We Can All be Life-Long Learners

I put together and presented a program last night to a group I’m in, and got to thinking that it might be beneficial to others, too. You all, as readers, could also make a difference, so here goes.

The program

When I was teaching high school English, the teachers at my school were encouraged by one of the speakers who came to fire us up before another school year to do some sort of daily check-in with our students. She mentioned something about how teens’ mental health was declining (this was even before Covid hit), and checking in often seemed like a good way to keep tabs on our kids. 

Checking in became Circle Time in my classroom, and looked like this: we all sat in a circle on the floor, no phones allowed in the circle (because they were allowed in my school at that time) so we could respectfully listen to each other, and I began by asking them to give me a thumbs up, thumbs down, or sideways thumb showing me how they were feeling that day. 

I’d ask for volunteers to explain why their thumb was in a certain position. If people didn’t want to speak up, they didn’t have to. 

Circle Time - the seniors thought it was great that we were doing something they had first done in kindergarten - became more than a way for me to check in. The bonds between us grew tighter and stronger. The kids, who were freshmen through seniors, knew they could tell me almost anything and it would stay between us, unless I thought it was something that would put them in danger. It was just good, honest conversation between a bunch of people who trusted each other. 

Each class got to do Circle Time about once a week, and the kids got pretty testy if there was a week when we didn’t have time to fit it in. Almost every single week, our conversation turned to our phones. 

After listening and advising and empathizing with my students year in and year out, the one common denominator, said in so many different ways, emerged as, “I don’t want to be a prisoner to my phone, but if I’m not on every single app, I’ll miss out and won’t be popular.” 

How sad is that?

A name you should know

During this part of my presentation last night, I paused and said I needed to show them a short video. It’s a conversation with Jonathan Haidt, a college professor and social psychologist. He’s responding to a caller’s question about how to get their child off their phone. In his response, he first explains slow dopamine and explains that we want our kids to have this. He says that slow dopamine is what happens when we practice and practice and practice a basketball layup, and when we do it correctly, we get a shot of dopamine throughout our system, it makes us feel good, and we want to do it again. 

He explained that the tech companies figured out a way to hack dopamine so that the kids experience fast dopamine. All they have to do is like or swipe something, and they get a hit of quick dopamine, which is really bad for them because it changes their brain. Dopamine isn’t such a big deal then because it comes so easily. 

But, he goes on to say that, much like an addict, if you take the kid’s phone away, after three or four weeks, their brain goes back to normal. Because honestly, the kids are addicts. Aren’t we all addicted to our phones? 

This is what we’ve done by handing over our screens to our babies and grandbabies, and letting them get hooked on the technology. It IS a great pacifier. We know it works because you can watch a wild child stop everything that they’re doing and just become a zombie staring at the phone/iPad/laptop screen. 

I remember when our family was much younger and we’d take our three youngest kids out to eat. They didn’t have phones at the time, and they were obnoxious, squealing and laughing, poking at each other, and having a blast. 

Excuse me?

My husband would always get fed up and announce that this was the last time we were ever going out to eat again. Then I would look at him with one eyebrow raised and shake my head no because he was wrong. In order for me to get out of cooking every single night for the rest of my life, 24/7, until I die, we would continue going out to eat every now and then, regardless of how the children behaved. 

But today, if you look around a restaurant, you’ll notice children are not sprinting between tables, laughing with each other, or squealing in delight. They’re on the screens their parents gave them. Sad. 

I introduced a book to my group and mentioned that they’re lucky I’m only about 20 pages in, or my presentation would be much longer. The book had been recommended to me, and I wanted to recommend it to them. It’s called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Its subtitle is How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness and he’s right. 

He talks about how parents became afraid of giving their kids too much freedom, because someone could snatch them up. It’s a valid worry. When phones came along, parents could offer one to their child, and they’d stay inside, right under their parents’ noses. But as the parents were limiting their outside freedoms, they unknowingly were giving them free rein in a digital world that allows kids to go where they might not be ready to venture. 

Did you know that to get into many porn sites, all you have to do is check a box that says you’re 18? 

I recognize so much of what he describes in his book. We had several issues at different times with our five children and their phones. A couple of them spent their entire teenage years walking around depressed, sad, and absolutely glum. What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and fix all the mistakes we made as parents back then. 

But the great thing is that when we know better, we must do better. I understand now where we went wrong. Phones should never be given to kids. As much as they’re going to enjoy it, there have to be limits. Phones are able to change kids’ brains. Read that again: the phones can change their brains! 

Even as adults, we don’t know when to put our damn phones down. How can we possibly expect kids to do it without being told to? 

It’s a scary world. We, as a society, have made huge mistakes. But I believe that we’re on the right path to correcting some of them. All you readers are influencers of your own families. You can make a difference just by having a conversation. Or you can jump in with both feet and help Jonathan Haidt change the world. If you’re going to be on your phone anyway (and you know we all are), give him a follow on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.