Paying attention online

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Many a parent and teacher has despaired over how easily young people’s attention is diverted, especially when they’re online. Stay focused! we urge them. Don’t let yourself get distracted! Our admonitions have little sway against the powerful temptations of the Internet. But there may be a better way to help teenagers resist the web’s lures: let them know that their attention is being deliberately manipulated and exploited. If experience with another bad habit—smoking—is any guide, teens’ own desire for self-governance is a force far more compelling than the exhortations of their elders.

Ever since the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health in 1964, public health advocates have searched for ways to stop young people from picking up the habit. They’ve said that smoking makes them look stupid and makes their breath smell bad. They’ve tallied up how much cash teens would have if it weren’t wasted on cigarettes. And, of course, they’ve told teens that smoking kills, adding graphic images of black lungs and tracheotomy tubes.

None of these approaches has worked as well as supporters hoped, and some have even backfired, making teenagers more likely to smoke. But a few savvy individuals—advertising executives, mostly, with an assist from teens themselves—did come up with a strikingly effective way to turn young people against smoking. They took a page from cigarette companies’ own playbook, tapping into adolescents’ fierce desire for autonomy. Instead of flaunting that independence by smoking, these teen-whisperers suggested, do it by resisting the manipulations of Big Tobacco.

As journalist Tina Rosenberg recounts in her book Join the Club, the “counter-marketing” approach didn’t feature a “long, boring lecture in church hall or school auditorium about proper behavior. And it didn’t look like more recent attempts at swaying teens—the booklets and posters showing rows of graveyards and cancer statistics.”

Instead, it introduced public-service campaigns with names like “Rage Against the Haze” and “truth” (the lowercase first letter attesting to its youthful subversiveness). It broadcast commercials—some of them directed by teens—that quoted from tobacco companies’ internal documents, in which executives mused about how to replace the customers who were dying off with a new generation of smokers. And it sent young, attractive staff members into classrooms to deliver an unaccustomed message: “We’re not telling anyone how to live their life. We’re not against smokers or smoking. We’re just here to give you information on how tobacco companies are manipulating you.”

After decades of lackluster results (“The Bottom Line: No One Knows What Works,” read the headline of one article about antismoking efforts), the counter-marketing approach in the late 1990s generated impressive outcomes: In Florida, for example, the “truth” campaign led to an 8 percent decline in smoking among high school students and a nearly 20 percent decline among middle schoolers.

Counter-marketing relied, successfully, on teenagers’ indignation about being exploited by the tobacco companies. But Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds are bush leaguers at manipulating young customers when compared to today’s technology companies. The creators of today’s most popular apps, games and websites have perfected, quite consciously and deliberately, what writer Alex Soojung-Kim Pang has called “the commodification of distraction.” Who wants Joe Camel when you’ve got Facebook?

Pang—the author, aptly, of a book titled The Distraction Addiction — urges us to see the web as man-made artifact, the product of particular intentions and interests. “Some people talk about how the shiny-blinky flashing Internet appeals to our visually-oriented brains, how Facebook ‘likes’ and re-tweets give us a little shot of dopamine,” Pang writes on his blog, Contemplative Computing. “But these effects aren’t merely an accident. Technology companies actively design to maximize our engagement with them . . . Social media, gaming, and entertainment companies now spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to get you to spend more time interacting with them, to recruit your friends to join them, and to intentionally or accidentally share as much information as possible with them.”

Young people, for whom a connected world is the only one they’ve ever known, are especially liable to accept the Internet as the state of nature, simply the way things are. Perhaps this blithe acceptance helps explain the furor that erupted last month over the revelation that Facebook had involved users in a psychological experiment without their knowledge, deliberately manipulating their moods by determining which of their friends’ posts (upbeat or morose) they saw.

From the perspective of academic research, this was indeed a troubling violation: investigators are obliged to obtain the consent of the subjects in their studies. But from the perspective of online product development and marketing, this was business as usual: companies that earn their money on the web do their best to manipulate our moods (and our attention, and our wallets) every minute we’re online.

Let’s encourage teenagers to discover (maybe with the help of their peers) that the freedom and autonomy they feel when they’re at the helm of their computers is in some ways an illusion, and let’s help them develop the skeptical, critical stance that would allow them to be truly autonomous users of the Internet. A template for such a project might be the efforts to show young people—especially young women—how magazine editors and advertisers seek to manipulate their sense of what the female body should look like. (The Photoshopped before-and-after images available through the Common Sense Media blog could well be the fashion world equivalent of internal tobacco company documents.)

