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Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction - NYTimes.com

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Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction - NYTimes.com

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Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks - and less able to sustain attention.

"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."

But even as some parents and educators express unease about students' digital diets, they 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.

It is a tension on vivid display at Vishal's school, Woodside High School, on a sprawling campus set against the forested hills of Silicon Valley. Here, as elsewhere, it is not uncommon for students to send hundreds of text messages a day or spend hours playing video games, and virtually everyone is on Facebook.

The principal, David Reilly, 37, a former musician who says he sympathizes when young people feel disenfranchised, 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.

He pushed first period back an hour, to 9 a.m., because students were showing up bleary-eyed, at least in part because they were up late on their computers. Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it.

"I am trying to take back their attention from their BlackBerrys and video games," he says. "To a degree, I'm using technology to do it."

The same tension surfaces in Vishal, whose ability to be distracted by computers is rivaled by his proficiency with them. At the beginning of his junior year, he discovered a passion for filmmaking and made a name for himself among friends and teachers with his storytelling in videos made with digital cameras and editing software.

He acts as his family's tech-support expert, helping his father, Satendra, a lab manager, retrieve lost documents on the computer, and his mother, Indra, a security manager at the San Francisco airport, build her own Web site.

But he also plays video games 10 hours a week. He regularly sends Facebook status updates at 2 a.m., even on school nights, and has such a reputation for distributing links to videos that his best friend calls him a "YouTube bully."

Several teachers call Vishal one of their brightest students, and they wonder why things are not adding up. Last semester, his grade point average was 2.3 after a D-plus in English and an F in Algebra II. He got an A in film critique.

"He's a kid caught between two worlds," said Mr. Reilly - one that is virtual and one with real-life demands.

Vishal, like his mother, says he lacks the self-control to favor schoolwork over the computer. She sat him down a few weeks before school started and told him that, while she respected his passion for film and his technical skills, he had to use them productively.

"This is the year," she says she told him. "This is your senior year and you can't afford not to focus."

It was not always this way. As a child, Vishal had a tendency to procrastinate, but nothing like this. Something changed him.
Growing Up With Gadgets
When he was 3, Vishal moved with his parents and older brother to their current home, a three-bedroom house in the working-class section of Redwood City, a suburb in Silicon Valley that is more diverse than some of its elite neighbors.

Thin and quiet with a shy smile, Vishal passed the admissions test for a prestigious public elementary and middle school. Until sixth grade, he focused on homework, regularly going to the house of a good friend to study with him.

But Vishal and his family say two things changed around the seventh grade: his mother went back to work, and he got a computer. He became increasingly engrossed in games and surfing the Internet, finding an easy outlet for what he describes as an inclination to procrastinate.

"I realized there were choices," Vishal recalls. "Homework wasn't the only option."

Several recent studies show that young people tend to use home computers for entertainment, not learning, and that this can hurt school performance, particularly in low-income families. Jacob L. Vigdor, an economics professor at Duke University who led some of the research, said that when adults were not supervising computer use, children "are left to their own devices, and the impetus isn't to do homework but play around."

Research also shows that students often juggle homework and entertainment. The Kaiser Family Foundation found earlier this year that half of students from 8 to 18 are using the Internet, watching TV or using some other form of media either "most" (31 percent) or "some" (25 percent) of the time that they are doing homework.

At Woodside, as elsewhere, students' use of technology is not uniform. Mr. Reilly, the principal, says their choices tend to reflect their personalities. Social butterflies tend to be heavy texters and Facebook users. Students who are less social might escape into games, while drifters or those prone to procrastination, like Vishal, might surf the Web or watch videos.

The technology has created on campuses a new set of social types - not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato.

"The technology amplifies whoever you are," Mr. Reilly says.

For some, the amplification is intense. 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 texts between classes, at the moment soccer practice ends, while being driven to and from school and, often, while studying.

Most of the exchanges are little more than quick greetings, but they can get more in-depth, like "if someone tells you about a drama going on with someone," Allison said. "I can text one person while talking on the phone to someone else."

But this proficiency comes at a cost: she blames multitasking for the three B's on her recent progress report.

"I'll be reading a book for homework and I'll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then 20 minutes later realize, 'Oh, I forgot to do my homework.' "

Some shyer students do not socialize through technology - they recede into it. 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.

Escaping into games can also salve teenagers' age-old desire for some control in their chaotic lives. "It's a way for me to separate myself," Ramon says. "If there's an argument between my mom and one of my brothers, I'll just go to my room and start playing video games and escape."

