Digital addiction haunting students

Digital deluge makes it difficult to do deep work, says John M. Richardson.

Remember how before the pandemic everyone worried that teenagers spent too much time on their phones?

Teachers warned about digital addiction. Anxious parents struggled to keep cellphones off the supper table and nightstand.

But when the pandemic hit and schools closed, things changed. Digital devices became educational lifelines. Teachers called home if a student did not spend all day looking at a screen.

So, were we right to be worried?

Yes, we were, and as teachers and students prepare to head back to class, it's time to talk about it.

Human beings are suckers for novelty. According to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, we'll work just as hard to obtain a novel experience as we will to get a meal or a mate. When students keep an eye on iMessage or Instagram while working on an English paper, their “brain's novelty centers become rewarded for processing shiny stimuli, to the detriment of the prefrontal cortex, which wants to stay on task and gain the rewards of sustained effort and attention.”

Studies show that merely having a cellphone somewhere in the room leads to a loss of concentration.

As the pandemic abates and schools reopen, how should parents, teachers and students talk about technology? I have two suggestions.

My first suggestion is that we abandon the old debates about whether cellphones are “good” or “bad” and talk instead about “attention” and how we must choose to spend this finite resource.

In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, computer science professor Cal Newport argues that the future belongs to those who can master hard things quickly and produce work at an elite level. We can only do this when we train ourselves to do “deep work,” defined as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skills, and are hard to replace.”

Newport's “deep work hypothesis” is that “the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

Let's talk with students about how nobody is going to achieve great things while checking TikTok. Let's talk about how we owe it to ourselves to take time and space to think and do.

My second suggestion is that we encourage students to schedule time each day to put their devices aside and read on paper.

As neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf argues in

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, screens encourage skim-reading, skipping and browsing, often in the shape of Z or F as our eye flits from top to bottom. We do this because the average person reads between 50,000 and 100,000 words a day, the equivalent of an entire novel. We struggle to keep up with the digital deluge.

The trouble is, what and how we read determine the shape and quality of our neural pathways. If all we do is skim digital content, we lose the ability to read deeply — to consider facts, lose ourselves in a story or view the world from another perspective. The structure of the brain changes to reflect how it is being used and deep thinking becomes more difficult to achieve.

The return to school presents teachers, parents and students with the opportunity to renew conversations about our relationship to digital technology. Let's have this crucial discussion. At stake is the ability of students to think creatively, accomplish meaningful work and positively shape a troubled world.

Ottawa high school teacher John M. Richardson is an adjunct professor in the University of Ottawa faculty of education and co-lead of the Imagination, Creativity and Innovation student cohort.