Although there have been some attempts to teach students “critical thinking skills” with respect to the web, too often these programs adopt a sanctimonious tone, with all the rebellious appeal of extra-credit study hall. The history of antismoking campaigns offers a potentially more effective alternative. Granted, clicking a link or posting a status update won’t give teenagers lung cancer. But the undisciplined use of technology can waste their time, fragment their focus, and interfere with their learning. Just like their health, young people’s attention is a precious resource, and they should be empowered to resist the companies that would squander it.

https://anniemurphypaul.com 

For Kids With Low Self-Esteem, Excessive Praise Has Unintended Consequences

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"New research from the Netherlands finds inflated acclaim for kids’ accomplishments can backfire as a motivational tool.

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When we sense a child is feeling insecure, our tendency is often to shower him or her with effusive praise. It’s a lovely, compassionate impulse, but it’s also one you may want to resist.

Newly published research suggests that, for the kids most likely to receive it, exaggerated acclaim may do more harm than good.

“Inflated praise, although well-intended, may cause children with low self-esteem to avoid crucial learning experiences,” writes a research team led by Utrecht University psychologist Eddie Brummelman.

Specifically, the researchers write, rave reviews for a mundane accomplishment can convey an unintended message: Now that you’ve excelled, we’re going to hold you to a very high standard. Since youngsters with low self-esteem are driven by a desire to avoid failure, this can prompt them to avoid challenges.

“Inflated praise, although well-intended, may cause children with low self-esteem to avoid crucial learning experiences.”

“Inflated praise contains an implicit demand for continued exceptional performance,” Brummelman and his colleagues write in the journal Psychological Science. While this unspoken message can inspire kids with high self-esteem, it can have the opposite effect on their less-secure peers.

The researchers describe three experiments, the first two of which show that children with low self-esteem are the ones most likely to receive excessive praise from adults. The third was designed to show the results of this dynamic.

The participants were 240 children, ages eight to 12, who were visiting the Science Center NEMO, which the researchers describe as “the largest science museum in the Netherlands.” All began by addressing six self-esteem-related items from the Self-Perception Profile for Children. They read statements such as “Some kids are happy with themselves as a person” and responded to them on a four-point scale, from “I am not like these kids at all” to “I am exactly like these kids.”

They then drew a copy of a famous painting—Wild Roses by Vincent Van Gogh—which, they were told, would be assessed by a “famous painter.” After purportedly examining their drawings for a few minutes, this fictional expert wrote each child a note. Some said nothing about their work; others presented restrained praise (“You made a beautiful drawing”). Still others featured inflated praise (“You made an incrediblybeautiful drawing”).

Finally, the kids were given a choice between complex and simple images they could attempt to imitate for their next drawing. They were told that “If you choose to draw these difficult pictures, you might make many mistakes, but you’ll definitely learn a lot, too.”

As the researchers predicted, inflated praise led children with low self-esteem to choose the less-challenging assignments. For children with high self-esteem, it had the opposite effect, increasing the likelihood they’d pick the more difficult task.

“Our findings suggest that inflated praise triggers self-protection motives in children with low self-esteem (‘I want to avoid revealing my deficiencies’) and self-promotion motives in children with high self-esteem (‘I want to demonstrate my capacities’),” the researchers conclude.

Brummelman and his colleagues acknowledge that the difference between “inflated” and healthy praise can be subtle. In their experiment, a single word—“incredibly”—pushed the comment into the “inflated praise” category.

“This single word may feel quite large to children with low self-esteem, who fear that they might not be able to perform incredibly well in the future,” they write. In response, these kids might “avoid crucial learning experiences—a process that may eventually undermine their learning and performance.”

So, parents and grandparents, if you sense little Johnny or Jill could use an ego boost, feel free to praise them—but don’t go too far. Setting standards they fear they’ll never be able to meet is the easiest way to drive them back into their comfort zone—a place where there is little chance of failure, but few opportunities for growth.
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/kids-low-self-esteem-excessive-praise-unintended-consequences-73197/ 

Academic research supporting the impact of exercise on learning

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"The current study has clear educational implications. In fact, the experimental condition was methodologically designed so that could be easily replicated in schools. For example, the only equipment needed that schools may not already have in inventory is a set of reasonably priced heart rate monitors. Also, a 12-min exercise session is brief enough to be realistically integrated into a typical school day. Physical education (PE) classes could intentionally be scheduled before academic classes. PE classes could also be required to include acute aerobic exercise, thereby allowing students to reap cognitive and academic benefits as well as the intended physical benefits. Unfortunately, instead of capitalizing on PE, there is a current decrease in the number of high schools offering PE and PE is rarely a required college requirement (National Association for Sport and Physical Education, 2010). Further, PE classes are being cut most often from schools in lower-income communities (National Association for Sport and Physical Education, 2010).