With powerful new cellphones, the interactive experience can go everywhere. Between classes at Woodside or at lunch, when use of personal devices is permitted, students gather in clusters, sometimes chatting face to face, sometimes half-involved in a conversation while texting someone across the teeming quad. Others sit alone, watching a video, listening to music or updating Facebook.

Students say that their parents, worried about the distractions, try to police computer time, but that monitoring the use of cellphones is difficult. Parents may also want to be able to call their children at any time, so taking the phone away is not always an option.

Other parents wholly embrace computer use, even when it has no obvious educational benefit.

"If you're not on top of technology, you're not going to be on top of the world," said John McMullen, 56, a retired criminal investigator whose son, Sean, is one of five friends in the group Vishal joins for lunch each day.

Sean's favorite medium is video games; he plays for four hours after school and twice that on weekends. He was playing more but found his habit pulling his grade point average below 3.2, the point at which he felt comfortable. He says he sometimes wishes that his parents would force him to quit playing and study, because he finds it hard to quit when given the choice. Still, he says, video games are not responsible for his lack of focus, asserting that in another era he would have been distracted by TV or something else.

"Video games don't make the hole; they fill it," says Sean, sitting at a picnic table in the quad, where he is surrounded by a multimillion-dollar view: on the nearby hills are the evergreens that tower above the affluent neighborhoods populated by Internet tycoons. Sean, a senior, concedes that video games take a physical toll: "I haven't done exercise since my sophomore year. But that doesn't seem like a big deal. I still look the same."

Sam Crocker, Vishal's closest friend, who has straight A's but lower SAT scores than he would like, blames the Internet's distractions for his inability to finish either of his two summer reading books.

"I know I can read a book, but then I'm up and checking Facebook," he says, adding: "Facebook is amazing because it feels like you're doing something and you're not doing anything. It's the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway."

He concludes: "My attention span is getting worse."
The Lure of Distraction
Some neuroscientists have been studying people like Sam and Vishal. They have begun to understand what happens to the brains of young people who are constantly online and in touch.

In an experiment at the German Sport University in Cologne in 2007, boys from 12 to 14 spent an hour each night playing video games after they finished homework.

On alternate nights, the boys spent an hour watching an exciting movie, like " Harry Potter" or "Star Trek," rather than playing video games. That allowed the researchers to compare the effect of video games and TV.

The researchers looked at how the use of these media affected the boys' brainwave patterns while sleeping and their ability to remember their homework in the subsequent days. They found that playing video games led to markedly lower sleep quality than watching TV, and also led to a "significant decline" in the boys' ability to remember vocabulary words. The findings were published in the journal Pediatrics.

Markus Dworak, a researcher who led the study and is now a neuroscientist at Harvard, said it was not clear whether the boys' learning suffered because sleep was disrupted or, as he speculates, also because the intensity of the game experience overrode the brain's recording of the vocabulary.

"When you look at vocabulary and look at huge stimulus after that, your brain has to decide which information to store," he said. "Your brain might favor the emotionally stimulating information over the vocabulary."

At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory.

In that vein, recent imaging studies of people have found that major cross sections of the brain become surprisingly active during downtime. These brain studies suggest to researchers that periods of rest are critical in allowing the brain to synthesize information, make connections between ideas and even develop the sense of self.

Researchers say these studies have particular implications for young people, whose brains have more trouble focusing and setting priorities.

"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."

"The headline is: bring back boredom," added Dr. Rich, who last month gave a speech to the American Academy of Pediatrics entitled, "Finding Huck Finn: Reclaiming Childhood from the River of Electronic Screens."

Dr. Rich said in an interview that he was not suggesting young people should toss out their devices, but rather that they embrace a more balanced approach to what he said were powerful tools necessary to compete and succeed in modern life.

The heavy use of devices also worries Daniel Anderson, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who is known for research showing that children are not as harmed by TV viewing as some researchers have suggested.

Multitasking using ubiquitous, interactive and highly stimulating computers and phones, Professor Anderson says, appears to have a more powerful effect than TV.

Like Dr. Rich, he says he believes that young, developing brains are becoming habituated to distraction and to switching tasks, not to focus.

"If you've grown up processing multiple media, that's exactly the mode you're going to fall into when put in that environment - you develop a need for that stimulation," he said.

Vishal can attest to that.

