"Distracted" walking and driving injuries and fatalities are on the rise. A Mayo Clinic study finds that text messaging appears to produce a unique brainwave form that can cause epileptic and nonepileptic seizures. This "texting rhythm" was also found in iPad users.[18]
Options:
* Minimize use of electronic devices until reading, writing and math skills are established on paper.
* Do not offer computer time as a reward, a babysitter or pacifier.
* Ban cell phones in classrooms. Some schools ban them during hallway
and lunch breaks, confiscate the phone for 1-30 days with the first
violation, and, with the second violation, until the school year ends.
Bans require school board support and sufficient warning to parents and
students. At Monte del Sol (charter high school) in Santa Fe, New
Mexico, Principal Dr. Robert Jessen reports that with the ban, students
face teachers during class and talk to each other during lunch breaks. A
study from the Univ. of Texas and Louisiana State Univ. found that test
scores rose by up to 6% in schools with strict cell phone bans.[19]
* Teach parents and students to identify symptoms of excessive screen
time: aggressive behavior, disrupted academic or social performance. If
use becomes problematic, consider Dr. Dunckley's three-week electronic
fast to "detox" and determine the student's healthy tech threshold.[20]
* Encourage movement, hiking, sports, chess, book reading, hand-writing,
theatrical productions, painting, pottery-making, conflict resolution
skills, research by in-person interviews, playing music, learning a
second language, composting kitchen scraps and growing and preparing
food.
* According Jocelyn Glei, author of Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distraction and Get Real Work Done,
on average, people check email eleven times per hour. Such frequency
decreases productivity. To help children develop healthy work habits,
teach them to check email in batches--say two or three times per day.
* Provide Wi-Fi-free and tech-free areas for students and staff.
* Encourage teachers and parents to model self-awareness and self-regulation around screen-time limits.
Activities:
* Create "Personal Tech Contracts" and ongoing discussions about responsible tech use.[21],[22]
* Establish "crews" that meet daily over years with the same students and teachers to help children build real relationships.
* Encourage discussion about how tech influences our relationships.
* Recognize the danger of texting while driving. Encourage students and
families to pledge to stop texting and driving. Texting takes your eyes
off the road for an average of five seconds. At 55 mph, that's like
driving the length of a football field--completely blind. Car crashes
caused by texting and driving kill an average of eleven teens each day and injure 330,000 people every year.[23]
* Invite discussion: What is addiction? What are signs of tech addiction? What do camps in China do to remedy tech addiction?[24] What steps prevent tech addiction? What screen-time limits are healthy for you?
* Read and discuss Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Quill, 1978.
* View and discuss "Screenagers," Delaney Ruston, MD's documentary about teen cell-phone use. www.screenagersmovie.com
- Security and Privacy
The situation: School-issued computers likely collect info about students' Social Security numbers, food preferences, friends' names, grades and discipline records. School-issued computers may contain geo-trackers that provide students' exact locations. Without regulations, manufacturers (i.e. Apple and Pearson) who sell computers and software to schools may collect students' info to create "data-mined profiles" for lifetime marketing tools.
Further, according to applied physicist Dr. Ronald M. Powell, "The second you go wireless, you expose yourself to greater risk of interception. Fiber optic systems (fios) will always be able to carry data faster and more securely than any wireless system." Staff and student data can be hacked.[25],[26] Thirteen percent of educational organizations have been hacked--more than three times the rate of ransomware (payment for releasing data taken "hostage") found in healthcare and more than that of the financial sector.[27]
Computer-based assessments of students and Smarter Balanced Test Scores have led to unfair test administration, security and privacy issues related to test data, violation of students' rights, delivery of tests on faulty networks and technology, and long-term motivational problems that likely result from misdiagnosing students with unfit assessments.[28],[29]
Options:
* Eliminate wireless service and devices. Opt for fiber optics (fios)
and wired phones, computers, mice and printers. For affordable fiber
connections, see Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society's Maximizing K-12 Fiber Connectivity Through E-Rate.[30]
* Teach users not to use physical addresses or birthdates in email
addresses or passwords, not to reply to email from strangers, and to
open an attachment only when you know the sender and expect the
attachment.
* Teach staff and students that each device (i.e. a tablet, chromebook, or smartphone) has its own security practice.
* Establish email security protocols, monitor key third party vendors, track vendors' security ratings and avoid file sharing.
Activities
* Interview people who've been hacked. What happened? What advice do they have to prevent hacking?
Invite discussion: Do you prefer mobility (which risks hacking) or wired-only communications (which decreases hacking risks)?
2a. Critical thinking and tech design
The situation: According to Tristan Harris, former Design Ethicist at Google, tech product designers limit and even control users' thinking by creating a menu of choices. For example, in response to the question, "Where can we go to talk?" a server might offer a menu of bars--and not include nearby parks or diners.[31]
Activities:
* As they conduct research for school reports, encourage students to ask, What
are the menu providers' goals? What's not on the menu? Does the menu
serve my real needs or distract me? Does the server provide websites
with opinions or well-referenced reports?
* Read and discuss Dr. Kenneth J. Saltman's Scripted Bodies: Corporate Power, Smart Technologies and the Undoing of Public Education, Routledge, 2017.
- EMR exposure
The situation: In living creatures, every cell functions by electro-chemical signals.[32] Our physiological functions (i.e. sleep, digestion, decision-making and locating home) ultimately depend on cues from the Earth's electromagnetic fields, the solar wind and other natural sources.
Electronics (including cell phones, tablets, compact fluorescent bulbs, cordless phones) and infrastructure (such as cellular antennas; Wi-Fi routers; "smart" digital, wireless utility meters; powerlines and transformers) emit man-made electromagnetic radiation (EMR). In May, 2011, The World Health Organization classified EMR as a 2B carcinogen.[33] In May, 2016, NIH's National Toxicology Program found that 2G cell phone radiation causes brain and heart tumors and DNA damage.[34] A Feb., 2016 report published by the journal Neuro-Oncology and funded by the American Brain Tumor Association finds that malignant brain tumors are the most common cause of cancer-related deaths in adolescents and young adults aged 15-39, and the most common cancer occurring among 15-19 year olds.[35] (Leukemia used to be the leading cancer among children, but now it is #2, behind brain cancer, signaling an environmental change.) In September, 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued recommendations to reduce exposure to cell phones.[36]
Because children's skulls are thinner and their brains contain more fluid than adult skulls and brains, children absorb proportionately more radiation than adults. The effects of EMR exposure on a child's development may have lifetime impacts,[37] including on their fertility.[38]
Neither wireless devices nor the infrastructure that they require have been proven safe for children, pregnant women, people with medical implants, the general population or wildlife.
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