EdTech

new research findings from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, has shown that screen time has very little practical effect on children’s sleep.

while the correlation between screen time and sleep in children exists, it might be too small to make a significant difference to a child’s sleep

Focusing on bedtime routines and regular patterns of sleep, such as consistent wake-up times, are much more effective strategies for helping young people sleep than thinking screens themselves play a significant role

“What is the “right” age for youngsters to begin texting and using social media?”

If you wouldn’t say something to a person’s face, don’t send it via text or the internet.

Don’t gossip about other people

For now, anyone thinking about how much time using screens and social media is "OK" will ultimately have to make a personal judgement.

Rather than stating that social media was harmful, it suggested a more complex effect.

increasing the time spent using technology was linked to improved wellbeing

Technology makes it too easy to say things that are impulsive or unkind

Your words can be misinterpreted, manipulated, and forwarded without your permission

Once you share something online, you lose control of where it goes, who can forward it, who will see it, and how it can potentially be used

engaging in digital media activities together such as watching films, playing video games and keeping in touch via calls and messaging apps brings families together rather than dividing them

rather than displacing established ways of interacting, playing and communicating – digital media sit alongside them

the report’s authors highlighted parents’ concerns about “screen time”, which is a source of conflict in homes, though sleep and behaviour cause more disagreement. They also flag up a lack of support for parents who may face particular challenges regarding their child or family’s digital media use. Whereas on other issues they might turn to their own parents for advice, the digital generation gap means they are unlikely to be able to help

Anxieties over technology's impact on society are as old as society itself; video games, television, radio, the telegraph, even the written word—they were all, at one time, scapegoats or harbingers of humanity's cognitive, creative, emotional, and cultural dissolution. But the apprehension over smartphones, apps, and seductive algorithms is different. So different, in fact, that our treatment of past technologies fails to be instructive

To combat addiction, you have to discard the addicting substance," Turkle wrote in her 2011 book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. "But we are not going to 'get rid' of the Internet. We will not go ‘cold turkey’ or forbid cell phones to our children. We are not going to stop the music or go back to the television as the family hearth.

it's really hard to do purely observational research into the effects of something like screen time, or social media use," says MIT social scientist Dean Eckles, who studies how interactive technologies impact society's thoughts and behaviors. You can't just divide participants into, say, those with phones and those without.

Too often, designers of educational materials and activities simply add a thin layer of technology and gaming over antiquated curriculum and pedagogy

But I’m also sure that some students found it very discouraging and disempowering. And the activity put an emphasis on questions that can be answered quickly with right and wrong answers — certainly not the type of questions that I would prioritize in a classroom.

In many cases, the skeptics apply very different standards to new technologies than to “old” technologies. They worry about the antisocial impact of a child spending hours working on a computer, while they don’t have any concerns about a child spending the same time reading a book. They worry that children interacting with computers don’t spend enough time outside, but they don’t voice similar concerns about children playing musical instruments. I’m not suggesting that there are no reasons for concern. I’m just asking for more consistency.