"I'm doing Facebook, YouTube, having a conversation or two with a friend, listening to music at the same time. I'm doing a million things at once, like a lot of people my age," he says. "Sometimes I'll say: I need to stop this and do my schoolwork, but I can't."

"If it weren't for the Internet, I'd focus more on school and be doing better academically," he says. But thanks to the Internet, he says, he has discovered and pursued his passion: filmmaking. Without the Internet, "I also wouldn't know what I want to do with my life."
Clicking Toward a Future
The woman sits in a cemetery at dusk, sobbing. Behind her, silhouetted and translucent, a man kneels, then fades away, a ghost.

This captivating image appears on Vishal's computer screen. On this Thursday afternoon in late September, he is engrossed in scenes he shot the previous weekend for a music video he is making with his cousin.

The video is based on a song performed by the band Guns N' Roses about a woman whose boyfriend dies. He wants it to be part of the package of work he submits to colleges that emphasize film study, along with a documentary he is making about home-schooled students.

Now comes the editing. Vishal taught himself to use sophisticated editing software in part by watching tutorials on YouTube. He does not leave his chair for more than two hours, sipping Pepsi, his face often inches from the screen, as he perfects the clip from the cemetery. The image of the crying woman was shot separately from the image of the kneeling man, and he is trying to fuse them.

"I'm spending two hours to get a few seconds just right," he says.

He occasionally sends a text message or checks Facebook, but he is focused in a way he rarely is when doing homework. He says the chief difference is that filmmaking feels applicable to his chosen future, and he hopes colleges, like the University of Southern California or the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, will be so impressed by his portfolio that they will overlook his school performance.

"This is going to compensate for the grades," he says. On this day, his homework includes a worksheet for Latin, some reading for English class and an economics essay, but they can wait.

For Vishal, there's another clear difference between filmmaking and homework: interactivity. As he edits, the windows on the screen come alive; every few seconds, he clicks the mouse to make tiny changes to the lighting and flow of the images, and the software gives him constant feedback.

"I click and something happens," he says, explaining that, by comparison, reading a book or doing homework is less exciting. "I guess it goes back to the immediate gratification thing."

The $2,000 computer Vishal is using is state of the art and only a week old. It represents a concession by his parents. They allowed him to buy it, despite their continuing concerns about his technology habits, because they wanted to support his filmmaking dream. "If we put roadblocks in his way, he's just going to get depressed," his mother says. Besides, she adds, "he's been making an effort to do his homework."

At this point in the semester, it seems she is right. The first schoolwide progress reports come out in late September, and Vishal has mostly A's and B's. He says he has been able to make headway by applying himself, but also by cutting back his workload. Unlike last year, he is not taking advanced placement classes, and he has chosen to retake Algebra II not in the classroom but in an online class that lets him work at his own pace.

His shift to easier classes might not please college admissions officers, according to Woodside's college adviser, Zorina Matavulj. She says they want seniors to intensify their efforts. As it is, she says, even if Vishal improves his performance significantly, someone with his grades faces long odds in applying to the kinds of colleges he aspires to.

Still, Vishal's passion for film reinforces for Mr. Reilly, the principal, that the way to reach these students is on their own terms.

Hands-On Technology

Big Macintosh monitors sit on every desk, and a man with hip glasses and an easygoing style stands at the front of the class. He is Geoff Diesel, 40, a favorite teacher here at Woodside who has taught English and film. Now he teaches one of Mr. Reilly's new classes, audio production. He has a rapt audience of more than 20 students as he shows a video of the band Nirvana mixing their music, then holds up a music keyboard.

"Who knows how to use Pro Tools? We've got it. It's the program used by the best music studios in the world," he says.

In the back of the room, Mr. Reilly watches, thrilled. He introduced the audio course last year and enough students signed up to fill four classes. (He could barely pull together one class when he introduced Mandarin, even though he had secured iPads to help teach the language.)

"Some of these students are our most at-risk kids," he says. He means that they are more likely to tune out school, skip class or not do their homework, and that they may not get healthful meals at home. They may also do their most enthusiastic writing not for class but in text messages and on Facebook. "They're here, they're in class, they're listening."

Despite Woodside High's affluent setting, about 40 percent of its 1,800 students come from low-income families and receive a reduced-cost or free lunch. The school is 56 percent Latino, 38 percent white and 5 percent African-American, and it sends 93 percent of its students to four-year or community colleges.

Mr. Reilly says that the audio class provides solid vocational training and can get students interested in other subjects.

