I don’t think the problem is people staring at screens. I think the issue is whether your screen time is passive or active. Are you interacting or passively watching? Does it add to your life or do you feel like your life is slipping away?
Back in the day, when social media took off on mobile devices, I loved how all of the nostalgists shared their profound sadness at how people in public were ignoring each other and staring at their devices instead of being engaged in witty repartee. Right. One quick Google search later and I found a page on a website, Vintage Photographs of People Reading Newspapers Before the Invention of That Grossly Antisocial Device: The Smartphone, with image after image of folks on the subway and in other public places with their collective noses buried in their newspapers and decidedly not talking to each other.
Now I’m open to the possibility that some of these images were staged (given the photography technology of the day), but the point is that this alleged “anti-social” behavior isn’t new or the result of the ascendancy of the smartphone. At the same time, I have some 6th grade girls who cannot be forced to get their noses out of their devices and put some effort into their class work. But it’s hardly the fault of the device.
One way of thinking about this is that this is further demonstrations of cultural shifts that show the growing gaps between where these persons are “living” their lives and the irrelevancy of whatever is happening in the classroom. When I began teaching in 1995 I knew that whatever it was that we did needed to engage the full spectrum of communication that our students experienced when they watched TV or were playing video games with each other. Anything less would be deemed of lesser importance than what they experienced when engaged in those other activities. I would guess that most of my colleagues didn’t recognize the competition and just assumed that this generation of students were stupid. And this is going back way before the mobile takeover, in 1995 when computers were big stand-alone devices.
Like all cultural shifts, banning or demonizing behaviors isn’t a solution. Understanding the appeal, taking advantage of the engagement and developing discipline against destructive aspects would be better approaches to this ongoing shift. There is no going back and one has to push back and work with the technology manufacturers to address the intentional embedded addictive parts of their products. FaceBook says that they’re all about community and you finding your tribe, but only so far as they are able to keep you scrolling through your feed for hours, showing you ad after ad after ad. In as much as our society and culture has chosen that the highest honor goes to those with the most stuff, then it shouldn’t surprise anyone that our children live in their devices and in this shiny “most stuff” world.
All I wanted was a better way to write than what I had with my manual typewriter. And now here I am over 40-years later, surrounded by three 27-inch screens communicating with you. I do need to be more disciplined about my sleep and exercise, but that’s hardly the fault of all my screens. How about you, how are you doing with the doom-scrolling and vicarious living through the greatest-hits posts of your online friends? We can do better and maybe that’s the point. Don’t condemn or feel bad, just keep moving and helping one another. Xo
Source: Source: KQED/PBS Above the Noise, https://youtu.be/fVALeerZpd4
Back in the day, when social media took off on mobile devices, I loved how all of the nostalgists shared their profound sadness at how people in public were ignoring each other and staring at their devices instead of being engaged in witty repartee. Right. One quick Google search later and I found a page on a website, Vintage Photographs of People Reading Newspapers Before the Invention of That Grossly Antisocial Device: The Smartphone, with image after image of folks on the subway and in other public places with their collective noses buried in their newspapers and decidedly not talking to each other.
Now I’m open to the possibility that some of these images were staged (given the photography technology of the day), but the point is that this alleged “anti-social” behavior isn’t new or the result of the ascendancy of the smartphone. At the same time, I have some 6th grade girls who cannot be forced to get their noses out of their devices and put some effort into their class work. But it’s hardly the fault of the device.
One way of thinking about this is that this is further demonstrations of cultural shifts that show the growing gaps between where these persons are “living” their lives and the irrelevancy of whatever is happening in the classroom. When I began teaching in 1995 I knew that whatever it was that we did needed to engage the full spectrum of communication that our students experienced when they watched TV or were playing video games with each other. Anything less would be deemed of lesser importance than what they experienced when engaged in those other activities. I would guess that most of my colleagues didn’t recognize the competition and just assumed that this generation of students were stupid. And this is going back way before the mobile takeover, in 1995 when computers were big stand-alone devices.
Like all cultural shifts, banning or demonizing behaviors isn’t a solution. Understanding the appeal, taking advantage of the engagement and developing discipline against destructive aspects would be better approaches to this ongoing shift. There is no going back and one has to push back and work with the technology manufacturers to address the intentional embedded addictive parts of their products. FaceBook says that they’re all about community and you finding your tribe, but only so far as they are able to keep you scrolling through your feed for hours, showing you ad after ad after ad. In as much as our society and culture has chosen that the highest honor goes to those with the most stuff, then it shouldn’t surprise anyone that our children live in their devices and in this shiny “most stuff” world.
All I wanted was a better way to write than what I had with my manual typewriter. And now here I am over 40-years later, surrounded by three 27-inch screens communicating with you. I do need to be more disciplined about my sleep and exercise, but that’s hardly the fault of all my screens. How about you, how are you doing with the doom-scrolling and vicarious living through the greatest-hits posts of your online friends? We can do better and maybe that’s the point. Don’t condemn or feel bad, just keep moving and helping one another. Xo