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Seeing more and more aspects of our lives as games to win through maximization has a sort of self-perpetuating effect with perverse consequences, not the least of which is the impairment of what Diesing terms social rationality; the cherishing of unique relationships, personal connectedness, cooperative functioning, solidarity and sentiment.

If winning efficiently is the goal, then the rules (ethical, moral, legal, and spiritual), are essentially obstacles to game.

In our schools, competition for access to elite preschools, for grades, for social status, in sports, over positions of leadership, and for admission to exclusive colleges transforms one of our most basic institutions for fostering community, ethics and learning into competitive, individualistic corporate training-grounds. In these settings, the importance of competitive sports becomes paramount, for both financial and training purposes, and the artistry of cheating (see this year's Stuyvesant High School cheating scandal) and rule-bending (see Joe Paterno) revered. Such intense competition encourages the professionalization of parenting -- through tutors, highly-educated nannies, prep courses, and professional training camps (such as investment camps). You can imagine the deleterious effects these trends have on the ethos of care and moral responsibility in our families and schools, a critical buffer against bullying and violence in the lives of our children.

We become hyper-connected through technologies, boasting our number of "friends" on Facebook, and have less and less intimacy.

We choose friends with benefits or Internet porn over romantic relationships as they are less messy, more efficient.

Life is a race and we are losing.

Texting, emailing, and posting on Facebook and other social media sites are by far the most common digital activities students undertake while learnin

“Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources.

They may like to do it, they may even be addicted to it, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s far better to focus on one task from start to finish.”

the assignment takes longer to complete

memory of what they’re working on will be impaired if their attention is divided

The moment of encoding is what matters most for retention

This ability to resist the lure of technology can be consciously cultivated,

“even if distraction does not decrease the overall level of learning, it can result in the acquisition of knowledge that can be applied less flexibly in new situations.”

students who used Facebook during the 15-minute observation period had lower grade-point averages than those who didn’t go on the site

texting and using Facebook—in class and while doing homework—were negatively correlated with college students’ GPAs.

“There’s a definite possibility that we are raising a generation that is learning more shallowly than young people in the past,” he says. “The depth of their processing of information is considerably less, because of all the distractions available to them as they learn.”

academic and even professional achievement may depend on the ability to ignore digital temptations while learning

kids who were better able to delay gratification not only achieved higher grades and test scores but were also more likely to succeed in school and their careers.

hose who were interrupted more often scored worse on a test of the lecture’s content; more interestingly, those who responded to the experimenters’ texts right away scored significantly worse than those participants who waited to reply until the lecture was over.

leads to more mistakes

“Young people’s technology use is really about quelling anxiety,” he contends. “They don’t want to miss out.

Device-checking is a compulsive behavior that must be managed, he says, if young people are to learn and perform at their best.

‘This is a time when you will concentrate on just one thing.’ ”

Just make sure when they’re doing schoolwork, the cellphones are silent, the video screens are dark, and that every last window is closed but one.

Every time we pull up a memory, we make it stronger and more lasting, so that testing doesn’t just measure, it changes learning. Simply reading over material to be learned, or even taking notes and making outlines, as many homework assignments require, doesn’t have this effect.

When we work hard to understand information, we recall it better; the extra effort signals the brain that this knowledge is worth keeping. This phenomenon, known as cognitive disfluency

interleaving

The prescription for Facebook despair is less Facebook. Researchers found that face-to-face or phone interaction — those outmoded, analog ways of communication — had the opposite effect. Direct interactions with other human beings led people to feel better.