Guess who is warning that we have become too addicted to computers, cell phones, and all those other devices?
I may be addicted but I don’t think it is the usual kind of screen-addiction.
I love to communicate and exchange ideas.
Before I started this blog, I would tweet about 50-80 times daily.
It wasn’t for the joy of tweeting. I never tweeted to say “I am now at the corner of Broadway and 30th street,” or “I am sitting down to dinner.”
I communicated stories I had read that I wanted to share.
Other people share with me, and that’s how I am able to write about what is happening in other cities and states and occasionally other nations.
I read Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows. He worries that computer addiction is ruining the brains and sensibilities of all of us, especially the young.
He described a period of time–maybe it was a week–when he shut down everything and lived without the Web. It sounded idyllic.
But I noticed that he soon was right back, doing all the same things.
Where do you think this is heading? How is it affecting younger people? What does it mean for our future?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein is another book with a similar thesis. One of his more interesting claims is that, instead of broadening minds, information technology makes teens and young adults ever more insulated within peer culture. They become experts on themselves, each other, and the ephemera of popular culture, rather than taking virtual tours of the Louvre or whatever.
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About a year ago, I gave up my cell phone. After all, I have computers and phones at home and at work and (now) a Kindle Fire that gets wi-fi. Having no phone has proven no difficulty, but has made me realize that I only had the phone because I wanted to have it–as technology, not to meet a need. Now, I don’t feel quite so tied to technology, but free to go to it when I want it.
I love that no one can call me when I’m walking or driving… or just sitting in the yard looking at the flowers. Something we once took for granted is now a great freedom!
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Don’t have a cell phone, don’t have TV but I’d like to think I’m a tad more informed than most that have those. I”m not a Luddite, but refuse to succumb to propaganda.
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The printing press was supposed to destroy education because no one would have to memorize anything and our brains would atrophy. Radio was distracting us from more important tasks. Television at first was thought to be the thing to revolutionize education and then changed course to destroying our young people’s minds.
Technology is a tool like anything else. I have an ipad, a cell phone, a Kindle fire, a desktop, and an iphone. If the phone rings and I don’t want to answer it, I don’t . No one is forcing me to log in.
I have more faith in the next generation. Each generation thinks the one following them is going to hell in a handbasket.
I love technology and admit I am addicted to reading news stories mostly education but other issues as well. When my husband was alive he read 5 different newspapers today. If he were reading them today online people would say he’s addicted to the internet. No. He was addicted to the news.
Is being on the computer any different than people sitting watching the stock market ticker?
My friends are scattered and the internet and phone are wonderful ways for me to connect with them. I like to discuss educational topics. You don’t even have to agree with me. If it were available to me I would go to a discussion group every evening to share ideas.
Young people have always been self absorbed and interested in what interests them. That will never change.
The only thing that has changed is the method of delivery.
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How is it affecting younger people? I think most healthy kids will find their life’s balance. But those kids who are healthy and those kids who are at risk for addiction are still a huge challenge for their teachers. These are students who. . .
• Are used to getting instant answers to questions, delivered 24/7 to personal devices
• Don’t get the need to memorize anything
• Have access to information that is easy-to-cut-&-paste without intellectual processing required
• Play and work with the same technology, often with the inability to differentiate
• Are dependent on devices to remind them of events
• Multitask to the point of diminishing concentration and quality of task
• Allow themselves to be constantly interrupted
• Know too much: have a basic grounding in knowledge from the media (out-of context, age inappropriate, global, perhaps unhealthy)
• Do not see the technology that mediates what they see
• Are copycats who live in a world with endless duplication possibilities and no value in copies
• May have global perspectives ( often taught as a commodity) but perhaps at a cost of missing out on an intense cultural grounding
• Have learning opportunities everywhere, but also the choice to be shallow consumers of shallow information, with a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes
• Belong to informal secret networks outside the protection of parents and teachers, with god-knows-who-or-what
• Think nothing of sharing most things online with strangers
• Do not know how to make a conscious effort to find solace from distractions and disruptions. – But now this gets us back to your original question! Good question!
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I grew up with 3 tv stations, a record player and am transistor radio. These distractions were often meant to be enjoyed in a group. And the level of distraction was nothing compared to the way we are interrupted now by our personal devices.
My concern in all this is this generation’s disinterest in reading of books or newspapers or magazines as a beneficial pastime.
If you don’t read full-length novels or non-fiction, it is not easy to sustain narratives and think critically about them. That is my concern.
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Well, I think this depends a lot on the context in which technological miracles are marketed to the kids. It really creeped me out that Microsoft’s Halo 4 game was “rolled out” at the same event where Gates was “rolling out” his revolutionary video-game-driven future of education. Halo addiction interrupted the college careers of some of my best students, who since have recovered and are picking up the pieces.
I had to wonder: were the unprecedented addictive features of the Halo games developed under the guidance of galvanic skin response technology? Kids’ human nervous systems hardly stand a chance against cynical exploitation of powerful drives that are wired into their own emotional/behavioral dynamic. Those responses have evolved over millions of years, to engage real-world rewards and life-threatening emergencies.
