Outside of school, young people’s use of technology is not strictly managed; they must learn to use technology responsibly, and that includes resisting temptations of distractibility. According to Howard Rheingold (2012), learning to manage our attention is a valuable literacy that takes deliberate practice. Rheingold’s argument draws from research that goes so far as to maintain that some distractions, rather than being harmful, are necessary and beneficial for survival. For example, it would be dangerous to be so focused on an important task that one wouldn’t be aware of the smell of smoke in the next room. No matter how focused or important a task, we need to be distracted at times—for instance, to alert us that there is a fire. This is an extreme example, of course, but the point is that not all distractions are negative, risky, or harmful. From an evolutionary perspective, humans have learned how to block out or pay attention to distractions that are beneficial for survival.
In his book Net Smart, Rheingold expertly and simply puts forth the idea that attention skills are a digital literacy that must be intentionally and deliberately developed (2012, pp. 42–43): “The executive control we all exercise when we maintain focus on a task becomes useful when we move from understanding attention to controlling it. … Gaining control of your attention while you are online requires, first of all, intention. When you formulate a goal, you need to intend to achieve it. Goals and intentions enable your executive control to attune to the part of your information environment that matters most, and tune out what is irrelevant, at least for the purpose of your goal.” Avoiding a technologically deterministic approach, Rheingold recognizes that fine tuning of attention skills dates back as far as humankind, but also recognizes that the development and domestication of technology necessitates the evolution of new skills and literacies.
The incessant buzzing of a mobile phone in our pocket, or the constant bleep of an email notification in our browser, or the flashing notification of a new tweet is potentially distracting, even to the point that it could have negative effects on productivity. For that reason, the removal of such distractions can be used to explain the test results of Beland and Murphy’s UK school test scores study or Carter, Greenberg, and Walker’s economics classroom trials. But compulsory authoritative approaches to regulating media—and therefore distractions—miss the point. Students do not need distraction-free environments, but rather, they must learn how to develop appropriate and effective attention literacies so that they can learn how to responsibly manage distractions on their own, outside of authoritative control. Schools have the opportunity to help students develop and shape the norms necessary for appropriately managing mobile media use in a beneficial manner. Helping students manage distractions can only be accomplished through the incorporation of mobile devices at school, rather than a punitive ban on personal technology. Banning mobile devices in order to create “distraction-free” learning at school constructs a superficial environment that ignores the reality that young people, just like adults, must learn to negotiate the distractions posed by mobile media.
Further, the discourse around distraction, media, and youth tends to assume that young people themselves are unaware of distractions. The discourse often positions youth as passive dupes who are unable to manage distractions, who are oblivious to the risks of distraction, or who can only manage distraction through authoritative control. These assumptions and constructions of youth and technology are evident of the harm-driven expectations that are common in policies of panic (see chapter 2). This rhetoric is also seen in headlines such as NBC’s “Students can’t resist distraction for two minutes … and neither can you” (Sullivan 2013) and this Slate headline: “You’ll Never Learn! Students can’t resist multitasking, and it’s impairing their memory” (Paul 2013). Such assumptions fail to recognize young people’s own agency with regard to both unintentional and intentional distraction. Amina (17 years old, East African) articulates her own understanding of deliberate distraction.
Q:
Okay. So, another thing that we’ve heard is that technology is a big distraction. What do you think about that?
Amina:
Oh, yeah. We all know it. We all know it. We all talk about how we have a paper to do, but “Look at me. I’m on Facebook.” Or we’ll talk about homework that’s not going to get done. Yeah. We always talk about Facebook and Twitter. We know it’s a distraction.
Q:
Okay. You and your friends talk about all that stuff a lot?
Amina:
Everyone talks about it. We all know it’s a distraction. I feel like a lot of other people are always talking about how our phones and computers are a distraction without us being aware of it. But that’s not true. We’re aware that it’s a distraction. You only do what you want to do and that will be your distraction. I feel like Twitter and Facebook are only a distraction because we want to be on Twitter and Facebook. Playing basketball could be a distraction if all you want to do is play basketball. Video games are a distraction if all you want to do is play video games. Anything can be a distraction.
Q:
So, that’s interesting. Are you saying that adults oftentimes say that?
Amina:
Just the idea of when the teacher’s talking about “Oh, you’re always on your phone. It distracts you. You never get your work done.” It’s not because oh no, we’re doomed for life. What are we going to do? It’s because we want to be on our phones. If we don’t want to be on our phones it won’t be a distraction. Sooner or later it will get old and it won’t be a distraction anymore. That’s probably going to be when we get older or when we go to college or however we get over it.
