I live in Texas and the state outlawed cell phones in school this year. All of my clients with high school kids - and I really mean all of them - have told me that their kids are thrilled. Apparently no one was talking to each other at lunch and other breaks, they would just sit together and play on their phones. How sad and dystopian, I’m thrilled for the change.
I love it, and as a LinkedIn Top Voice and former teacher in a youth offenders' Institution In Ireland, this warms the heart. I am about ot launch something significant that I hope parents the world over can get behind. Thank you for being part of the solution. The Anxious Nation is the blueprint for all of us.
As a teacher, I commend Sweden’s courage to act and follow the evidence. I firmly believe that attention needs to become central to curricula worldwide. How do we cultivate it in a world where profit is derived from involuntary attention capture? Schools should provide our kids with an alternative to the screen-saturated norm. They should be places where we protect and nurture their cognitive potential, not risk it to data-hungry private interests. I’m glad Sweden is getting this done. It’s time for the rest of us to do the same: https://open.substack.com/pub/walledgardenedu/p/why-attention-must-become-curriculum?r=f74da&utm_medium=ios
It’s refreshing to see Sweden recognize that progress doesn’t always mean more ed-tech. Reintroducing books and pencils is not regression. Children’s brains and bodies need tangible tools for focus and comprehension. Children need handwriting, the patience of reading from paper, and the human connection of face-to-face discussion, not just another app or gamified task. More tech equals better learning narrative is backfiring all over, so we need to ensure that schools remain places of depth, curiosity, and real thinking rather than another branch of the attention economy. This is a reminder that innovation can also look like returning to what’s proven to work.
In 2011, I didn’t have the right letters after my name to state with any authority that the handheld electronics were destroying kids’ health and learning. With no backing from school or community, I tried to restrict my kids’ use of the iPod Touch devices my ex had given them. It was impossible, and only served as a relationship-destroying constant conflict with my kids, whom I was rightly concerned about. With even teachers in elementary grades piling on to “reward” fifth graders with a “bring your handheld device to school” day (like pizza day, or movie day), I knew I was helpless to save my kids from the worst of an internet-in-your-pocket childhood and adolescence. And here is what I see in my own young adult kids:
• Sleep pattern problems, which cascade down into all aspects of mental and physical health
• Self-consciousness on a level I’d normally associate with mid-teens, yet they are in their 20s
• Lack of physical movement and tragically hunched posture
• Social avoidance; even though they are socially skilled, they still prefer not to do transactions in person
• Attempts at romantic bonding subverted and warped by violent online porn
• Inability to go without the phone for any length of time during waking hours, and the phone is in their hand as they finally fall asleep at 3am.
It’s such a disaster. I saw it all coming 14 years ago, and I was ridiculed. But I remember the day I keened and wept, and realized I was forced to accept that my kids were simply caught in a very unfortunate moment in human history. Like a devastating war or disease outbreak, there was going to be carnage I couldn’t prevent.
Such a shame. So sorry. I see that also in my grandkids, one getting counseling. Thank you for sharing these habits that have harmed, now seen in that generation.
I see nothing about adult, teacher use. ITS impact on adults: in turn, on kids. If most students arrive at college experienced w/ smartphones, while a minority don't, how redress the disadvantage this puts on those NOT cyber-savvy? A severe nerve disease leaves me unable to send/access text, navigate a smartphone. Even now, at 65, my inability to use smartphones blocks me from much vital medical info; registering for many orgs, social contacts, finding needed services -- participating in advocacy, education I once commonly led. I was a minor my first year of college; hence denied a job there. Found a job that summer only because one employer mistakenly assumed I was an adult. I see no concern about how debilitated this would have left me; leaves me now. On top of my afflictions themselves, mightily increasing how vital contact w/ leading researchers worldwide has been. Along w/ access to medical journals, etc. via the internet, medical studies that have welcomed my participation, etc., other patients commonly afflicted, who have confronted similar problems
Wonderful to hear as a Child Psychotherapist I know how much damage time spent on social media does for my clients' mental health. Thank you for the post
Touching paper creates serotonin, the wellness hormone; touching screens, cortisol, the stress hormone.
This, by Sweden, great news. They know how to pivot and quickly change a wrong direction.
However, we have another huge change to make: getting out of industrialized education.
Bacon and Descartes changed our experience of life by simplifying things and focusing only on thought to define what is "real," instead of continuing to include feelings, intuitions, and a sense of connection. Descartes; "I think, therefore I am." And when not thinking?
From thinking, their approach led to the scientific method, useful to a degree, which led to the industrial revolution, also useful to a degree, until they both were overused, and linear letters and numbers built Tech programs, now they having led our lives with numbers and letters-"thinking" for years and years, as well as the reach for profit in this long history.
Education prior had been multidimensional, deep into reading, science as then known, math, yet music and art, and more in-depth. Then the British trained all of their provinces in the art of rows of human learning of fed information, they creating the first worldwide human computer, to keep track of things.
Education overall has been long in the same approach: desk rows of learners, now by screens, of fed information for the linear thinking-based shaping of society. What of connection, intuition, passions and discovery?
Quickly here, Waldorf and Montessori approaches, and another solution is project-based learning (PBL) as one program that allows children to remain in their explorative, discovery-based, and intuitive knowing of what in life appeals to and excites them to want to learn, including wanting to help the world, as kids want to do, THEN supporting and shaping those discoveries for good by thinking skills to create viable solutions for us all. We all have intelligences ready to be employed in both of these realms, they meant to work together for our good.
I live in Texas and the state outlawed cell phones in school this year. All of my clients with high school kids - and I really mean all of them - have told me that their kids are thrilled. Apparently no one was talking to each other at lunch and other breaks, they would just sit together and play on their phones. How sad and dystopian, I’m thrilled for the change.