"Today mixing music, tomorrow sound waves and physics," he says. And he thinks the key is that they love not just the music but getting their hands on the technology. "We're meeting them on their turf."

It does not mean he sees technology as a panacea. "I'll always take one great teacher in a cave over a dozen Smart Boards," he says, referring to the high-tech teaching displays used in many schools.

Teachers at Woodside commonly blame technology for students' struggles to concentrate, but they are divided over whether embracing computers is the right solution.

"It's a catastrophe," said Alan Eaton, a charismatic Latin teacher. He says that technology has led to a "balkanization of their focus and duration of stamina," and that schools make the problem worse when they adopt the technology.

"When rock 'n' roll came about, we didn't start using it in classrooms like we're doing with technology," he says. He personally feels the sting, since his advanced classes have one-third as many students as they had a decade ago.

Vishal remains a Latin student, one whom Mr. Eaton describes as particularly bright. But the teacher wonders if technology might be the reason Vishal seems to lose interest in academics the minute he leaves class.

Mr. Diesel, by contrast, does not think technology is behind the problems of Vishal and his schoolmates - in fact, he thinks it is the key to connecting with them, and an essential tool. "It's in their DNA to look at screens," he asserts. And he offers another analogy to explain his approach: "Frankenstein is in the room and I don't want him to tear me apart. If I'm not using technology, I lose them completely."

Mr. Diesel had Vishal as a student in cinema class and describes him as a "breath of fresh air" with a gift for filmmaking. Mr. Diesel says he wonders if Vishal is a bit like Woody Allen, talented but not interested in being part of the system.

But Mr. Diesel adds: "If Vishal's going to be an independent filmmaker, he's got to read Vonnegut. If you're going to write scripts, you've got to read."
Back to Reading Aloud
Vishal sits near the back of English IV. Marcia Blondel, a veteran teacher, asks the students to open the book they are studying, "The Things They Carried," which is about the Vietnam War.

"Who wants to read starting in the middle of Page 137?" she asks. One student begins to read aloud, and the rest follow along.

To Ms. Blondel, the exercise in group reading represents a regression in American education and an indictment of technology. The reason she has to do it, she says, is that students now lack the attention span to read the assignments on their own.

"How can you have a discussion in class?" she complains, arguing that she has seen a considerable change in recent years. In some classes she can count on little more than one-third of the students to read a 30-page homework assignment.

She adds: "You can't become a good writer by watching YouTube, texting and e-mailing a bunch of abbreviations."

As the group-reading effort winds down, she says gently: "I hope this will motivate you to read on your own."

It is a reminder of the choices that have followed the students through the semester: computer or homework? Immediate gratification or investing in the future?

Mr. Reilly hopes that the two can meet - that computers can be combined with education to better engage students and can give them technical skills without compromising deep analytical thought.

But in Vishal's case, computers and schoolwork seem more and more to be mutually exclusive. Ms. Blondel says that Vishal, after a decent start to the school year, has fallen into bad habits. In October, he turned in weeks late, for example, a short essay based on the first few chapters of "The Things They Carried." His grade at that point, she says, tracks around a D.

For his part, Vishal says he is investing himself more in his filmmaking, accelerating work with his cousin on their music video project. But he is also using Facebook late at night and surfing for videos on YouTube. The evidence of the shift comes in a string of Facebook updates.

Saturday, 11:55 p.m.: "Editing, editing, editing"

Sunday, 3:55 p.m.: "8+ hours of shooting, 8+ hours of editing. All for just a three-minute scene. Mind = Dead."

Sunday, 11:00 p.m.: "Fun day, finally got to spend a day relaxing... now about that homework..."

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Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction

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Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks - and less able to sustain attention.

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How does technology distract us from the world around us? — Medium

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How does technology distract us from the world around us? — Medium

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You can't tell

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How does technology distract us from the world around us?

"All that happens must be known" (Eggers)

The person in this image seems to be taking a really astonishing photo. But she looks to be very motivated in getting the perfect picture by adjusting the brightness and zoom on the photo. This way she will be able to share it with friends and family on social media. What she is not capturing is all the fun and activivites around her. In her photo, the scene looks like the sun is about to set and it is around night time. But when you look outside of the phone, it is a beautiful sunny day with endless amounts of activities to do. She has become way too distracted by technology. Instead of living in the moment, she is trying to have others live it for her. In Eggers novel, The Circle, a company tries to create a worldwide idea that everything that occurs must be known by everyone else. The girl in this photo is trying to do that. But in the process, she is missing out on everything else that is going on around her.

