Your Child Living In A Digital Age- Be There!

I know as a parent it is hard to get out at night.  I am exhausted and the last thing I want to do is run out to school for a program. I hope to convince you by the end of this article to attend our December 4th parent workshop on Your Child Living In A Digital Age- despite the difficulty of getting out.

Before I begin, I’d like to thank all those who have been forwarding me articles which I quote in this column.  Hot off the presses, a November 20th article in The New York Times opinion article “How Evil Is Tech? By David Brooks, ” outlines three “critiques of big tech.”  

1. Increase in social exclusion and loneliness.  While social media promises increased interactions with others, in essence it makes you more aware of how lonely you are and limits real interactions with actual people. “Teens are less likely to hand out with friends, they are less likely to date, they are less likely to work…Eighth graders who spend 10  or more hours a week on social media are 56% more likely to say they are unhappy than those who spend less time. Eighth graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27%.  Teens who spend three or more hours a day on electronic devices are 35%  more likely to have a risk factor for suicide… Girls, especially hard hit, have experienced a 50% rise in depressive symptoms.”

For someone who works with 8th graders and teens, and for a parent of teens, these statistics are alarming.

      2.  Increased use of technology causes an addiction and the tech companies are purposefully causing this addiction. We all know that addictive quality.

       3. Tech companies are invading the private lives of their users.  

A recent article found on Aish.com, “Smartphones’ Negative Effects: A Summary Of The Latest Comprehensive Research” by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller.  Dr. Miller adds some additional findings of the negative impact of constant smartphone use.

1. Smartphones have a negative impact on our intellectual abilities. Dr. Miller quotes a 2017 research study from University of California  where students scored lower on tests of cognitive ability when their phones were in the room with them.  “The very proximity of their smartphones lowered students’ mental abilities” even when smartphones are turned off. Similar findings were found in other studies as well indicating that smartphones distract us and even change brain activity even when not using them.  
2. Dr. Miller points to the social isolation and the decrease in teens getting together with friends as well. She also highlights how teenagers indicate they feel more lonely and wish they had more friends when they have smartphones.  MIT professor, Professor Sherry Turkle, stresses the importance of face to face communication and how smartphones have changed the entire manner in which we communicate, even face to face. “Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits… we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions. We dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters.”  And, even when we meet face to face, social interactions are even impacted when our phones are simply sitting on the table.
3. Smartphones have a negative impact on one’s health. Over 60% of 18-29 year olds reported sleeping with their smartphones in their beds. 57% more teens are sleep deprived in 2015 than in 1991.  And, this does not include the physiological impact of the LED lights on suppressing our melatonin, and how looking at the screen makes you more alert before bed.

Just in case this research hasn’t been enough…

There is a plethora of research on the impact on teens specifically when it comes to their education and attention span.  In a recent Kappan Magazine article Larry Rosen wrote, “Due to the constant temptation to check their smartphones, today’s students are spending less time on their schoolwork, taking longer to complete assignments, and feeling more stressed in the process.”  Teens think they can multitask, but they really cannot.  When their phones are taken away, they are highly anxious and cannot focus- there is that addictive quality.  Teens are no longer able to focus for more than 15 minutes at a time- whether studying or sitting in class. Rosen suggests the importance of “building stamina for studying without technology.”  

Then… there’s more…

The Wall Street Journal’s  October 2017 article, “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds” by Nicholas Carr again asserts that “the division of attention impeded reasoning and performance.” When in the middle of a task, if we hear our phones buzz, our attention wanders and our work gets sloppier.   A 2015 study indicated that when subjects  heard their phones ring and could not answer them, their “blood pressure spiked, pulse quickened and their problem-solving skills declined.”

Just the act of resisting the desire to check our phones, can diminish our thinking ability.  This lead to the more concrete decision of some schools to ban smartphones,  where the students’ exam grades went up significantly.  Carr explains that psychologists have always pointed out that any object that is new and intriguing, that has “salience,” will draw our attention.  What makes the smartphone different?  “Imagine combining a mailbox, a newspaper, a TV, a radio, a photo album, a public library and a boisterous party attended by everyone you know, and then compressing them into a single, small, and radiant object. That is what  smartphone represents to us.  No wonder we can’t take our minds off of it.”  

Carr also points out the “google effect.”  “Because search engines are continually available to us, we may often be in a state of not feeling we need to encode the information internally. When we need it, we will look it up.”  Subjects in studies actually recall less due to this effect.  We are transferring the need to recall information to online sources.  The less we have in our memory, the less we have to think about and with.  

