartoons and iPads are for developing attention spans. This was in 2013, way before the realities of parenting in the digital age smacked hard. This was way before toddlers understood that they could take your index finger and demand that you scroll back or forward to a specific point in a video, so that they could watch that precise part that they liked.

Like many of you who are parenting small people, we’ve experimented with setting different limits on the iPad. We use parental controls and even ventured into having an outright ban – don’t judge me – but it is clear that we are on unchartered waters, people. There’s just simply no resisting the incoming waves. Technology is changing so fast that what was true three months ago is no longer true this month. And yes this is true of any parenting adventure for all previous generations; I mean the arrival of radio, television, gramophones etc. These were all huge challenges. Ours today, is contemplating what rules we will create for our kids around generative AI. It truly is mind blowing.

Admittedly I am officially an auntie and I’m definitely not trying to sound like previous generation of parents lamenting the negative influence of television. Mind you, I made a living as a television producer for a considerable amount of time in the early days of my media career with my business partners at Black Rage Productions. As such, I am very aware of all the complaints, both ridiculous and genuine. Remember how those old people lamented the popularity of the music and dance show – not a show Black Rage show – Jika Majika (you could call it South Africa’s Soul Train?) saying television standards had deteriorated, there’s no educational content and the world was going to end? More recently, South Africa’s outgoing police minister complained about cops dancing on TikTok in their service uniform. There’s a lot to unpack in his comments, but suffice is to say that there’s a way, and there’s a WAY to address things, and there is no need for us join him or those parents in being one of those old people.

At the same time, it’s hard not to be one of those old people because smartphones are part of daily life and our kids want in, from as early as 8 years old. Even with parental controls, there are many inappropriate things for children to stumble on. Also, access to smartphones primes kids for overconsumption – notice how many times they ask you to buy certain products after watching even something educational like an instructional video on YouTube. Apart from that, everything changes so quickly that you have no choice but to keep up with every software and platform update. Assuming your 13-year-old (official age you can have a social media account) has a smartphone, what does it mean for their device to have eye-tracking capabilities? Why are there so many recommendations to delay access to smartphones until age 16? Why is our local high school implementing smartphone free classrooms in the new school year? And, on the extreme side, why are there parents taking pledges to delay access to smartphones, almost as if they are taking a vow to remain a virgin until marriage? Why are some parents not allowing their kids to watch YouTube alone? Why are so many adults taking digital detox breaks? Why are all the tech bros not giving their kids devices?

Mostly, I think my stress levels were raised because of this report about the US Surgeon General saying social media platforms should come with a health warning for teens – in the same way that cigarettes and alcohol do. It made me pause and dig deeper. I am inclined to agree with the Surgeon General for several reasons, including the threat of cyber bullying. And we’ve all seen how things can go wrong online. A few years ago, South African media veteran Azania Mosaka, had to defend her daughter from cyber bullies … But back to the Surgeon General issue; it is the opposing arguments from tech companies that are disturbing; they are devoid of any moral considerations. Like all giant US companies, they argue that there is no conclusive research on the impact of social media on teen mental health, and so they cannot take any firm decisions regarding the Surgeon General’s recommendations for child safety promotion. They also plan on defending their position by citing their right to freedom of speech. So, are we all willing to let our children be part of a social experiment whose early outcomes are not pointing in a positive direction?

There are too many unanswered questions for us on the user end, and once again we are rendered helpless by a lack of proper alternatives. A digital-free life is near impossible, so we do need some kind of antidote… Perhaps it’s better to remember that it is also their world, our children, and we can only do our best to guide them. We do have to trust that they’ll figure it out. Dude, we survived Nightmare on Elm Street, Eddie Murphy’s risqué comedy skits, leaded petrol, smoking in restaurants, no ID checks when ordering a Hunter’s Dry at restaurants and plenty cultural content that came with no danger or health warnings. I’m not sure we turned out completely fine, but we did figure out a way to be successful humans while navigating all of that – and a whole lot more.

In conclusion, tech companies design their devices and platforms for certain desired outcomes, therefore it shouldn’t be difficult for them to imagine scenarios that would predict the possible outcomes. This is no different from oil companies who knew the impact of their activities on the environment and human beings from as early as the 1950s, and did nothing to change their harmful activities and business practices, until the lawsuits started coming in. You can in fact draw parallels between what’s happening in tech with the evolution of many large industries. The food industry is the perfect example of companies knowing the harmful effects of including certain ingredients in their products, but not taking responsibility for outcomes like obesity and cancer. Once again, it will be the parents and individuals – our kids when they come off age – to blame for the outcomes of a system that is motivated by greed.

How are you guys handling social media during school holidays? Hit reply and let me know!

GIVING ME JOY AND PAUSE

I simply cannot put down Coleen Van Niekerk’s Conspiracy of Mothers. The prose is lovely, the story is powerful, and the characters will get under your skin. Set in Cape Town during 1994, the narrative follows three generations of women: traumatized artist Yolanda Petersen, her estranged daughter Ingrid, and Ingrid’s grandmother, Rachel. Ingrid was conceived illegally during apartheid, with a white man, and throughout her life, she was led to believe that her parents had died in a car accident. Twenty years later, she finds out that this was all a lie told in the name of protecting her. Yolanda had in reality been hiding in the UK and the USA, also trying to heal from her own painful past. Yolanda returns home to find that her daughter is missing…. Do yourself a favor.

Haven’t started it yet but Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The History of Man is currently on my reading shelf, as is Isabel Wilkinson’s Caste.

Any recommendations for a lighthearted summer read? DM me on Insta or hit reply to this email.

Have you guys listened to the Moral Repair: A Black Exploration of Tech podcast yet? The topics covered are very much aligned with the newsletter theme this month. Speaking of tech, here’s a great critique of all the big tech insiders who are quitting the toxic machine to become activists, and are now warning the world about the perils of social platforms and generative AI….

That’s all from me this time around pod friends. I’m ready for the summer, but first winter in Mzansi, a European short left to see my husband’s side of the family, and then back to the US of A for a proper New England summer, and the calm before the s**t show that’s coming in November. IYKYK.

Until next time, please do take good care.

Cheers,

Kutloano

(your host with the most)