The ongoing issue that bothers me about this genre of article, and never seems to be addressed, is the lack of detail in defining the exact nature of the problem, and the apparent lack of curiosity in finding it out.
Speaking generally, whenever there is an article talking about the evil of 'screen time', I should like to know what that means. Are we saying that physical exposure to a screen is causing the difficulty (if so, what about digital ink displays)? Is it about icons and graphics vs. text? Or are we really just talking about social media? Most 'screen time' articles end up on the third subject by the third paragraph, and that is not helpful. If it is a software problem, so that we need to get rid of modern websites, or get rid of internet access, or get rid of graphical user interfaces, that is correctable. If it is a hardware problem, something that inevitably goes wrong whenever a human being uses an electronic device, from the Apple I all the way to the present, that's a completely different issue.
In regards to this particular article, it does speculate a little on fundamentals (like 'screen scrolling', though I suspect that is a correctable software issue), but it sounds like most of the problem involves students being distracted. The article even implicitly suggests, early on, that older machines, like Windows 95 computers, were not a problem back in the 1990s when these kids' parents were in school. If that's so, the issue isn't that it's a computer, the issue is everything that's running on it.
I'm personally in favour of getting rid of electronics from schools, but if we do so based on the grounds that "computers rot the brain", that isn't just a 'school rule', that's a reality that is applicable to every part of life. We are saying that these devices shouldn't be used anywhere, under any circumstances, no matter how they are configured or used. I'd like to have proof of that, lest we get rid of text editing based, ultimately, on the grounds that Facebook and TikTok damage mental health.
James_Gryphon•2mo ago
Speaking generally, whenever there is an article talking about the evil of 'screen time', I should like to know what that means. Are we saying that physical exposure to a screen is causing the difficulty (if so, what about digital ink displays)? Is it about icons and graphics vs. text? Or are we really just talking about social media? Most 'screen time' articles end up on the third subject by the third paragraph, and that is not helpful. If it is a software problem, so that we need to get rid of modern websites, or get rid of internet access, or get rid of graphical user interfaces, that is correctable. If it is a hardware problem, something that inevitably goes wrong whenever a human being uses an electronic device, from the Apple I all the way to the present, that's a completely different issue.
In regards to this particular article, it does speculate a little on fundamentals (like 'screen scrolling', though I suspect that is a correctable software issue), but it sounds like most of the problem involves students being distracted. The article even implicitly suggests, early on, that older machines, like Windows 95 computers, were not a problem back in the 1990s when these kids' parents were in school. If that's so, the issue isn't that it's a computer, the issue is everything that's running on it.
I'm personally in favour of getting rid of electronics from schools, but if we do so based on the grounds that "computers rot the brain", that isn't just a 'school rule', that's a reality that is applicable to every part of life. We are saying that these devices shouldn't be used anywhere, under any circumstances, no matter how they are configured or used. I'd like to have proof of that, lest we get rid of text editing based, ultimately, on the grounds that Facebook and TikTok damage mental health.