2321: Is Allowing Your Child to Study While on Facebook Morally Irresponsible? by Cal Newport on Parenting & Homework

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[00:00:31] This is Optimal Relationships Daily.

[00:00:33] Is allowing your child to study while on Facebook moreally irresponsible

[00:00:38] by CalNewport of CalNewport.com.

[00:00:42] Hello, everybody! I am your host Gregg Adino and welcome to Optimal Relationships Daily.

[00:00:49] Today we are going to be hearing from computer science professor CalNewport

[00:00:53] on multitasking and technology habits.

[00:00:56] Something we don't talk about too much here on the pod is wonderful.

[00:00:59] This is a great post on electronic distractions and how it can cause permanent effects

[00:01:04] which is something we all need to be aware of.

[00:01:07] So, let's hear Cal's post and start optimizing your life.

[00:01:16] Is allowing your child to study while on Facebook moreally irresponsible by CalNewport

[00:01:22] of CalNewport.com.

[00:01:25] The Stanford Consensus.

[00:01:27] My technology habits are eccentric.

[00:01:30] I use an old-fashioned non-internet connected Samsung flip phone

[00:01:34] with a postage stamp size screen.

[00:01:37] I'm not on Facebook or Twitter and my RSS reader is an emaciated husk

[00:01:41] subsisting on a small number of feeds mainly the blogs of friends.

[00:01:46] Long ago, I configured Gmail to automatically mark every message

[00:01:49] as red when it arrives in my inbox, frustrating my attempts to perform distracting

[00:01:54] quick scans for new messages during the day.

[00:01:57] The rational foundation of my eccentricity is the increasingly alarming research coming out

[00:02:02] of Stanford's communication between humans and interactive media, Chime Lab.

[00:02:07] Pioneering researchers from this lab are converging on a scary consensus.

[00:02:12] It's long been understood that you're less productive when you're constantly switching

[00:02:15] your attention, that is the claimed benefits of multitasking are false.

[00:02:21] Researchers at the Chime Lab, however, have found that the impact of electronic multitasking

[00:02:26] goes beyond the momentary sense of distraction. It can also create permanent changes in the

[00:02:32] brain. As reported in a recent New York Times article, subjects who were identified as

[00:02:38] multitaskers did a significantly worse job on experimental tasks that required them to filter

[00:02:44] out irrelevant information, even though they weren't multitasking during the experiment.

[00:02:50] Other tests at Stanford reports the same article showed multitaskers tended to search for new

[00:02:56] information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work,

[00:03:02] or as Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford summarized.

[00:03:06] The scary part for multitaskers is they can't shut off their multitasking tendencies

[00:03:12] when they're not multitasking. This is why I invest so much effort in isolating myself from electronic

[00:03:19] distraction. In my two fields, theoretical computer science and writing, the ability to focus on

[00:03:25] hard things for long uninterrupted periods is my most valuable currency. If I lose this ability,

[00:03:31] I might also lose my livelihood. As the computer scientist Donald Knuth once said, email is a

[00:03:37] wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things, but not for me. My role

[00:03:43] is to be on the bottom of things. The danger to students. That's the rational explanation

[00:03:49] for my behavior. If you want the emotional explanation however, turn your perhaps distracted

[00:03:55] attention from Stanford's chime lab to my blog email inbox. I consult with around one to two

[00:04:02] dozen students a week, offering advice on how to find sustainable success. Over the three years

[00:04:08] I've played this advisory role, I've noticed an alarming trend. The current crop of undergraduates

[00:04:14] who went through high school in an era of Facebook and smartphones is suffering from serious

[00:04:19] concentration issues. I receive an increasing number of emails from students who have an expert

[00:04:24] level knowledge on how to study, but are simply incapable of giving the task at hand more than

[00:04:30] a few minutes of concentration before seeking what the Times article aptly described as the

[00:04:35] dopamine squirt that comes from discovering a novel stimulus. This recent email is typical

[00:04:41] of those I receive. Quote, I've read your red book. I have an autopilot schedule. I have a

[00:04:47] to do list. I block off specific times for each task and yet I procrastinate like crazy. I have a

[00:04:59] according to the Stanford consensus. The longer students have spent working in a semi-distracted

[00:05:04] state, the harder it becomes to rebuild an ability to concentrate on something hard, like a naughty

