I just returned from Australia where I was rolling out Screenagers. The film has screened in more than 30 countries so far and we have a new partnership in Australia that is really exciting. Doing screenings and press throughout put me in contact with parents, teachers, and reporters. All over the country, I heard exactly the same questions and concerns I’ve heard in the U.S. and in other countries: Why are we so glued to our devices and what is excessive screen time? A new book called Irresistible by Adam Alter looks at why everyone seems to be is so entranced by screens. He makes points such as how Netflix shows are designed specifically for binge watching.
In an interview with Alter by Ben Machell in The Weekend Australian Magazine, Alter says “The interesting thing with technology 20, 15, even 10 years ago was that there were built-in barriers to enjoyment.” He goes on to say that to see a cartoon you had to wait for the “boring” news to be over. In the past there were forced breaks that usually existed for enjoyable things, called “stopping rules,” but now the Internet has eliminated those.
In the same article, I learned about what happened when the electronics company Philips launched a toothbrush that was a video game and kids got points as they brushed their teeth. The kids, it turned out, would not stop brushing their teeth. Frustrated parents contacted the company and soon Philips changed the product so the game would automatically time out. The game’s main character, Sparkly, would drop from exhaustion. I love this story for two reasons: the reminder that even tech with the best intentions needs to be put in check and that parents' voices can be heard by companies.
For TTT let's talk about how various media forms are designed to keep us glued—from streaks on Snapchat to binge watching TV shows:
As well as our weekly blog, we publish videos like this one every week on the Screenagers YouTube channel
I just returned from Australia where I was rolling out Screenagers. The film has screened in more than 30 countries so far and we have a new partnership in Australia that is really exciting. Doing screenings and press throughout put me in contact with parents, teachers, and reporters. All over the country, I heard exactly the same questions and concerns I’ve heard in the U.S. and in other countries: Why are we so glued to our devices and what is excessive screen time? A new book called Irresistible by Adam Alter looks at why everyone seems to be is so entranced by screens. He makes points such as how Netflix shows are designed specifically for binge watching.
In an interview with Alter by Ben Machell in The Weekend Australian Magazine, Alter says “The interesting thing with technology 20, 15, even 10 years ago was that there were built-in barriers to enjoyment.” He goes on to say that to see a cartoon you had to wait for the “boring” news to be over. In the past there were forced breaks that usually existed for enjoyable things, called “stopping rules,” but now the Internet has eliminated those.
In the same article, I learned about what happened when the electronics company Philips launched a toothbrush that was a video game and kids got points as they brushed their teeth. The kids, it turned out, would not stop brushing their teeth. Frustrated parents contacted the company and soon Philips changed the product so the game would automatically time out. The game’s main character, Sparkly, would drop from exhaustion. I love this story for two reasons: the reminder that even tech with the best intentions needs to be put in check and that parents' voices can be heard by companies.
For TTT let's talk about how various media forms are designed to keep us glued—from streaks on Snapchat to binge watching TV shows:
As well as our weekly blog, we publish videos like this one every week on the Screenagers YouTube channel
Is learning to write obsolete? How impactful will all the bias be? How can we trust who wrote what, including the issue of cheating? Today I’m writing about ChatGPT. This is HUGE. From the program itself, “ChatGPT is a large language model trained by OpenAI. It is designed to generate human-like responses to text input.”
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Staying on task and paying attention in a classroom online when pulled by many tabs and often phones nearby is intensely challenging. Today I share some solutions that kids have shared when it comes to studying online.
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READ MORE >for more like this, DR. DELANEY RUSTON'S NEW BOOK, PARENTING IN THE SCREEN AGE, IS THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE FOR TODAY’S PARENTS. WITH INSIGHTS ON SCREEN TIME FROM RESEARCHERS, INPUT FROM KIDS & TEENS, THIS BOOK IS PACKED WITH SOLUTIONS FOR HOW TO START AND SUSTAIN PRODUCTIVE FAMILY TALKS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AND IT’S IMPACT ON OUR MENTAL WELLBEING.
