…Until the infamous 2020, or earlier, depending on the school. Technology is no longer a limited element of our students’ lives. For many teens, it is where their brain power, emotional energy, entertainment, school curriculum, and social lives are spent. A Day in the Life of a Screen-Addicted Teenager Consider for a moment what a typical day might look like for a high schooler in 2024. There is, of course, a spectrum of tech-dependency that varies based on family priorities and school structure. But as you know, many teenagers are engaged on screens within every. single. aspect. of their academic and personal lives. It’s worth imagining it, because their high school experience is likely different from yours. Let’s spend a moment imagining this reality. And feel free to wince, cringe, or give an audible “yikes” along the way. Upon hearing the alarm clock, there is a back-and-forth battle with the snooze alarm after a late night Netflix binge. A few incoming push notifications from Snapchat and Tiktok pique your interest. After scrolling through Instagram and catching up on the group messages sent after you fell asleep, you lethargically rise from bed. The getting ready and breakfast process is accompanied by Spotify music emanating from your nearby phone. The drive to school, whether with a parent, friend, or oneself, often includes more of the same stimulus input. Arrival in your first period class begins with a few face to face check-ins from friends. While waiting for your teacher to begin, you set up your laptop and ensure your school platform, Youtube, and Netflix tabs are ready for the day. Your phone is accessible for frequent checks at the top of your backpack. You quickly remember that today is a group collaboration day in Geometry. The project will be done on Google Slides. Perfect opportunity to keep open your personal tabs. Today’s exit slip will be typed on Canvas, so switching between that and your notes won’t be a problem. Fortunately, you have a few extra minutes to check last night’s ESPN scores. Your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th period require an open laptop. Your 6th period will use a QR codes for the day’s activity. Frequent push notifications, social media checks, and open Netflix tabs interrupt a state of workflow. Your afternoon classes include the use of one notebook, a pen, two collaborative apps, and one interactive video with corresponding typed questions. You and your mom correspond via text throughout your last class to settle what time you plan to leave school today. By 3:20, you are ready to walk home. Airpods and Spotify guide your way. The evening involves four homework assignments, only one of which involves pen and paper. The family tv, your sister’s Tiktok videos, and your soccer team’s exploding group message extend the homework “work time” well past dinner. Before crashing for the night, you fit in Facetime with your best friend and two hours of Instagram scrolling. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.  One brick builds upon another Think of all the ways a child, adolescent, and teenager needs to develop throughout his/her lifetime. Take language development as an easy example. Singing, reading, and talking with children build the foundational “bricks” for effective phonics instruction. Sound phonics skills lead to decoding. Strong decoding leads to fluent readers. Strong readers can engage more fully when taught higher level skills. Higher level thinkers can express their ideas in writing, speech, etc. Pretty amazing to think of the progression in just this ONE area, isn’t it? Meaningful, varied learning experiences are what enable this essential progression to be successful. If learning is primarily rooted in one experience (screens), what is being lost? Dr. Michael Rich, author of The Mediatrician’s Guide: A Joyful Approach to Raising Healthy, Smart, Kind Kids in a Screen-Saturated World, writes “Much of what happens on screen provides “impoverished” stimulation of the developing brain compared to reality.” Children need a diverse menu of online and offline experiences, including the chance to let their minds wander” [1]. As a parent, teacher, or ANYONE who works with children and adolescents, we have the opportunity to create this variety! Have you noticed this trend? In your classroom alone, think about how many digital assignments take place in a week. Now multiply that times six or seven classes. If you struggle to remember what you ate for breakfast…as an adult with a fully-formed brain (even if coffee is required to activate it), think about today’s demands on a 16-year-old. In a recent conversation with current high school seniors, one trend stood out: not remembering submitted assignments. In the words of one student, “In middle school, we turned in our work physically. It registered that we turned it in. Now, it doesn’t even register. I started missing more assignments.” Does this excuse chronic late work? No. Are there ways to check for submitted assignments on most platforms? Of course. But the reality that students, yours included, are likely struggling with this issue is enough of a reason to periodically do something different, isn’t it?  Studies (…That likely support what you already witness!) Ok, now let’s connect research to these images, shall we? In a study conducted by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the average time 8th and 10th graders spend on social media is 3.5 hours daily. 1 in every 4 uses it 5+ hours per day, and 1 in every 7 uses social media for 7+ hours each day [2]. This is JUST social media! Throw in a full day of classroom instruction, 2-3 hours of homework, video game sessions, and even just one Netflix episode, and it’s hard to imagine any minutes remaining in a day.  Not Sold? Here are some more findings:
 Research across countries, demographics, age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status makes clear one truth: High amounts of screen time, repeatedly throughout one’s childhood and adolescence, lead to negative outcomes. Negative outcomes cause ripple effects.  Recognizing the Good Technology has led to a profound increase in efficiency, the ability to quickly cross-check information, an explosion of personalized learning platforms, quicker grading systems, ... the list goes on. There are obvious benefits to technology in one’s personal life as well. However, in most classrooms, there are not just elements of technology. It completely dominates. Notes. Exit slips. Group work. Annotations. Homework. Test prep. Assessments. So what can you do? How can you create an environment that includes time away from tech, without doubling your workload or abandoning great digital resources? Where to Go From Here First, evaluate what you’re already doing. Create a simple outline of your week or unit. Highlight the activities that are screen-free. Really, physically write or type this out! Are none to be found? No judgment here. Today is the perfect day to try something new. When you have a visual sense of your week or unit, purposefully schedule in non-tech related experiences (emphasis on creating a real EXPERIENCE! - more on that below) into your week. If your class meets 5/5 days each week, could 1-2 classes include non-tech activities? If your school follows block scheduling, maybe it’s only a portion of the class. What matters is that there are regular, meaningful, and engaging elements to your classroom that allow students to learn outside of a screen. When planning your non-tech experiences, start your brainstorm with the memorable ones you had growing up. Maybe this included color-coded notes, skits, drawing, an extension project, interviews, use of math manipulatives, or a printed activity connected to your unit (Check out my paper airplane coordinate plane activity, geometry construction art, doodle notes, or simplifying rational expression golf game for ideas!).  A Worksheet is a Fine, but an Experience is Better If you’re a teacher, you have had to muster up some creativity on more than one occasion. When planning a non-tech activity, ask yourself this question: “How can I immerse my class in a way that completely hooks them?” Adding music, some simple decorations, colored paper, a snack that connects to the content, use of realia (items from the real world used for instruction), etc. Make a plan, set a budget, and light your classroom up with something different.  A Word to the Wise Repeat after me: Paper (...paper). Does not (...does NOT). Make (...make). My lesson (...my lesson). Effective (...effective). That’s right, simply using paper rather than a device does not guarantee effectiveness. In the same way that using a device does not directly correlate to increased student learning, the reverse is also true. The activity must be purposeful. It must be an appropriate level of difficulty. And it must be well-executed by you, the classroom leader. A Print-And-Go Challenge Do you want to take this issue to the next level? How about a week-long challenge that asks students to avoid all non-academic screen time? They’ll still need to complete homework online and respond to their parents’ texts, but scrolling on Instagram or the nightly video game binge is fair game to be cut. You can begin by opening up a 15-20 minute conversation using these questions. Print and hang them around the room, provide colored post-its for comments, and create a gallery-walk discussion. You could also project them to your whiteboard and simply ask the questions.  Pro tip: If you ask for their experiences with screen time, don’t immediately lecture them for their screen time. Makes sense, right? Invite them to share and keep the conversation light-hearted (i.e. “Wow! All that time on Tiktok and you still play varsity basketball? I’m impressed. I wonder how drastically your game would improve if you converted those scrolling hours into time spent shooting baskets in the driveway…”) After asking about their habits and honest opinions, offer them a screen-free challenge. Here’s a daily tracker with alternative ideas for when they feel the urge to click on that screen. If they can print an assignment, such as an article, to minimize screen time, even better. You can also organize a competition between periods. Create a bar graph on your wall that tracks how many students fully avoid non-academic tech each day. Stoke some friendly competition. Those high schoolers may surprise you with how invested they become! Walk the Walk Off the top of your head, you could likely name a few times that an adult in your life told you one thing, then did another. Frustrating, wasn’t it? As a classroom teacher, students witness not only your content knowledge. They see your habits, demeanor, and attitude. They have a front row seat to a trusted adult who ISN’T their mom and dad. Checking your phone at the back of the room sends a confusing message. If you model healthy boundaries with technology and are truly present while teaching, they will notice. We know students are always watching: let’s be the example every child deserves.  Let us be a fly on your wall!
What non-tech activities are you already using in the classroom? Are you integrating some of these fun screen-free games and activities? Do you have a go-to screen-free activity that is always a hit? We’re eager to hear what that class period looks like. Share with us below! Who might need to hear this message? If you have a colleague struggling to garner up engagement in the classroom, send this article their way! This perspective may be just what’s needed to reignite that classroom spark. References: 1: https://hms.harvard.edu/news/screen-time-brain 2: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-me 3: https://www.jpedhc.org/article/S0891-5245(21)00126-7/abstract 4: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099478 5: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001393511830015X 6: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7473739/
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