We “customers” are not the only ones who have been worrying about the negative effects of smartphones on us.  In an article in The Guardian “Our Minds Can Be Hijacked:The Tech Insiders Who Fear A Smartphone Dystopia,” Paul Lewis interviews tech executives who have put limits on their own technology use.  Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, highlights  that techniques that lure us in are fine-tuned to the customer.  “An internal Facebook report leaked this year revealed that the company can identify when teens feel ‘insecure’ and ‘worthless.’”  Loren Brichter, the designer of the pull down to refresh mechanism, agrees with the common comparison to a slot machine and its addictive quality, although he did not intend it at the time.  

Justin Rosenstein, the Facebook engineer who created the Like button, banned himself from Snapchat and asked his assistant to set up a parental-control feature on his own new iPhone to prevent him from downloading apps. Nir Eyal, the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products is the expert on how to create technologies that become compulsions.  He himself  has installed a outlet timer in his house that cuts off access to the internet at a set time each day. He says, “The idea is to remember that we are not powerless. We are in control.”   

As a parent, I worry that we are actually not in control.  At least we have the Shabbat- a day we are forced to disconnect.  The research I quoted relates to teens and above. How about the third graders who are walking around with cellphones? Is it too late for our teens?  What do we need to be doing as parents NOW? A quote from Facebook's founding president Sean Parker says it all, "The thought process that went into building Facebook was all about, 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.?' That means we need to give you a little dopamine hit once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a post or a photo. That's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you more likes. It's a social validation feedback loop, exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, exploiting vulnerability in human psychology. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains." I hope I have scared you sufficiently to join us on December 4th. It is an evening that no parent can afford to miss.  

One more note. I found this poem submitted by someone named Shoshana on aish.com. As we hand our children their first smartphones- something to think about:

Ever wonder what would happen if we treated the Torah as we treat our cell phone?

What if we carried It around in our purse or pocket every day?

What if we looked through It many times each day?

What if we turned back to go get It if we forgot It?

What if we always checked It for messages?

What if we treated It as if we couldn't manage a day without It?

What if we gave It to our children as a special gift?

What if we always took It, and used It, when we traveled?

What if we always thought to use It in case of an emergency?

Oh, and one more thing... Unlike our cell phone, we don't have to worry about Torah being disconnected, because Its "Carrier" never fails.

Advisory Update:

Sixth Grade:  Students wrapped up a unit on time management and learned how to schedule their evenings.  They began the next unit on Manners and Respect.

Seventh Grade:  Students began a unit on Empathy and understanding the pain of others.

Eighth Grade; After a lesson about putting the standardized tests into perspective, students discussed gratitude and the impact on our daily lives.

The School's Recess Duty

I have been in middle school now for about 12 years.  Before that I was in high school for about 10 years. Now, you might say that I was working in a middle and high school, but I maintain that when I “live” with middle school students (or high school) I feel as if I am one of them. I feel their accomplishments and their pain. I imagine what it is like to be in their shoes.  Each day I enter school with the same butterflies they feel, and the same worries on my mind.  As a middle schooler I often worry about recess and lunch. Recess and lunch, you might ask?!?!  We typically think that when we ask students what their favorite subject in school is, they respond, “Lunch and recess.” However, that is not the case for a number of middle schoolers.  Some dread those times of day, as they look around the room, searching for someone to with whom to sit and someone who will include him/her in a game.

Natalie Hampton, a sixteen year old in California, developed an app called “Sit With Us” to help students find students with whom to sit during lunch.   Natalie shared that she created this app because she spent most of her seventh grade year sitting alone at lunch.  She suffered from depression and stress, and shared that, “When I walked into a classroom, I was planning an escape route.”  The app also searches for  those who are “happy and willing to invite anyone to join the lunch table.  Users can designate themselves as “ambassadors” who can create “open lunches” and invite others to join. And, because it is on the phone, it is private, and no one need feel like a “loser” for using the app.

   Then there’s ten year old Christian Bucks.  When his family was thinking of moving to Germany he was worried about making friends. A school he looked at had a solution called the “buddy bench.” If a child was sitting on that bench alone during recess it was a sign that other children should ask him to play.  Christian’s family never moved to Germany, but he introduced the “buddy bench” to his school in America. There are now over 2,000 schools with buddy benches in the United States.  

For a child who is feeling as if he hasn’t found his place, recess can be a very lonely time of day. Research indicates the importance of recess for academic/cognitive and physical benefits.  The physical benefits are obvious.  The American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement on Recess highlights the cognitive benefits of recess by stating that in order for children to process that which they have learned in class, they need time for “cognitive processing”  which needs “a period of interruption after a period of concentrated instruction.”  Recess actually makes children more attentive in class- even if there is no physical activity and they just socialize with friends.

