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.