[00:05:10] chapter from a philosophy text or a tricky calculus problem set. This leads me to the deliberately

[00:05:16] provocative title I gave this post. When a parent allows a son or daughter to study in a state of

[00:05:23] distraction, the impact goes well beyond the assignment at hand. This behavior could be rewiring

[00:05:29] the young student's brain, making it all but impossible for him or her to perform the

[00:05:34] feats of increased concentration required later at college and beyond. Resisting disconnection

[00:05:41] Surprisingly, when I advise parents of the necessity of enforcing focus, my most infamous

[00:05:46] advice being to remove the cable connecting the modem to the router during homework time,

[00:05:51] I'm often met with a equivocation. And I'm not the only one noticing this trend. The above

[00:05:57] mentioned times article profile the hyper-connected family in which the young son, Connor,

[00:06:02] started receiving his first disease due to an inability to focus on his homework and outcome

[00:06:07] that's not surprising considering that he shares his work desk with two computer monitors,

[00:06:12] one with his music collection, one with Facebook and Reddit. He also adds to the den

[00:06:17] an iPhone relaying a constant stream of text messages. Faced with this obvious problem,

[00:06:23] Connor's always connected father, baffling, expressed pride in his son's distraction.

[00:06:29] He's a fact-town the father-braggd. The mother who is perhaps more aware of the problem,

[00:06:34] nonetheless through upper hands claiming that technology is part of the fabric of who he is.

[00:06:40] I get similar responses to my own pleas with parents. In addition to the traditional

[00:06:44] Apologist tropes about the Internet's advantages, improved visual acuity, the ability to

[00:06:50] do faster Google searches. Really? This justifies a persistence state of unavalcerated

[00:06:55] distraction. I also hear contrived scenarios in which being online would add some incremental

[00:07:01] benefit to this school work at hand, the need to look up word definitions as a common explanation.

[00:07:07] A crusade begins. This is where I'm drawing my line in the sand. The tired debate on the

[00:07:13] advantages and disadvantages of hyper-connectedness is fine for adults. A 27 year old, such as myself,

[00:07:19] can make his own decision about what mental skills are important. But for teenage students,

[00:07:24] immersed in a developmental stage where impulse control is dangerously weak and the brain is at

[00:07:29] a peak of malibility, guardians should have some responsibility for helping to preserve their ability

[00:07:35] to focus. The teenagers can choose to discard this ability later in life, but by allowing

[00:07:41] a 15 year old to study while bombarded by three screens worth of distraction, even if he is

[00:07:47] a fact-town and it's part of his personality and he might need to quickly look up a word he doesn't

[00:07:52] understand. You're making this choice for him. I'll continue of course in my role as an informal

[00:07:58] source of student advice to preach the benefits of sustaining focus during this fragile period.

[00:08:03] Are you willing to join me? You just listen to the post titled,

[00:08:10] is allowing your child to study while on Facebook morally irresponsible by CalNewport of CalNewport.com.

[00:08:20] Super important read from Cal today guys. Wow, multitasking is indeed one of the often misunderstood

[00:08:28] skills I'll call it that people tend to have. Yes, it can seem glamorous not only because

[00:08:34] people think it's glamorous, but also because if you're someone like Connor, yeah, sometimes

[00:08:39] it can feel like you're constantly willing to learn. And if you can sustain this for at least a while

[00:08:45] while still accomplishing what you need to accomplish, then why question it? But as Cal says,

[00:08:50] the long-term effects are slow but real, excessive multitasking not only leads to the inability

[00:08:56] to concentrate on homework, but realistically in any area of life. You know, focus becomes harder on one

[00:09:02] when relationship, et cetera. And this excess stimuli makes it harder to give proper attention to

[00:09:09] anything and commitment can go down the drain from there. So thanks to Cal for reminding us of that

[00:09:14] in this great, great article. Now we're going to wrap up today's episode everybody. Thank you so

[00:09:19] much for joining me today and remember to advise your kids on the long-term effects of their

[00:09:23] technology habits. Please, it's for the sake of the future people. I will see, I will list, I've

[00:09:30] wanting to say I'll see you tomorrow. God-wreck figured out this is not the visual podcast.

[00:09:34] I will talk to you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.