"Just beyond her, Mae saw Alistair, who waved to her, and began texting" (Eggers 165)

School studies are very important. Depending on how much you work and study, it will eventually determine the type of future you will live. But students today are procrastinating like no other. They just can't seem to get away from that phone or computer for just 1-2 hours so that they can study or get their work done. When it comes to studying it can be a challenge to focus on their studies without checking their phone or computer every once in a while. It is resulting in many students staying up late, writing last minute essays, or crunching in a lot of information that they need to memorize for a test. Technology, in my opinion, is the number one reason why students procrastinate today. It is their biggest distractions to their studies. As shown in Eggers quote, young people are so attached to their phones that they don't even have time to say hello anymore. They will give a quick wave and go back to whatever they were doing on their device.

"You no longer pick up on basic human communication clues. You're at a table with three humans, all of whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you're staring at a screen! Searching for strangers in... Dubai!" (Eggers)

This photo is a prime example of how technology is distracting us from the world around us. This man in this photo is curled up on his couch and is giving 110% of his attention to his phone. His pet dogs, on the other hand, lay lifeless on the other side of the couch. They are hoping that the man would just get off his phone and come play fetch with them. Just like eggers explains in his novel and in the quote above, humans are not seeing how being distracted by technology is impacting those around them. It is giving others the notion that they are less important than a phone or computer. Sooner or later, everyone will only communicate with each other through the use of technology. The idea of sitting down and having a conversation with someone will cease to exist.

"...haven't explored the gym, and you've barely explored the campus. I think you've used about 1 percent of our facilities" (Eggers 178)

This young child seems to be fascinated by the T.V. screen. It is the center of the universe in this photo. Even though the child has all these toys and objects around him, the T.V. has caught his attention and will probably keep on caching his attention every time he enters this room. These technological distractions are beginning to start at an earlier age as the years go by. As the younger generation begin to interact with technology, they will grow up and loose thought of exploring other activities such as sports, reading, writing, etc. As Eggers explains, humans will use only 1 percent of what the world has to offer as they become attached to technology from a young age. They will be pulled away from other resources because of the mind capturing presence that technology has over other things in this world.

"My problem with paper is that all communication dies with it. It holds no possibility of continuity" (Eggers)

The man in this photo seems to be doing something that was very ordinary just 20 years ago. That is opening up a book and reading it. But now technology can be used for everything. You can read, write, sing, act, etc. The man in this photo has become so attached to his phone that even while reading a book he will sneak his phone in. There is no need for anything else. Technology will do everything for us at one point in the future. It will soon become just the user and his piece of technology. There will be no more usage of anything else. That is why technology will ultimately become the biggest distractions for humans and their involvement with the rest of the world. As noted by Eggers, the usage of paper does not come up to par with the usage of a computer to write or read something. People favor using technology over ordinary books and papers to read and write. In favoring technology, comes a lot of distractions. Many tablets, phones, and computers are able to multitask which means if someone wants to read a book on a tablet, they would also be able to receive messages from friends or other notifications that would distract them from their original task.

Works Cited

"Daniel Goleman Quote." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2015. <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/danielgole585905.html>.

Eggers, Dave. The Circle. New York: Vintage, 2013. Print.

Marx, Leo. " Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept." Technology and Culture 51.3 (2010): 561-77. Web. 01 Mar. 2015.

Pintrest. Christine Buchanan, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2015. <https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F167618417356314956%2F>.

Popova, Maria. "Aesthetic Consumerism and the Violence of Photography: What Susan Sontag Teaches Us about Visual Culture and the Social Web." Brain Pickings RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2015. <http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/09/16/susan-sontag-on-photography-social-media/>.

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How does technology distract us from the world around us?

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How does technology distract us from the world around us? "All that happens must be known" (Eggers) The person in this image seems to be taking a really astonishing photo. But she looks to be very motivated in getting the perfect picture by adjusting the brightness and zoom on the photo.

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Most human activity is directed toward the realization of some good, and activity requires time to think and to act. We are all aware of the many demands on our time. As we will see below, many of those demands come about as a result of technological objects.

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How Is Technology Distracting to Teenagers? | LIVESTRONG.COM

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How Is Technology Distracting to Teenagers? | LIVESTRONG.COM

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good website

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Damon Verial

Having obtained a Master of Science in psychology in East Asia, Damon Verial has been applying his knowledge to related topics since 2010. Having written professionally since 2001, he has been featured in financial publications such as SafeHaven and the McMillian Portfolio. He also runs a financial newsletter at Stock Barometer.