On the other hand, my own sons had non-rationed access to every emerging technology. Although they too struggled from time to time with the addictive power of high-tech simulation, I can confidently assert that they are now masters of technology in their own real-world pursuits, not its slaves.
The older has his doctorate in it, and is applying computational biology methods to questions like maternal-to-child AIDS transmission and genomic variation in drug response. The younger is appearing now in a critically praised bilingual outdoor play performance, in a public park in a low-income immigrant community. He blogs and records and networks ceaselessly with his contemporaries, to create opportunities and to refine and advance the arts of live theater for their own generation.
So, it depends on whatever other “tools” we can put in their hands and hearts. Let’s teach them power, and then hand the technology over to the kids. I have faith in them.
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One of my main concerns is that people are getting addicted not only to the continual communication (or what passes for communication), but to the popularity votes everywhere–the stats on hits, likes, and tweets. These become stand-ins for appraisals of merit, though they have little to do with merit. It has become more and more difficult to find something that you can just read without the accompanying stats. Of course you can ignore them, but part of the essence of the Web is the stuff that flickers in the corner of eye.
Another concern is that people’s use of technology can impinge on others’ focus and quiet. I dislike it when I’m at a talk or concert and I see phones flashing in my row. I am not on Twitter but have read a few Twitter feeds; some of them are precisely from people at events who can’t wait to let others know that they’re there, that something’s going on, that the performer is doing just great (or not). What happened to taking something into the mind and saving the reactions for later?
One of the dangers of the current technology is that it discourages people from (a) taking things in on their own and (b) making up their own minds about it. I don’t mean that all of the current technology does this, or that it introduced the problem. I do mean that it’s all too easy, with phone in hand, to distract oneself and others from the independent relationship with a thing or person. It gets much worse than what I’m describing; Facebook and other services would have us checking in whenever we approached a restaurant, movie theater, or store, to see what our friends ordered, saw, or purchased.
In other ways technology can be a great boon. It is great to be able to read articles on JSTOR and look up words in the OED, all from the comfort or discomfort of wherever I happen to be. I enjoy the Princeton Dante Project, which has, among other things, audio recordings of the entire Divine Comedy read in Italian and English. I enjoy a good thoughtful email–and the surprise of hearing from strangers or from people I haven’t seen in years. And so on.
But something like the Princeton Dante Project requires some concentration to begin with. You don’t go there if you’re expecting some sort of quick feedback or communication. To make the most of the Internet, to enjoy some of its best offerings, we need to have the muscle to resist some of its lures and distractions and to take its clamor in stride.
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Where’s the like/dislike button when I need it???
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P.S. I realize that many people use Twitter as you do, to share links and news, not to tell everyone where they are or what they thought of the first minute of the concert.
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Might be off-track (but I think it fits this post)–just heard on the NBC Nightly News that
Scholastic’s My Weekly Reader will cease to exist! I looked forward to reading that children’s version of Time or Newsweek every Friday in school.
What next–Highlights for Children?! (Perhaps it’s already been obliterated, & I hadn’t heard.)
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I think balance and moderation in this as in everything else in life would be a positive way to look at “devices” and social media. Do worry about those children who hide behind “screens” of any kind.
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I resisted even having a cell phone until shortly before I lost the job that had convinced me to get one. I had a 26 mile trip to school; my husband was a little nervous. When I started working in this school district they asked me for my cell phone number, so they could call me during the day. I was so glad I didn’t have one. The main office used to interrupt classes with intercom announcements that were entirely unnecessary, but I never had a class interrupted by cell phone, not mine anyway. Almost all my students had cell phones; I competed with them daily. High school special ed students are masters of illusion. I became a snatch and grab artist, and since I returned them at the end of class they were good-natured about it. (You learn to pick your battles.) I could go on about the computer wars, I taught a reading class with a computer segment, but that’s another story. How about the people who can’t walk their dogs or push a stroller without a phone glued to their heads?
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Recommended reading for people interested in a well researched and coherent argument of exactly this point: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.
It is possible to use technology in certain ways which are not counter-productive, but it’s damn difficult and hardly any of us do it. I recently disabled notifications on my phone. Why would I want to be interrupted with a buzz every 5 minutes? It was distracting. I’m also attempting to be self-critical of my own use of technology, and to see whether it is true that the medium is the message, or is it possible to get the same point across using a variety of different technologies.
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Interesting that you work at NYU. We are a NYU startup tackling this issue of internet/screen addiction, overconsumption, information overload or whatever you want to call it.
I think this is headed towards various degrees of addiction ranging from what you feel to what’s written by Matt Richtel. It really comes down to self discipline. For those without the discipline, there will need to be tools and software to help curb or change unhealthy habits.
We are building Skim.Me (http://skim.me) to make your daily browsing routines more productive. It comes down to the user’s experience – do I leave always wanting more or do I leave feeling that this is enough?
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