In Tennessee it is the same. I have heard from parents thought that some kids are getting around the edict with burner phones.
There will always be "smokin' in the boys' room", but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ban the cigs for kids, though, I say. :-)
The important lesson is that it’s not too late. Thank you so much for sharing the article. Go Sweden!
I love it, and as a LinkedIn Top Voice and former teacher in a youth offenders' Institution In Ireland, this warms the heart. I am about ot launch something significant that I hope parents the world over can get behind. Thank you for being part of the solution. The Anxious Nation is the blueprint for all of us.
As a teacher, I commend Sweden’s courage to act and follow the evidence. I firmly believe that attention needs to become central to curricula worldwide. How do we cultivate it in a world where profit is derived from involuntary attention capture? Schools should provide our kids with an alternative to the screen-saturated norm. They should be places where we protect and nurture their cognitive potential, not risk it to data-hungry private interests. I’m glad Sweden is getting this done. It’s time for the rest of us to do the same: https://open.substack.com/pub/walledgardenedu/p/why-attention-must-become-curriculum?r=f74da&utm_medium=ios
It’s refreshing to see Sweden recognize that progress doesn’t always mean more ed-tech. Reintroducing books and pencils is not regression. Children’s brains and bodies need tangible tools for focus and comprehension. Children need handwriting, the patience of reading from paper, and the human connection of face-to-face discussion, not just another app or gamified task. More tech equals better learning narrative is backfiring all over, so we need to ensure that schools remain places of depth, curiosity, and real thinking rather than another branch of the attention economy. This is a reminder that innovation can also look like returning to what’s proven to work.
In 2011, I didn’t have the right letters after my name to state with any authority that the handheld electronics were destroying kids’ health and learning. With no backing from school or community, I tried to restrict my kids’ use of the iPod Touch devices my ex had given them. It was impossible, and only served as a relationship-destroying constant conflict with my kids, whom I was rightly concerned about. With even teachers in elementary grades piling on to “reward” fifth graders with a “bring your handheld device to school” day (like pizza day, or movie day), I knew I was helpless to save my kids from the worst of an internet-in-your-pocket childhood and adolescence. And here is what I see in my own young adult kids:
• Sleep pattern problems, which cascade down into all aspects of mental and physical health
• Self-consciousness on a level I’d normally associate with mid-teens, yet they are in their 20s
• Lack of physical movement and tragically hunched posture
• Social avoidance; even though they are socially skilled, they still prefer not to do transactions in person
• Attempts at romantic bonding subverted and warped by violent online porn
• Inability to go without the phone for any length of time during waking hours, and the phone is in their hand as they finally fall asleep at 3am.
It’s such a disaster. I saw it all coming 14 years ago, and I was ridiculed. But I remember the day I keened and wept, and realized I was forced to accept that my kids were simply caught in a very unfortunate moment in human history. Like a devastating war or disease outbreak, there was going to be carnage I couldn’t prevent.
Such a shame. So sorry. I see that also in my grandkids, one getting counseling. Thank you for sharing these habits that have harmed, now seen in that generation.
I see nothing about adult, teacher use. ITS impact on adults: in turn, on kids. If most students arrive at college experienced w/ smartphones, while a minority don't, how redress the disadvantage this puts on those NOT cyber-savvy? A severe nerve disease leaves me unable to send/access text, navigate a smartphone. Even now, at 65, my inability to use smartphones blocks me from much vital medical info; registering for many orgs, social contacts, finding needed services -- participating in advocacy, education I once commonly led. I was a minor my first year of college; hence denied a job there. Found a job that summer only because one employer mistakenly assumed I was an adult. I see no concern about how debilitated this would have left me; leaves me now. On top of my afflictions themselves, mightily increasing how vital contact w/ leading researchers worldwide has been. Along w/ access to medical journals, etc. via the internet, medical studies that have welcomed my participation, etc., other patients commonly afflicted, who have confronted similar problems
Wonderful to hear as a Child Psychotherapist I know how much damage time spent on social media does for my clients' mental health. Thank you for the post
Immense relief and joy, to hear of this. 👏🏼
Touching paper creates serotonin, the wellness hormone; touching screens, cortisol, the stress hormone.
This, by Sweden, great news. They know how to pivot and quickly change a wrong direction.
However, we have another huge change to make: getting out of industrialized education.
Bacon and Descartes changed our experience of life by simplifying things and focusing only on thought to define what is "real," instead of continuing to include feelings, intuitions, and a sense of connection. Descartes; "I think, therefore I am." And when not thinking?
From thinking, their approach led to the scientific method, useful to a degree, which led to the industrial revolution, also useful to a degree, until they both were overused, and linear letters and numbers built Tech programs, now they having led our lives with numbers and letters-"thinking" for years and years, as well as the reach for profit in this long history.
Education prior had been multidimensional, deep into reading, science as then known, math, yet music and art, and more in-depth. Then the British trained all of their provinces in the art of rows of human learning of fed information, they creating the first worldwide human computer, to keep track of things.
Education overall has been long in the same approach: desk rows of learners, now by screens, of fed information for the linear thinking-based shaping of society. What of connection, intuition, passions and discovery?
Quickly here, Waldorf and Montessori approaches, and another solution is project-based learning (PBL) as one program that allows children to remain in their explorative, discovery-based, and intuitive knowing of what in life appeals to and excites them to want to learn, including wanting to help the world, as kids want to do, THEN supporting and shaping those discoveries for good by thinking skills to create viable solutions for us all. We all have intelligences ready to be employed in both of these realms, they meant to work together for our good.