Way back when, kids went to school with a clear focus and few distractions. Of course, young kids always find ways to distract themselves from their studies, regardless of era. These days,however, technology has advanced to a point where it's almost impossible for a child to be without it. The problem is when technology becomes more of a burden than an aid.

Video of the Day

Computer science expert Keith Beard has written in the book "Internet Addiction: A Handbook and Guide to Evaluation and Treatment," that technology is not inherently distracting, but the way that teenagers use technology can cause major problems in school, home life and self-image. For example, a cell phone is essentially just a communication tool. It eases the burden of family-to-teen communication, which is why many parents buy them for their teens. However, when teens begin to use cell phones for other purposes -- which they almost certainly will -- the technology can prove distracting.

The teen years are crucial for a child's development, especially social development. The teenage years give a child many opportunities for social interaction, which improves on the social skills teens will need for college and work. Today's technological communication tools, ranging from cellphones to the Internet, often become social crutches. Instead of interacting face-to-face, many teens opt to interact via text messages, social media and email. While these forms of social interaction are sometimes useful and important for entering society, teens tend to develop bad habits through them. For example, teens might become accustomed to typing via the "teen-speak" method of replacing words with letters, as in "y r u h8n?" -- "Why are you hating?" This might not be a large issue to teens who are keeping up with their English courses, but even the most academic teen is giving up practicing important skills such as nonverbal communication and active listening when she replaces face-to-face communication with face-to-screen communication.

One distraction of technology to which teens are particularly susceptible is the ability to redefine their identity through the Internet. Teens attach particular importance to their self-identity, both in how they see themselves and in how they see others. For most people, uniformity of identity is impossible; almost no one is perfectly satisfied with himself. The draw of the Internet in the teen years is the ability to control the information you put out about yourself. Teens who are not confident in their appearance or who do not feel popular in their social environment have the opportunity to use the Internet to try on different personas. This experimentation, while natural, can be distracting, and some teens will find themselves more comfortable in cyberspace than their real lives.

When used unproductively, technology can bring about family problems. Kimberly Young, director of The Center for Online Addiction, points out in her book, "Caught in the Net," that many modern teens respond to family instability by using technology to cope. How teens cope with a problem in childhood sets them up for dealing with stress in adulthood. For example, instead of addressing a problem, such as a conflict with a parent, a modern teen might turn on the video game system and escape into a more comforting world. This can lead to the exacerbation of a problem that could have been solved head-on. If a teen runs to technology whenever she feels uncomfortable, addiction might develop, which is much more serious than a distraction.

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How Is Technology Distracting to Teenagers?

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Way back when, kids went to school with a clear focus and few distractions. Of course, young kids always find ways to distract themselves from their studies, regardless of era. These days,however, technology has advanced to a point where it's almost impossible for a child to be without it.

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How Distracting Is Technology? - Digits - WSJ

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How Distracting Is Technology? - Digits - WSJ

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How much time do you spend each day being distracted by technology? According to one recent survey, 53% of people say they waste at least an hour at work every day, and most of their distractions are digital.

The survey of more than 500 employees showed that technology accounts for about 60% of workplace distractions - through email, social websites and even the time it takes to toggle between applications. About 45% of the respondents kept at least six items open at the same time and 65% said they used more than one device in addition to their main computer.

Searching for documents also drains productivity significantly; respondents spent at least 30 minutes daily to search for documents including emails. The cost of that searching comes to $3,900 per employee per year, assuming an hourly wage of $30.

Such distractions raise questions about whether the technology businesses use is as efficient as it could be.

The survey also calls attention to the effect of heavy tech usage on people's ability to concentrate. According to the study, two out of three people communicate digitally with someone else, at least sometimes, while attending an in-person meeting. A majority of the respondents also said that they sometimes stay connected after work hours, during vacation and while in bed.

But the vast increases in productivity brought by technology make the distractions and interruptions "worth it," some employers say.

"In my world, more often than not, they are productive and ultimately time saving interruptions," said Emily Ashworth, a vice president at utility company American Water.

The survey was commissioned by social email software provider harmon.ie, of Milpitas, Calif. David Lavenda, the vice president of Marketing and Product Strategy at harmon.ie, said the "survey results are the first steps toward building a story that tells businesses that they will have to take steps to reduce distractions."