We often forget the social and emotional benefits of recess as well.  At recess they “practice and role play essential social skills...communication skills, including negotiation, cooperation, sharing and problems solving as well as coping skills, such as perseverance and self-control.”

But, what about the children who struggle with those skills? The children who go outside to recess and stay on the side by themselves?  And, the children who prefer to play games on their iPads instead of interacting with others?  This is where the idea of “structured recess” comes in.  Providing programming during recess allows for children who may have a hard time during this unstructured time.  Research by Stanford University in The Journal of School Health  demonstrates that a recess program can help children feel more engaged, safer and more positive about school.  It is a “critical contributor to positive school climate.”

I am proud to say that in the past few years we have made some progress in the middle school in this area.  This year, we have embarked on a more ambitious effort to provide structured activities DAILY for those who wish.  Our Middle School Recess Program contains: a.  A daily game room with mini hockey, foosball, nock hockey and assorted board games, b. Basketball leagues for sixth (Tuesday/ Thursday) and seventh grade (Monday/Wednesday), Thursday c. Zumba each Thursday  d. Baking for sixth grade e.  Makerspace daily  f. An art component still being developed.  

The other adults in the building have been wondering why I have felt so passionate about making this happen. It is simple. I am in middle school too. I know what it is like to enter a room and not know who to talk to.  I know what it is like to not be sure which table to choose- where will I feel comfortable? I know what it is like to feel anxious about what to do at recess- especially if I am not athletic.   And, so, we needed to make this structured recess program happen.  For middle schoolers like me.

(Parents often wonder, if my child likes being alone, is my child lonely?  What if he prefers to be by himself?  At home, this might be the middle schooler who enjoys reading, art, or just watching TV, while his siblings have sleepovers or are going to the movies and making plans.  There are children who are “home bodies.” I think the first piece is to ascertain whether the child is unhappy- through speaking with him. There are some children who won’t reveal their true feelings. How does he feel about hanging out at home?  You want to find out if his being alone is happening at school as well.  “What did you do at recess today?” “Who are you sitting next to at lunch?” Again, sometimes you can get some information. Reaching out to the school is a good idea as well to find out whether he seems alone in school or is hanging out with the rest of the students.  

On one hand, children have different personalities and some are happy to be relaxing at home without Saturday night plans. On the other hand, if the feedback from school is consistent with the fact that he is alone in school all the time, despite his being content, he is missing out on learning and practicing the social skills needed for interacting with others.  In that case, the parent can encourage some invitations.  That might need to start slow with an activity like bowling or a movie, where not a lot of talking is demanded).

It says in Bereishit 2:18, “ לֹא־ט֛וֹב הֱי֥וֹת הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְבַדּ֑וֹ אֶֽעֱשֶׂה־לּ֥וֹ עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ” "It is not good for man to be alone; I shall make him a helpmate opposite him."  It is the only thing in the Torah described as “not good”- being alone.  There is nothing more painful than the feeling of being alone.  Rav Binny Freedman points out that in Parashat Vayishlach 32:25 it describes the pain of Yaakov as, “וַיִּוָּתֵ֥ר יַֽעֲקֹ֖ב לְבַדּ֑וֹ” “And, Yaakov was left all alone.”  That is when he struggled with the angel. Rav Soloveitchik, z”l, points out that the identity of this man that he struggles with is kept mysterious, as it is meant to be Yaakov himself.  

When we feel lonely, and we struggle within ourselves- wondering why no one wants to be with us, it is a miserable feeling.  This feeling is magnified during the pre-adolescent and adolescent stages when children are searching for themselves and dependent on peers and friendships to define them.  As adults, our primary role is to help them discover themselves, to realize how wonderful they are and to develop that self-esteem so that they can stop struggling within themselves. However, our job is also to make for them an עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ.  First, to stress to our other students their obligation to reach out to someone who has not been included and be their  עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ. We should all have that conversation with our children at home. And, that is also what our recess programming is all about- helping them find that עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ.  That is our recess duty.

Advisory Update:

Sixth Grade- Students learned to use google classroom as a time management tool.

Seventh Grade- Students debriefed the Frost Valley experience and heard a presentation by Mr. Jeff Slater from the Bergen County Housing, Health and Human Services Center to introduce the students to the homeless shelter they will be visiting as part of their unit on empathy.

Eighth Grade-  Students discussed the phenomenon of test anxiety and why tests do not define them, in preparation for the PSAT exam this week.