EdTech

the present study is the first to investigate the effects of long-term violent video gameplay

Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3 or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent video game to a group playing a non-violent game, nor to a passive control group.

the question that society is actually interested in is not: “Are people more aggressive after having played violent video games for a few minutes? And are these people more aggressive minutes after gameplay ended?”, but rather “What are the effects of frequent, habitual violent video game playing? And for how long do these effects persist (not in the range of minutes but rather weeks and months)?”

parents spend an average of nine hours and 22 minutes every day in front of various screens—including smartphones, tablets, computers and televisions. Of those, nearly eight hours are for personal use, not work

we do not even realize how much time we spend when we heed the siren call of our devices

if parents use screen time for shared activities with a child—watching a movie or playing an educational game together, for example—it can enhance the child's learning

Verbalize what you’re doing with your phone

They also get their cues about technology from people around them. A child would need to be alone in the woods to miss that people love their phones. From the time that they’re born, people are shoving phones in their faces to take pictures, turning to their phones to escape, and obsessively talking on their phones while ignoring them.

Once you begin saying out loud every time you look at technology, you also realize how much you’re looking at technology.

A new study of dysfunctional use of smart technology finds that the most addictive smartphone functions all share a common theme: they tap into the human desire to connect with other people

it is our desire for human interaction that is addictive—and there are fairly simple solutions to deal with this

Could smartphone addiction be hyper-social, not anti-social

Not everybody in the medical community is on board with such an assessment

a group of more than two dozen doctors and researchers sent an open letter to the WHO in 2016, arguing that formalizing the disorder lacked scientific merit and could cause real harm to patients.

the current operationalization leans too heavily on substance use and gambling criteria, and the lack of consensus on symptomatology and assessment of problematic gaming

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.