Even when we were young, there were recommended limits to our TV time. Quite apart from making your eyes grow square, it detracted from exercise, the great outdoors and reading. Those threats still stand, but what other risks have arisen in the age of personal tablets and phones?
Instant gratification — good things come to those who wait
Instant gratification is a dangerous thing for young minds. Computer games – even educational ones – offer a constant stream of positive reinforcement for very little effort, and it can be addictive. That “hooray” moment when a computer game level is completed or someone likes or responds to your social post easily becomes compulsive.
As a result, the new generation rarely get the opportunity to develop patience. They don’t even need to wait until 4pm on Tuesday for their favourite program: it’s instantly available on YouTube and so is the rest of the box set. Without the ability to wait for a reward, students can fail to build intrinsic perseverance for long tasks.
Try, try again
Teenagers and young adults now are spending around six hours a day playing computer games instead of forming the close personal friendships that come with the normal creative outdoor risk-taking that teens used to be renowned for.
In his excellent Inside Quest talk about Millennials in the Workplace, Simon Sinek explains that young people now are entering adulthood completely bereft of the personal confidence to brush off failures and try again when professional challenges don’t go their way. They also lack the personal support network of deep friendships on whom to fall back. He likens it to alcoholism: having spent their formative years turning to a screen for emotional support, that’s all they have to fall back on as adults. That means that long term, when a problem is difficult at work, there is no internal or external grit there to plough on and beat it. They feel constantly unsatisfied and their lack of staying power makes them poor employees.
Taking away from student learning?
Of course, some screen time can be highly educational: using an e-reader to enjoy a novel, engaging in a progressively challenging drawing or reading game or discussing a film/story can all promote language, numeracy or fine motor skills. However, time spent alone watching low-quality content such as computer games and poor You Tube shows can detract from other, more valuable pursuits.
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Why are outdoor activities important anyway?
Participation in games, particularly in an outdoor environment, is critical partly for physical health but more crucially because they allow for us to ‘experience risk’. As we overcome this risk, the brain develops strategies and boundaries for future, larger challenges. The New Scientist has a good round-up here. As well as this confidence, young adults learn to negotiate with others. Negotiation is the ability to conduct two-way debates, to compromise, to press and modify your own wants and to gain agreement from others.
Doing direct damage?
Doctor Mary Aitken says that 60 minutes of unstructured activity per day is vital. Furthermore, some students are up so late they are unable to learn, and others are already showing signs of inability to socialise and communicate properly.
The key thing, experts explain, is that students be educated in the positive uses of screen technology. In fact, the University of Oxford has found that screen time can be beneficial in terms of creativity and communication if used properly and to time limits: “For smartphones the ‘sweet spot’ was around two hours and one hour 40 minutes for video games.”
What can we do?
Whilst this issue is largely out of the further education environment, students can be supported to make better choices and teens can be made more aware of the consequences.
1. Integrate the risks into lessons: eyes, weight gain, brain development.
2. No Tablet Tuesdays / no Wifi Wednesdays (or any other catchy event!) Instead of homework, your students can produce some other evidence of their adventures, either in mixed media or verbally the following day.
3. Keep parents and guardians informed of research evidence with this sort of content in your newsletters.
4. Avoid using tablets as a reward or punishment: it encourages it as a ‘treat’.
5. Keep reinforcing the other uses of tablets: research, reading, music, news…
Does your college have a helpful way to cultivate positive tablet culture for your learners? Let us know how!
About the author
Katie Newell
Katie Newell BA(Hons) PGCE is an ex-primary school teacher, Head of Maths, Head of Year five and languages specialist. Katie qualified in Psychology at Liverpool then specialised in Primary Languages for her PGCE at Reading. Before teaching, Katie was a financial commentator and is now the Content Manager for eteach.com and fejobs.com. Katie feels passionately that teachers are the unsung heroes of society; that opening minds to creative timetabling could revolutionise keeping women in teaching, and that a total change to pupil feedback is the key to solving the work life balance issue for the best job in the world.