Amina’s interview reveals the extent to which students are acutely aware of distractions, but she transfers the debate to a framework of choice, rather than passivity or victimhood. Teachers—and adult society more broadly—can benefit from listening to Amina and other teens when they discuss distractions and media. Teens don’t need adults to eradicate distractions—an impossible goal anyway—but rather, they need help making smart and responsible decisions. Amina assumes as she gets older she will be less distracted my media. However, Rheingold’s (2012) research demonstrates that adults also need help developing and employing attention literacy strategies that minimize distractions. Setting healthy and productive boundaries is not simply a youth problem, but schools can help young people manage distractions.
In her research focusing on teens’ social uses of mobile media, Nicola Green (2003) argues that we ought to shift our focus away from the differences between teen and adult uses of mobile media. She contends that by focusing on differences between teen and adult use of technology that we erroneously construct teens as a uniform category and ignore the differences within teen populations. I would add that identifying particular practices as teen practices ignores the similarities between teen and adult media use as well. The ways teens use mobile media are not inherently in opposition to the ways adults use mobile media—yes, sometimes as a distraction, but also as a way to enhance a learning environment. But additionally, constructing problems as “youth” problems, opens doors for surveillance and policy intervention not typically applicable to adults (Shade 2011). Distractions from mobile devices are not a youth problem, but rather we should extend our focus to “attention literacy” as a skill that both young people and adults must develop and practice. School environments could incorporate mobile media as a way to scaffold students as they learn to manage distractibility in school and beyond. There must to be a balance between completely restricting mobile media and forgoing any level of control. This harkens back to Cramer and Hayes (2010) point from the beginning of the chapter, electronic device policies should expand beyond “unacceptable use” and instead focus on “acceptable use.”
Such strategies could include writing down goals, focusing on tasks for set periods of time, allowing students opportunities to multitask or take media breaks, determining what kinds of classroom activities are conducive to technology
use, and helping students evaluate what is working and what isn’t. In other words, it’s about helping students “be mindful” (to use Rheingold’s language) about their practices. Teachers could help students reflect on what aids and detracts from productivity, media being merely one variable in the equation. A larger reflective approach would help students identify when, where, and how they are most productive. For example, what time of day they are most alert, how much sleep they need to focus, if noisy or quiet spaces are better, if they need to work alone or with a friend, and so forth. This extends attention literacy beyond an overly technologically determinist focus on media in order to situate technology as part of a broader understanding of attention and distraction.
We can also look to the affordances of technology to help manage distractions. While most mobile phone apps default to push notifications, these can be turned off. Facebook provides a way to unsubscribe from notifications both in a browser and on a phone, a strategy that can be beneficial when certain updates are not relevant or are a distraction. Gmail has a “do not disturb” feature that essentially blocks your access to your email for a specified period of time and does not alert you to new messages. A student recently alerted me to a new app, called Pocket Points,5 that allows students to earn points for keeping their phones locked during class; the points can be redeemed for discounted food on and around campus. Both Android and Apple mobile devices have a customizable “do not disturb” feature that you can schedule to prevent notifications during certain times of day, such as bedtime or during class. The notifications are still visible, but they do not actively alert you of incoming information (both allow exceptions for your favorite people, or if someone calls multiple times in a short period, as would be done in an emergency). Although these strategies and techniques are easy to implement, they are not widely publicized within the interfaces or platforms, and thus schools could help students learn about these features and encourage using them in particular contexts. This would help them agentively manage distractions in productive and intentional ways.
As a reminder, I am specifically addressing a high school context; a scaffolding approach would be necessary to prepare students for this mode of trust and responsibility. For example, in elementary school personal devices may best be banned, but students could be given opportunities to earn privileges (or lose privileges) as they get older. By high school, the focus would expand beyond mere trust and responsible use, but include specific strategies for fine-tuning and developing attention literacy strategies. This shifts focus from mobile media as a risk that must be controlled to expectations of opportunities for enhanced learning. It also turns attention away from expectations of misuse, and instead empowers and respects students to develop necessary and beneficial attention literacies that they will undoubtedly need to learn as students at school, but also as adults at work, and responsible citizens in society. Distraction is a risk, but failing to help teens manage distractions autonomously is an even bigger risk.
Controlling Stress
Another argument for banning mobile devices in the classroom is that they increase stress and anxiety for young people (Billieuz et al. 2007; Brosseau 2013; Takao, Takahashi, and Kitamura 2009; Vitelli 2013). As happens with almost all media technologies when they are new, adults are concerned about the negative effects a technology will have on the emotional, psychological, social, and physical well-being of young people. Headlines and news stories are full of anxiety-inducing expectations of harm that highlight the inherent risk of young people’s media engagement and practices. When considering the emotional and psychological anxiety associated with constant mobile media interaction, the concerns are often related to social pressures to always be connected to peers, to family members, and to what is happening online. Culture has created a new word—FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)6—to describe the anxiety young people experience in an information-saturated world. Social media are often blamed for contributing to a “desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing” (Przbylski et al. 2013, p. 1841). Like other harm-driven expectations and phenomena, FOMO is an adult-generated explanation of what young people might be experiencing (Schreckinger 2014). The communication scholar Joseph Reagle (2015) provides an historical analysis of how anxiety related to “missing out” is actually “a continuation of century-old issues” dating back to the printing press and the telegraph. The desires to see and be seen did not arrive with social media, but are grounded in broader social issues Reagle refers to as “conspicuous sociality.” Some young people do experience feelings of addiction and anxiety in relation to their phones or their online social lives. However, we must recognize this is a small percentage of the population and that media cannot be solely blamed for feelings of anxiety or isolation, which are typically indicative of other mental health, social, developmental, or environmental issues.
