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"The bottom line is that there is no scientific consensus that brain training works. All that can be concluded at this point is that time and money spent on brain training is, as likely as not, time and money wasted,

there is still plenty of excitement about the possibilities of brain-training programs in general. Even in the Stanford letter dismissing the current brain-training claims, the scientists acknowledge that several isolated studies have had promising results, and they deserved to be looked into further. And the concept that the brain is malleable, even for super old people, isn't just wishful thinking: It is true.

the scale does not distinguish between TV and other types of screen use

no child had a vocabulary score in the impaired range

misleading

The study was not pre-registered, making it hard to know how many analyses were conducted but not reported

The study does not provide credible evidence of an adverse effect of screen time on child development, but could serve to stoke anxiety in parents who may worry that they have damaged their child’s brain by allowing access to TV, phones or tablets

an association between screen time and brain wiring says nothing about causation: you can speculate that an apparent delay in brain development might be caused by high screen time but it is equally possible that lower brain developmental status increases screen time

send discrete messages delivered through touch

extract semantic meaning from touch, to create what just might amount to a new form of language

exploring how optical imaging could get real-time data from the brain and translate it into words. The resulting device could be something like a neural cap worn on the head, or some type of band that stretches around the back of the skull.

literally getting inside your head and under your skin.

by playing the right games, ones that encourage exploration and problem solving rather than just camping and sniping soldiers

the effectiveness of learning is determined primarily by the way the medium is used and by the quality of the instruction accompanying that use

The crucial factor for learning improvement is to make sure that you do not replace the teacher as the instrument of instruction, allowing computers to do what teachers would normally do, but instead use computers to supplement and amplify what the teacher does

the use of both e-learning and contact education—which is known as blended learning—produces better results than lessons given without technolog

the medium does not influence the learning

the medium seldom influences teaching, learning, and education, nor is it likely that one single medium will ever be the best one for all situations

students do not naturally make extensive use of many of the newest technologies, such as blogs, wikis, and virtual worlds

the main reasons young people use technology. These reasons are mainly social

Digital natives! Whenever the question of digital innovation in education is discussed, this is a term that immediately comes to the surface. But it should be avoided. Even the person who coined the term digital natives, Marc Prensky, admitted in his most recent book, Brain Gain, that the term is now obsolete.2

Prensky’s coining of this term—and its counterpart for people who are not digitally native—was not based on research into this generation, but rather created by rationalizing phenomena that he had observed

The students use a large quantity and variety of technologies for communicating, learning, staying connected with their friends, and engaging with the world around them. But they are using them primarily for “personal empowerment and entertainment

university students do not really have a deep knowledge of technology, and what knowledge they do have is often limited to basic Microsoft Office skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), emailing, text messaging, Facebook, and surfing the Internet

There is simply no experimental evidence to show that living with new technologies fundamentally changes brain organization in a way that affects one’s ability to focus. Of course, the brain changes any time we form a memory or learn a new skill, but new skills build on our existing capacities without fundamentally changing them. We will no more lose our ability to pay attention than we will lose our ability to listen, see or speak.

Note that many of these studies examined the influence of television rather than the influence of interactive technology, such as smartphones and social media

when people think that young people today read less, it’s not about reading online content or text messages, it’s about reading book

young people are still doing a lot of reading, and these statistics make clear that many of them are reading for pleasure. However, we need to be careful about making too many sweeping assertions, since the reading figures in many countries are falling. Even so, we know that reading continues to be important: both reading by young people themselves and parents reading to their childre

Previously, young children had to be shown by their parents how to use a mouse or a remote, and the connection between what they were doing with their hand and what was happening on the screen took some time to grasp. But with the iPad, the connection is obvious, even to toddlers. Touch technology follows the same logic as shaking a rattle or knocking down a pile of blocks: the child swipes, and something immediately happens.

A more accurate point of comparison for a TV viewer’s physiological state would be that of someone deep in a book, says Kirkorian, because during both activities we are still, undistracted, and mentally active.

even very young children can be discriminating viewers—that they are not in fact brain-dead, but rather work hard to make sense of what they see and turn it into a coherent narrative that reflects what they already know of the world.

Children’s lives are filled with media at younger and younger ages, and we need to take advantage of what these technologies have to offer

More important, she made the video demonstration explicitly interactive.

That exchange was enough to nearly erase the video deficit.

