When you wake up in the morning, do you check your phone for new emails within the first few minutes of arising? Do you repeatedly monitor a Facebook post after making it to see who has “liked” or commented on it? Have you thought you felt a buzz only to check your phone and find that you really only imagined it?
With the rise in social media, smartphone, and tablet use, there is no doubt we are living in a new era of digital connectivity, and, along with it, the resulting information overload. Recent research has shown that the typical person now processes over five times as much information in a day than one did less than 20 years ago—reading the equivalent of 174 full newspapers front to back each day. Much of this is because our brain gets a little hit of dopamine from the new and novel bits of information we take in and, since this information is now so readily available, many of us continually seek it out through our devices. This pattern literally changes the makeup of our brains, reducing our ability to focus on a conversation or task. And if this is the effect on adult brains, you can imagine the impact frequent screen time can have on the still-developing minds of young people.
I attended the three-day “Learning & the Brain” conference in Boston right before the holiday break, and the theme was “Focused Minds in a Distracted World”. It’s clear to me from this conference that the role digital devices play in the lives of our students is one of the most important educational issues of our times. Leading brain researchers, psychologists, and educators described the ways in which the ubiquity of internet access has changed the way we think and learn in an incredibly short period of time. Daniel Goleman—author of books including Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence—noted that for kids age 10 and younger “they have not known a time in which you couldn’t become immersed in a digital device.” Neuroscientist Dan Levitin cited research showing that exposure to large waves of information has made it more difficult for students and adults alike to possess the brain capacity to problem solve. Author of The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, Catherine Steiner-Adair, spoke of the fraying of social relationships caused by too much technology.
Thankfully, these speakers and others offered ways to manage the influence of digital devices on our students—and to harness the power of these devices to improve student learning. Here were a few consistently-mentioned strategies:
1) Learn about the technology students are using: The founder of LearningWorks for Kids stressed the importance of getting to know the games, apps, and social media students are using so that you can better understand what’s helpful and appropriate and what’s not. In fact, his organization works to recommend particular games and apps as tools to help strengthen students’ cognitive skills and attention as a part of a “play diet”.
2) Provide breaks for students during the day and help them to learn how to use those breaks well: All of us need to replenish the glucose in our brain regularly throughout the day, especially if we’re using our minds often. This recharge can come from eating healthy foods and from getting exercise. Our brains can also get the energy they need to reset our focus by learning how to be “mindful”. Daniel Goleman spoke of significant research showing that regular mindfulness exercises can help to mitigate the impact of A.D.H.D. and A.D.D.—the most extreme manifestations of inattention. Practices like quiet time, breathing techniques, and others that we use daily at ANCS can give students the skills to sharpen their focus.
3) Teach students information literacy: With all that is available at the click of a mouse or tap of a screen, it’s critical that students develop the skills to discern whether what they are reading is credible. We need to help students to know how to find answers to basic questions: What are the biases in this source? Is this information current? Where can I find references for what’s cited?
Of course, learning how to manage the daily deluge of information is important for adults too. So I leave you with a few tips for grown-ups to sharpen their focus courtesy of Daniel Goleman. Now stop reading this blog and go take a walk!