The New York Times a while back did another long piece on the important topic of whether The Technology is eating our kids’ brains. It wasn’t the usual hysterical mess, but it did have a few fundamental problems in its approach:
Like so many articles about what is happening to youth today, this one blurs the distinctions between “distraction” and “attention”—and throws around terms like “addiction” as if they were self-evident. Richtel focuses on a young teen named Vishal who cannot pay attention to his homework because he’s too addicted by video games. The article suggests he has lost the ability to “pay attention,” that he is always distracted. That diagnosis of distraction contradicts the physiology of addiction. Addiction, of course, is the most focused form of attention. That is one problem with the way the question of attention is currently framed in so much of the popular press; it blurs different conditions by simply thinking of them all as “bad.” That is not helpful. […] Until we get the physiology straightened out, we won’t be able to help kids who truly need help— or we’ll assume they all need help (when they do not).
The above is from Cathy Davidson’s really fantastic & thoughtful response, which you can (and should!) read in its entirety here.
She continues:
Do kids pay attention differently now? No. Because they didn’t learn any other way of paying attention. Do they pay attention differently than their parents did? Probably. And their parents paid attention differently than theirs. The brain is always changed by what it does. That’s how we learn, from infancy on, and that’s how a baby born in New York has different cultural patterns of behavior, language, gesture, interaction, socialization, and attention than a baby born the same day in Beijing. That’s as true for the historical moment into which we are born as it is for the geographical location. Our attention is shaped by all we do, and reshaped by all we do. That is what learning is. The best we can do as educators is find ways to improve our institutions of learning to help our kids be prepared for their future—not for our past. [Continue reading: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/why-doesnt-anyone-pay-attention-anymore]
Davidson’s also coming out with a book on the topic this summer, entitled Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. I’m looking forward to picking it up!
PS: Anne Collier also has a nice reaction at NetFamilyNews.org, available here.
Source: hastac.org