Readers, what do you think? What digital tools do you find most distracting at work, or at home?

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How much time do you spend each day being distracted by technology? According to one recent survey, 53% of people say they waste at least an hour at work every day, and most of their distractions are digital.

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Does technology distract us too much from the task at hand? | Debate.org

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Does technology distract us too much from the task at hand? | Debate.org

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Debate.org is a cool website and I can use it to get ideas.

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Does technology distract us too much from the task at hand?

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Debate.org is a dynamic social community where you can voice your opinion on today's hottest issues.

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Distracted by Technology: Focusing Attention on Homework

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Distracted by Technology: Focusing Attention on Homework

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Does your child stay up all night doing homework? Is he or she often texting or online while doing homework or studying? Is it possible for students to study and do their homework effectively while being distracted by technology? Is focusing attention on homework really all that important? It's just homework, right?

Welcome to the 21st century. A world filled with distractions every where you turn. How is it even possible to get homework done at all, let alone focus on doing homework without being distracted by a wide variety of electronic gadgets. Back in the not so distant past, you might have heard a kid saying "It doesn't matter if I have the TV on while I do my homework. It's not like I'm studying for a test." Today, it's a bit more complicated as students and their smart phones are inseparable. What might at first glance seem harmelss, doing homework or studying while watching TV, texting or checking social media can actually impair learning the material as well as lower test scores. Research has shown that it's one of the worst study habits a student can develop.

With nearly everyone over the age of 10 having a cell phone and access to the internet these days, it's quite common to find students dividing their attention between texting, checking social media websites and surfing the internet while doing homework and studying for exams. Given that text messaging is the way many students communicate with each other, it's not easy for parents to explain to them that when it's time to do homework or study for an exam it's necessary to turn their phone off.

In all likelihood, they will argue about this as students of all ages seem to have a misconception that they can pay attention to more than one thing at a time and that multitasking is an effective way to do homework or study for a test. How are you, their parent, going to respond? With research. In this blog post, we reviewed the most up to date research that we could find on the subject of multitasking to give parents a better understanding of what it takes to be a successful student.

What Does Research Show About Studying While Distracted by Technology?

In a study conducted by Dr. Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University - Dominguez Hills, students were observed studying for a 15 minute period where they were told to "study something important." He found was that students generally started to lose focus after about three minutes. On average "students only spent about 65 percent of the observation period actually studying." That's not exactly what you might consider "quality" studying time.

Dr. Rosen did another study where he surveyed high school students and asked them how often they switch from studying to doing something related to technology such as checking email, Facebook, texting or watching TV. Across all grade levels, 80% of students reported that they switch between studying and technology somewhat often to very often. Rosen calls this "Continuous Partial Attention," meaning that most of the time, students are not focused on studying but rather are moving their attention back and forth between studying and various forms of technology. As you might expect, students who were the most distracted generally had the most windows open on their computers. Students who were less distracted had higher GPAs than students who switched back and forth fairly often and those who regularly check Facebook or text messages. Students who had strategies for studying also had higher GPAs according to Rosen's findings.

Rosen explains, "Young people's technology use is really about quelling anxiety...they don't want to miss out or to be the last person to hear some news (or like or comment about a post online)." One of the major problems with texting and posting on Facebook and other social media sites while in class and/or studying, is that "they draw on the same mental resources-using language, parsing meaning-demanded by schoolwork." Ultimately, he concludes, if we want students to learn and perform at their best, smart phones and other online distractions must be managed.

Can Doing Homework While Distracted by Technology Affect Test Scores?

In another study of 8-18 year old students done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly one third of the students surveyed confessed that when they were doing homework, they were also watching TV, texting, or listening to music. Victoria Rideout, the lead author of the study, warns parents about the dangers of media multitasking. This concern is distinct from worrying about how much kids are online or how much kids are media multitasking overall. "It's multitasking while learning that has the biggest potential downside,"she says.

If a student is focused when doing their homework, they actually retain more of the information when it comes time to take a test on the same subject matter. It's like studying for the test little by little and absorbing the information in small chunks. The strategy of 'chunking' bits of information has been shown to be the most effective way to learn larger amounts of information and is a useful test prep strategy. If a student does her homework while multitasking, that will result in less information being retained and therefore more time will be required for test preparation in order to achieve the same result. Compounding matters, if homework is done while multitasking in an introductory class, it will be more difficult to build on that "shaky foundation of knowledge" in the more advanced class the next semester.

