Between TikTok and the Ballot Box: Who Shapes Our Children's Opinions?
Children are exposed online to political positions, generalizations, and extreme language, even when schools are closed. Instead of rushing to correct them or telling them what to think, parents have an opportunity to teach them how to form a position, check facts, and deal with those who think differently.
I was a teenager during the withdrawal from Sinai. I remember the news on the radio, the stormy public debate, the arguments for and against. One day, when the news ended, I turned off the radio and asked my father: "Dad, what do we think about this?"
I remember the question well. I didn't know whether to be convinced by those supporting the withdrawal or those opposing it, and I hoped my father would give me the right answer. I didn't ask "what do you think?", but "what do we think?". I wanted to know where my family stood, and where I was supposed to stand.
This moment returns to me today as a mother and an educator. I am glad that my children know what I think. I want them to know my values and the positions I hold. But I am also curious to hear what they think. Sometimes they surprise me, sometimes they challenge what seems obvious to me, and sometimes they make me rethink as well.
Today I understand that I was not wrong when I looked for a position from my father. Children need adults who have a position. The question is what else they encounter alongside that position.
This question is troubling quite a few parents this summer. In conversations with parents, I hear concern about the language and positions that children bring home. "I don't know where he gets these things from." "Suddenly she talks about an entire group as if they are all the same." Young people are exposed online not only to different political positions, but also to generalizations and slurs against Palestinians, LGBT, Haredim, leftists, and other groups, to messages justifying violence, and to language that turns a political rival into a "traitor".
It is easy to be alarmed. It is also easy to immediately enter into an argument and try to correct. But there is also another possibility: to see this moment as an educational opportunity.
Schools are closed, but the civic education of our children has not gone on summer vacation. They continue to consume news and videos, to share and argue, and sometimes we don't even know from which sources they learn about reality. Precisely now it is worth being there with them.
Not every statement requires a lecture, but statements that generalize or humiliate people and groups, false information, and justification of violence are not "just another opinion" that we are required to accept in the name of openness. You can say to a child clearly: we don't talk about people like that. And now let's try to understand where it came from. What did you see? Who said it? What is the claim based on? Would you say the same thing about every person in the group you belong to? Democratic education needs both boundaries and curiosity.
In a few weeks, the children will return to school. We expect teachers to do similar work there: not to run away from difficult questions in the name of "neutrality", but also not to tell students what to think. In our programs at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, "Teacher.Class.State" and "Teachers' Lounge in Memory of Shira Banki", we invite educators to deal together with controversy and questions of identity, belonging, and responsibility.
Recently, we also built an AI-based tool that allows teachers to practice conversations about Judaism and democracy, freedom of speech and offense, equality and loyalty. Not to find a right answer, but to practice forming a position, pedagogical thinking, and developing judgment. But right now the classrooms are closed. The responsibility lies largely with us, the parents.
We don't have to be neutral. Children grow up within the world of values, identity, and beliefs of their family, and that is good. But alongside the question of what we believe is another question: how do we think?
One can start with what enters the house through the screens. Where did this video come from? Who is behind it? Is it a fact, an interpretation, or an opinion? Is there a source for this claim? What is missing from the story? What would someone who thinks differently say? And one can also let the children see us deliberating. To say: "I believe in this very much, but here there is something that bothers me"; "I identify with this camp, but in this case I think it is wrong"; "Two values that are important to me are clashing here, and I am not sure what is the right thing to do".
This way they encounter not only our conclusions, but also the path to them. They see that it is possible to have a clear position and also criticize our own camp, to listen to an argument that challenges us without giving up our values, and sometimes, in the face of new facts or a convincing argument, also to change our mind. Citizenship is not just a position. It is also the question of what my responsibility is and what I do with it.
In a few months, we will go to the ballot box. In September, teachers will return to the classrooms and will bear their share of the responsibility for educating the next generation for life in a democracy. But until then, and also afterwards, much of this education happens at home.
Decades have passed since I turned off the radio and asked my father: "Dad, what do we think about this?". Today, if one of my children asks me the same question, I hope I will know how to say: I will tell you what I think and why. And then I am curious to hear you too.