In summary, an acute session of aerobic exercise improved the SVA of both low-and high-income adolescents. The improvement seen in the low-income adolescents was so large that their SVA abilities matched those of the high-income adolescents after just 12-min of aerobic exercise. Further, the benefit to SVA lasted for 45-min for both low- and high-income adolescents. Moreover, the mean reading comprehension score of low-income adolescents who engaged in an acute session of aerobic exercise was higher than that of low-income adolescents who did not engage in any exercise. In fact, the mean reading comprehension score of low-income adolescents who engaged in an acute session of aerobic exercise was as high as their high-income counterparts’ mean reading comprehension score. The field of education is in need of research-based interventions that are low in cost and easy to implement in low-income communities (Institute of Educational Sciences, 2014). Based on the results of this study, we encourage the implementation of an acute session of aerobic exercise as such an intervention."

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00575/full

What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades

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"Does handwriting matter?

Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.
But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html?_r=2

Protect your kids from failure

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"I call this BGUTI (rhymes with duty), which is the acronym of Better Get Used To It. 

If adults allow—or perhaps even require—children to play a game in which the point is to slam a ball at someone before he or she can get out of the way, or hand out zeroes to underscore a child's academic failure, or demand that most young athletes go home without even a consolation prize (in order to impress upon them the difference between them and the winners), well, sure, the kids might feel lousy—about themselves, about the people around them, and about life itself—but that's the point. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and the sooner they learn that, the better they’ll be at dealing with it.

The corollary claim is that if we intervene to relieve the pain, if we celebrate all the players for their effort, then we'd just be coddling them and giving them false hopes. A little thanks-for-playing trophy might allow them to forget, or avoid truly absorbing, the fact that they lost. Then they might overestimate their own competence and fall apart later in life when they learn the truth about themselves (or about the harshness of life). 

The case for BGUTI is, to a large extent, a case for failure. The argument is that when kids don’t get a hoped-for reward, or when they lose a contest, they’ll not only be prepared for more of the same but will be motivated to try harder next time. An essay on this very blog last year, titled “Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail,” cued an enormous on-line amen chorus. The journalist Paul Tough informed us, “If you want to develop [kids’] character, you let them fail and don’t hide their failures from them or from anybody else.” A casual Web search produces tens of thousands of similar declarations."

http://m.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/protect-your-kids-from-failure/284361/

Differentiating in a meaningful way

Sixth form cancels all morning lessons to help sleepy students

The end of falling asleep during classes? A private sixth form in Surrey hopes so. Photograph: Corbis

A private school is to start lessons for sixth formers at 1.30pm because teenagers "have a biological disposition to going to bed late and struggling to get up early".

Hampton Court House in East Molesey, Surrey, believes that the change from the conventional time of 9am, with classes ending at 7pm, will be more productive and less stressful for its students. The staggered start will also mean that the pupils can avoid rush-hour traffic.

Headmaster Guy Holloway said: "There is now more and more scientific evidence to support what many parents and teachers have known for years.

"The fact is that many teenagers do not sleep sufficiently during the week and this can, and often does, have a significant impact on teenage cognition and mental and physical health generally."

Gabriel Purcell-Davis, 15, currently in year 10 and who will be one of the first to undertake the new routine, said: "I want to wake up in my bed, not in my maths lesson."

A school spokesman said: "Parents know it can be a hard task to maintain routine in a teenager's life. The independent school, Hampton Court House, believes that there is a more productive and stress-free way to encourage A-level students to concentrate on their educational needs.

"It's a bold step forward, but a pioneering decision has now been made by Hampton Court House to start lessons for sixth formers at 1.30pm instead of the conventional time of 9 am.

"The reason? Recent and persuasive research has further reinforced the fact that teenagers have a biological disposition to going to bed late and struggling to get up early."

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/10/sixth-form-cancels-morning-lessons-sleepy-students

Cyber Safety # 2: Should Parents Have the Backdoor Key to Kids’ Facebook Accounts?

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"PASSWORD PRIVACY AND SAFETY CONCERNS

When it comes to deciding about kids and parents sharing their passwords, the most important goal is to maintain open communication, explaining to kids the responsibility that comes along with having an email account, and the need to ask an adult for help if the child feels uncomfortable with the nature of any online exchange. It’s a big responsibility, though, and changes with a kid’s age. Is it too much to ask of a 10- or 11-year old to know what’s worthy of alarm?

Some kids and parents decide the parent can have email access, but as kids get older and want more independence and privacy, those agreements may change. Some parents and kids agree to keep kids’ password in a sealed enveloped, promising only to open the seal when there’s a question of safety. Others figure out an arrangement with a parent’s close friend or relative with sound judgment who has emergency access to the email. The goal is to let kids know they’re not alone"

.http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/05/should-parents-have-the-backdoor-key-to-kids-facebook-accounts/