Dr. David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan observed that "under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. Listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook-each of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex." Most students incorrectly believe that they can perform two challenging tasks at the same time, according to Meyer. They may like to do it, they may even be addicted to it, but there's no getting around the fact that it's far better to focus on one task from start to finish."

Quick Test for Students to Determine if Multitasking Impacts Performance

Here's a fun, 3 minute test that you can do along with your kids to demonstrate if multitasking impacts performance (and the time it takes to complete homework). Taking this simple test will allow students to see for themselves if multitasking could potentially be affecting their studying.

http://davecrenshaw.com/multitasking-example/

Top 3 Negative Outcomes of Studying While Being Distracted by Technology

According to an article by Annie Murphy Paul , research has shown that there are various negative outcomes that result from students multitasking while doing homework. Paul describes the top 3 negative outcomes. "First, the assignment takes longer to complete, because of the time spent on distracting activities and because, upon returning to the assignment, the student has to re-familiarize himself with the material." Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes. "Third, students' subsequent memory of what they're working on will be impaired if their attention is divided." Paul explains, "The moment of encoding information is what matters most for retention, and dozens of laboratory studies have demonstrated that when our attention is divided during encoding, we remember that piece of information less well-or not at all."

Paul goes on to write, "Finally, researchers have found that media multitasking while learning is correlated with lower grades. In Rosen's study (discussed above), students who used Facebook during the 15-minute observation period had lower grade-point averages than those who didn't go on the site. In addition, two recent studies by Reynol Junco , a faculty associate at Harvard's Berkan Center for Internet & Society , found that texting and using Facebook-in class and while doing homework-were negatively correlated with college students' GPAs."

In conclusion, the evidence is overwhelming. Studying or doing homework while sitting in front of the TV, using social media or texting, makes it more difficult to learn and retain the information, increases the time it takes to complete homework, and may ultimately result in lower test scores.

Is your child attached to his smart phone or other electronic gadgets? If so, and grades are suffering, it might be time to take action. Are you ready to help your child break the multitasking habit, learn to focus attention on homework and get on the path to academic success?

How Parents Can Help Children Manage Distractions While Studying

Teach your child to take technology breaks to separate doing homework from using technology. Here's the strategy: After your child has worked on his homework without interruption for 15 minutes, he is then allowed a technology break for 2-3 minutes to text and post to social media. When the break time is up, you instruct him to turn off his electronic devices for another 15 minutes of doing homework or studying. Students can extend their working time to 20, 30 or 45 minutes and perhaps extend their technology break time to 5-7 minutes. If your child complains that the technology break time is too short, you can let him know that when he is finished with his homework, he can use technology for as long as he wants (or whatever amount of time you say is ok).

Would you like to cut your child's homework time in half?

If so, click below to download our free guide to "Cutting Homework Time in Half." You might also want to contact us to see if Executive Function coaching can help your child with focusing attention on homework.

Photo credit: Gitte Laasby

Attribution: A much more detailed discussion of some of these studies can be found in Slate Magazine (May 3, 2013) by Annie Murphy Paul, a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the book Brilliant: The Science of How We Get Smarter.

Michael Howard is the Director of Marketing for Beyond BookSmart. He joined the company in 2012 and works remotely from Los Angeles. He is responsible for researching and developing marketing strategies, marketing materials, updating and optimizing the company website, social media, and search engine optimization. Michael earned his BA in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Lamar University.

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Distracted by Technology: Focusing Attention on Homework

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Does your child stay up all night doing homework? Is he or she often texting or online while doing homework or studying? Is it possible for students to study and do their homework effectively while being distracted by technology? Is focusing attention on homework really all that important? It's just homework, right?

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Distraction Caused by Technology — Digital Responsibility

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Distraction Caused by Technology — Digital Responsibility

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In a recent book, Professor Rosen of California State University, Dominguez Hills conducted a study of high school students to determine how technological distractions affected their study habits. He discovered that students could concentrate for an average of a measly three minutes at a stretch. The major culprit behind their lack of focus?

# data[].attributes.headline
Distraction Caused by Technology — Digital Responsibility

# data[].attributes.subject
Distraction Caused by Technology — Digital Responsibility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a recent book, Professor Rosen of California State University, Dominguez Hills conducted a study of high school students to determine how technological distractions affected their study habits. He discovered that students could concentrate for an average of a measly three minutes at a stretch. The major culprit behind their lack of focus?