That kind of contingent interaction (I do something, you respond) is what captivates a toddler and can be a significant source of learning for even very young children—learning that researchers hope the children can carry into the real world. It’s not exactly the ideal social partner the American Academy of Pediatrics craves. It’s certainly not a parent or caregiver. But it’s as good an approximation as we’ve ever come up with on a screen, and it’s why children’s-media researchers are so excited about the iPad’s potential.

something about tapping the screen, about getting feedback and being corrected in real time, is itself instructive, and enables the toddlers to absorb information accurately, regardless of its source

A TV is static and lacks one of the most important things to toddlers, which is a “two-way exchange of information

The statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics assumes a zero-sum game: an hour spent watching TV is an hour not spent with a parent. But parents know this is not how life works. There are enough hours in a day to go to school, play a game, and spend time with a parent, and generally these are different hours. Some people can get so drawn into screens that they want to do nothing else but play games. Experts say excessive video gaming is a real problem, but they debate whether it can be called an addiction and, if so, whether the term can be used for anything but a small portion of the population.

We live in a screen age, and to say to a kid, ‘I’d love for you to look at a book but I hate it when you look at the screen’ is just bizarre. It reflects our own prejudices and comfort zone. It’s nothing but fear of change, of being left out.”

a useful framework—what she calls the three C’s—for thinking about media consumption: content, context, and your child. She poses a series of questions—Do you think the content is appropriate? Is screen time a “relatively small part of your child’s interaction with you and the real world?”—and suggests tailoring your rules to the answers, child by child.

a teenager's "news-gathering process" alternated skimming or "grazing" with a "deep dive" when she found something she could really get her teeth into

such nutritious, dense, lengthy pieces of writing are, of course, becoming ever more popular on the very same internet that pessimists blame for destroying our attention spans

Can we really blame kids for being so taken by Fortnite? The game itself—a combination of army guys, building forts, and king-of-the-hill battles—would have taken place with sticks or toy guns in the vacant lots or wooded strands that are increasingly designed out of today’s suburban neighborhoods

look beyond the immediate content of the game (its characters and themes), and focus more intently on what kids are doing with it

Although there are no established links between games and violence, there are some obvious connections between gaming too much and wider problems

Rather than focusing on what games kids are playing, we should attend more to who they are meeting and gaming with online, what type of talk they are engaged in, and what kinds of groups they are becoming a part of

open-ended math activities in Google Slides because each student can play with visual representations, give feedback to peers, and receive ongoing feedback from the teacher.

Keeler likes using the technology because she can easily see how each individual is thinking about the problem. And students can interact with one another’s ideas, even when they aren’t physically in her class

visualize division by divvying up a pan of brownies equally among friends. Keeler does this activity in a spreadsheet

The goal, in other words, is to get students to learn not to take everything at face value

Since the human brain is essentially wired to recognize patterns, computational thinking—somewhat paradoxically—doesn’t necessarily require the use of computers at all.

an innovative, mastery-learning model that is less wedded to unit and testing cycles than in other schools. Students are often graded on a custom rubric that crosses disciplines called a “continuum of skill development,” that scales with students

blending computational thinking into the curriculum need not require such a major overhaul. It can be inserted on a lesson-by-lesson basis and only where it makes sense.

The study found that the strongest agreement between participants' rankings and IGD characterizations were functional impairment, continued use despite problems, unsuccessful attempts to stop and the loss of interest in other hobbies

These games aren't necessarily causing the problems; it might just as well be the other way around. People are not functioning, they suffer from social anxiety, they're lonely, and they flee into the games because it's an excellent coping mechanism.

However, the official investigation report points out that the only game he played regularly was Dance Dance Revolution.

If anything, the current body of evidence suggests that gaming might actually reduce the rate of violent behavior rather than instigate it.

Luckily, moral panics don't last far beyond the lives of those who are outraged by them

heighten awareness of our multi-generational love of screens and encourage kids and parents to face it together.

None of us know the full extent of how our digital dependence is affecting us, or how it will affect the youngest generations growing up today. The least we can do is look up every now and then to ask each other how we’re doing, and how we can do better

they’re not alone in this struggle to practice what they preach

In an ever-more intricate and connected world, where software plays a larger and larger role in everyday life, it’s irresponsible to speak of coding as a lightweight activity.

On its own, the fact that a pleasurable activity involves dopamine release tells us nothing else about it.

A large-scale study of internet-based games recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry bears out our skepticism about this “addiction

the diagnosis of addiction doesn’t make much sense to begin with

by treating the immoderate playing of video games as an addiction, we are pathologizing relatively normal behavior

indulging in panic about technology or nostalgia for a better past that never really existed does us no good