Within popular media and academia, mobile phone use has been dubiously linked to sleep loss (Phillips 2011), social isolation (Carral 2015; Turkle 2011), anxiety (Brosseau 2013), and narcissism (Firestone 2013). The psychologist Suzanne Phillips (2011) wrote an article for Psych Central titled “Teens sleeping with cell phones is a clear and present danger.” In it, she presents evidence that “texting as an addiction jeopardizes sleep, cognitive functioning and real relating—making dependence on it greater and greater.” She describes how cell phone use can foster feelings of obligation and even equates the brain’s response to the pleasure of texting with that of heroin. Despite the pathological and alarming evidence presented in Phillips’ article, she concludes by urging parents to “plan with their teens to [help] relive the ‘on call’ demands [of staying connected]” and makes the point that self-regulation is better than policing teens’ mobile media use. There is a history of associating new behaviors or intense interests (obsessions) as pathological instead of habitual or intentional; this is particularly the case when describing the practices and interests of women and young people (boyd 2014; Giroux 2009; Ringrose 2006). Failing to recognize the motivations and intent behind young people’s use of technology, “many adults project their priorities onto teens and pathologize their children’s interactions with technology” (boyd 2014, p. 83). The pathologizing discourse problematically positions teens as lacking agency and is driven by expectations of harm.
Concerns about the psychological and social effects of new technology are far from unique or new. Let’s take a brief look back at a few relevant examples. According to Socrates, writing was going to disrupt people’s memories, which of course it did (Baym 2010). Yet it would be hard to argue that the cost–benefit tradeoff of oral culture and writing culture was not worth it. Before mass media, news was heard in the town square or from the pulpit. With the development of newspapers, there were concerns that mass print would socially isolate us and reduce spirituality (Eisenstein 1983). In 1936, the magazine Gramophone reported that because of the radio children had “developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of the school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker” (Bell 2010). Again, this might be true—radio stories probably did distract (entertain) children—but were the benefits of radio as a communication technology not worth the tradeoff? Fears about social isolation, distraction, and anxiety are not new. New technologies can be disruptive, but as a society we develop techniques for maximizing the benefits and learn how to minimize the potential risks and harms.
Perhaps the most appropriate comparison, however, is between the discourse on television in the early 1960s and the discourse on mobile phones today. In the early 1960s, television had been a common facet of American life for only about ten years (similar to the timeline of the smartphone today). Similar to today’s debate about the risks and benefits of mobile media, experts in the 1960s were debating the risks and benefits of television viewing both at home and in schools. There were concerns that television would distract young people, make them aggressive, and negatively influence their academic performan
ce; there was also worry that the “fantasy world” of television would render school too boring (Schramm, Lyle, and Parker 1961). There were debates about television’s ability to stimulate or inhibit intellectual and creative activity and people were concerned that television would negatively affect family life, routines, and sociality (Spigel 1992). In a way, those concerns were valid. Research indicates that there are risks associated with too much television viewing, such as negative effects on physical health (Faith et al. 2001)7 and the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes (Bissler and Conners 2012; McGhee and Frueh 1980; Ward 2015). But with time the overall anxiety about television has diminished as we have come to recognize that parents, schools, and children can exercise agency over the amount of television they watch, as well as the quality of content they view.
On the other hand, we have also learned that television can be educational and can have positive effects both in and out of the classroom (Anderson 1998). Television viewing has also been found to facilitate language acquisition (Fisch 2004) and contribute to cognitive development (Fisch 2004; Lesser 1974). And far from being antisocial, television as popular culture can bring people together by providing common topics of conversation—a phenomenon often referred to as the “water-cooler effect” (Anderson 2006). Likewise, despite fears of social isolation, television viewing can be inherently social, as is the case with live sporting events and award shows that encourage group watching (e.g., at sports bars and watch parties) and facilitate bonding via collective fandoms and identities (Earnheardt and Haridakis 2008). Many of these studies and concerns related to the early days of television-as-risk discourse are strikingly similar to the questions we are debating and researching about mobile media today, including questions of addiction, social isolation, and physical and mental health.
Worried About the Wrong Things Page 19