Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction

In today's Sunday New York Times, the front page article continues the discussion about how brains are affected by young people who are constantly distracted by computers and cellphones, and the  constant stream of stimuli they offer.

There are two concerns or tensions mentioned in the article.  One is that students' brains are still developing and can become more easily habituated to constantly switching tasks.  This makes it harder for them to be less able to sustain attention.  The result is that it may be harder to focus and thereby affect learning.

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,” said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.”

Another side of the debate is that educators and parents are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. "Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students’ technological territory."

 Woodside High School is one example.  The principal, David Reilly, 37, is determined to engage these 21st-century students. He has asked teachers to build Web sites to communicate with students, introduced popular classes on using digital tools to record music, secured funding for iPads to teach Mandarin and obtained $3 million in grants for a multimedia center.

“The technology amplifies whoever you are,” Mr. Reilly says, creating a new set of social types — not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato.

The article then goes on to showcase a number of these social types.

• Allison Miller, 14, sends and receives 27,000 texts in a month, her fingers clicking at a blistering pace as she carries on as many as seven text conversations at a time. She is getting 3 Bs on her progress report, which she blames on her texting and then forgetting to do her homework.
• Ramon Ochoa-Lopez, 14, an introvert, plays six hours of video games on weekdays and more on weekends, leaving homework to be done in the bathroom before school.

“Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body,” said Dr. Rich of Harvard Medical School. “But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation.”  Read on... (but it's a long article, so show the researchers they are wrong about the ability to focus - consider it our own little experiment).