digital addiction & Tech Use in Schools

Massachusetts-Specific News:

• Governor Bakers Swears in New Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning [To increase online learning for youth & adults]
• Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning (Sworn in 4/23/2018--commission includes entrepreneurs & online providers)
• Paul Sagan, Chair of Education Board, is managing director of a venture fund invested in EdTech and director of 2 tech companies (Note, Sagan resigned May 2019)
• James Peyser, Secretary of Education, was formerly managing director of EdTech venture fund, NewSchools, whose donors at $5 million include the Walton Family Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg DAF, & Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. FYI, often successful ventures are purchased by the "Big Boys" like Microsoft or Facebook.
  

Testing:

• Note: MCAS testing is online.
• Cassellius puts moratorium on district’s standardized tests: Some tests are optional, end-of-year assessments dropped [Bay State Banner]
  

Screen Time Laws:

• UK Restricts Social Media For Under 18—Report

Cell Phone & Tablet Bans:

• China bans cell phones & tablets (Shandong Province)
• France bans Students from Bringing Smart Phones and Tablets to School

Cell Phone Bans:

• California HS Largest to Ban Cell Phones
• Mobile phones to be banned in state primary and secondary schools (state-wide ban in Victoria, Australia)
• Albemarle County [VA] Students No Longer Allowed to Bring Phones to Middle School
• Screenagers Movie Suggestions for Cell Phone Bans
• Montreal School Cell Phone All-Day Ban

Organizational Appeals: 

• Massachusetts Teachers Association Concerned over '[De]Personalized Learning' by EdTech and Baker's MAPLE Initiative
• Screen Time Network Asks APA to Prohibit Psychological Techniques to Hook Kids Online
• Apple should address youth phone addiction, two large investors say (incl. California State Teacher's Retirement Association)

Helpful Advice:

• Outsmarting the Smart Screens: A Parent’s Guide to the Tools that are Here to Help
• ​Have You Spoiled Your Child Today? Meet: S.P.O.I.L., a Screen-Free Research-Based System for Prioritizing Child’s Play​
• Time Well Spent Suggested by Tristan Harris to Combat Addictive Tech (Or use a wired rotary phone)
• Privacy ToolKit
• Timekpr Revived: Limiting screen time on open source software (another article here)

​​Marketing of EdTech:

• 21st Century Profiteering?

List of Concerning Facts:

• Impact of Technology on Child Development, Behavior, and Academic Performance (by Cris Rowan)
• Spanish version of Impact of Technology on Child Development, Behavior, and Academic Performance

Graphics

• Screen Time for Kids (Mom Loves Best)
• "Devices: Are We Addicted?" by Common Sense Media--please note that CSM receives significant funding from technology-related groups
  
• Plugged-In Parents (Common Sense Media)
  
• Evolution of Media Use by Children 0-8 (Common Sense Media)
  
• Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences (Common Sense Media)
  
• Media Use by Teens & Tweens (Common Sense Media)
  
• Kids Prefer Social Media for News (Common Sense Media)
  

Policy Papers:

• Safe Schools Policy – Best Practice Standards for Screens and Radiation (excellent - written by Cris Rowan, Dr. Lennart Hardell, Tarmo Koppel, Sveinn Kjartansson & Stella Sæmundsdóttir)
  
• U.S. needs a task force to examine risks AR, VR, and 5G pose to kids
  

Books: 

• ​Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. Adam Alter. (2017) 
  
• Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse Is Making Our Kids Dumber. Joe Clement and Matt Miles. (2017) ​

Federal NonAction:

• Delays in responding to FERPA complaints lead to NYC children robbed of their privacy

General & Other Articles:

• Curated List of Relevant Articles
• Ten Reasons why Handheld Devices Should be Banned for Children Under 12
• The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids is not what we Expected (Poor raised by screens)
• Media Education and the Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Lack of Impulse Control & Brain Changes Increase Youth Risk of Addiction
• Less Tech, More Life (free to print)

Emotional & Physical Health Articles:

• Too much screen time damages the brain
  
• Classrooms in Crisis: Verbal, physical, sometimes violent outbursts plaguing Oregon classrooms [Note cause is unknown, but social ills have always existed, whereas digital devices are new]
  
• Chemists discover how blue light speeds blindness
  
• 55% Increase in kids' mental health crises from 2012 to 2016 in ER
  

• Reduced screen time for young highly recommended for well-being (Research article)
• How Too Much Screen Time Affects Kids' Bodies And Brains
• Screen time is making kids moody, crazy, and lazy
• Our obsession with phones could be changing the shape of our eyes
• Why screen time for babies, children and adolescents needs to be limited [Australian MDs, researchers, & professors]
• The Internet is not a Happy Place for Children
• 10 Physics Reasons Why Screens Are Bad for Humans

Digital Addiction Articles:

• How the Tech Industry Uses Psychology to Hook Children: Why do kids struggle to look up from devices? The answer is persuasive design.
• Internet Addiction: Stanford Study
• Toddler Addiction Requires Therapy

Lack of Control:

• Kids are getting around Apple's 'Screen Time' restrictions

Virtual Reality Hazards:

• The Ethics of Virtual Reality Technology: Social Hazards and Public Policy Recommendations (Science & Engineering Ethics, Spiegel 2018)
• Seizures

Education-focused Articles:

• Studying students with tech averaged only six minutes of focused study before task switching to tech
• Reboot Foundation released a report in this month showing a negative connection between a nation’s performance on international assessments and fifteen-year-olds’ self-reported school tech use
• Screens in Schools: Are "tech-centric" teachers addicted to technology?
• EdTech Killing Massachusetts Public Schools
• Surgery students 'losing dexterity to stitch patients' (Due to screen time)
• Infants `Unable to use toy building blocks` due to IPad Addiction
• Personalized Learning: What's Happening

Poor Quality Education & Commercial Exploitation:

• Students protest Zuckerberg-backed digital learning program and ask him: ‘What gives you this right?’

Cell Phone Articles:

• Addictive, obtrusive and anti-social: why are we still allowing mobile phones in schools? 
• Bell-to-Bell Cell Phone Bans
• Dialing in on Cell Phone Bans in High School (MA)
• Seymour High School Reports Positive Results After Cell Phone Ban (CT)
• To fight cyberbullying, ban cell phones [Also notes a NY school policy "Misuse it, you lose it"]
• Notre Dame Makes a Bold Move with its Cell Phone Policy. And Its Working.
• Bait & Switch: A View of the Cell Phone Ban, From the Bronx [Notes unfair (?) financial aspect of confiscated phones and policing intrusion via metal detectors]
• Cell Phone Bans in Schools, Jobs, Other Countries
• Smartphones Cause Family Row Every Singe Day, Study Finds

Privacy Articles (More at Privacy & Propaganda Risks):

• Surveillance Instead of Counseling Students
• Facing Tomorrow's High-Tech School Surveillance: Installed in the wake of recent high-profile mass shootings, controversial facial recognition systems that scan students’ faces could be the not-too-distant future for schools across America and beyond.
• Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them [And installs a root kit, which controls everything on your computer]
• State Student Privacy Laws

Advertising, Propaganda, External Exploitation:

• Extremists Creep into Online Game
• Does your childs school have an unsecure Wi-Fi network?

• Parental monitoring apps: How do they differ from stalkerware?

• What kids aren’t telling parents about porn on social media [Including Snapchat & Instagram]
• Manipulative And Distracting Ads Are Ruining Kids Apps, Researchers Say
• Something is wrong on the internet (discusses how internet platform and algorithms foster & allow exploitation and sick propaganda)
• Drinking, smoking, and sugar: how unsavory ads wound up on Edmodo (discusses how automation allows these ads on online youth platforms)

Silicon Valley Kids Avoid Screens:

• A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley: “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones.”

Policing Teachers:

• Use of cell phones by teachers in classrooms banned in Ganderbal