Worth Thinking About

By Simon Owen-Williams, Head of School

By the time the 17th century had rolled around, adults were already very worried about the sheer volume of information available to humans. This was mostly because of the increase in the number of books on various topics and what such information was doing to the minds of its population, especially the young. As French philosopher Blaise Pascal stated, “All the misfortunes of men arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own room.”

In the 17th century, Pascal worried, much as we do today, about the distractions caused by so much information: “useless things confusingly heaped in such large volumes.” Of course, the amount of information we receive today knows no bounds in comparison to 17th-century France. Our appetite for it seems insatiable. But like Pascal, ought we be deeply concerned about the life of distraction, the modern equivalent of social media, brought to our children? What, if anything, can be done about it? And, furthermore, from what are we being distracted?

For several years now at Portledge, we have given focus to digital citizenship: educating young students about taking deliberate and thoughtful steps before they press send and emphasizing healthy screen-life balance. We know that the human brain has limited processing capacities (especially in terms of complex tasks that are dealt with primarily in our short-term memory) and that it is difficult, if not impossible, to focus on more than one such task at a time. Little wonder then, as we watch our children spending upwards of five to six hours a day staring at a screen (according to our research, that is time logged outside the school day, by the way) that we are growing concerned about attention spans and the general health and wellness of children. Intuitively, we sense that extensive time spent staring at a phone cannot be healthy. Habit- time and human interactions are essential to develop our students’ concentration abilities. The two are directly related. If we do not allocate more of our available resources to developing students’ abilities to focus in the face of overwhelming information overload, all signs point to the outcome of gradual but steady atrophying of their concentration skills. forming behaviors in young children tend to stay with them from then on. So, it seems commonsensical that we encourage our young students to spend as much time away from their phones as possible during the day. In-person play

It turns out that constant distractions caused by screens are not merely a minor annoyance. The noise-to-signal ratio is quite jarring (“This engineering term uses binary measures to see how well a particular ‘channel’ of communication carries the desired signal compared to background noise or clutter” Dao). With so much noise, I worry that the intoxicating allure of social media actually prevents children from doing what they themselves would like to do.

These new “attentional adversaries” may “threaten even the integrity of the human will, at both the individual and the collective levels,” as American philosopher Harry Frankfurt claims. Simply put, by amusing children to the nth degree, social media erodes children’s ability to lead the lives they would otherwise choose to lead truly. This means that children become trapped, prisoners of the illusion of happiness. If true, this will make it harder for them to self-reflect, work in teams, socialize, self-regulate, and even live the lives they want to live. Alarming indeed!

We know keeping our children’s attention is lucrative—highly lucrative—to those seeking to garner it. Information data is the new gold in the world of social physics. Our children’s attention is worth a lot of money in the marketplace where shared personal information is the product. While we acknowledge this as a component of our shared reality and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will serve only to exacerbate this, we do not have to acquiesce to it entirely. In fact, we all have to adapt by becoming more aware. Schools and other institutions of authority must do their part to help mitigate the effects of some unhealthy and toxic trends that have emerged in our online world. Making hard decisions knowing that “too much information creates a poverty of attention” will be a step towards restoring balance. This has to be aligned with keeping children safe while they are online.

Like other educational leaders, I happen to be cautiously optimistic about our ability to cope with these presentiments. Some options seem selfevident as we think about solutions to this modern dilemma. As mentioned above, we should continue to encourage activities that require longer periods of concentration. In the language arts classroom, this means focusing on reading actual hard-copy books. Outside of the classroom, it means encouraging participation in co-curricular activities such as athletics and performing arts or more natural playtime in the schoolyard. It means practicing skills that help rest the brain and replenish lost concentration skills, such as mindfulness practice and insisting on regular sleep patterns. And above all, it means limiting the use of attention-sapping cellphones in our academic settings so that children are present and in the moment as often as is feasible, whether that be in the science lab at Portledge or at home when completing homework with you.

Mental de-cluttering does not mean tuning out the world or even imagining a world without iPhones. That time has long passed. But mental decluttering does mean paying attention in a different way. It means acknowledging that distractions are an inevitable part of life (the Trojan Horse has already been let into our societies) and realizing we now have to deliberately strategize to create a refuge in the real-life experiences that are still very much part of our world. We cannot simply give in by leaving the kids to their own devices (excuse the pun), as one comic strip I recently read suggested. We must continue to act!

The pandemic left us all with difficulty focusing because so many horrible and bizarre things were taking place around us daily. It was an unsettling, unprecedented, and horrific time. Unfortunately, it also magnified our reliance on screens. Nevertheless, as COVID seems to be finally in our rearview mirror, we can now consciously think about what we need to attend to concerning the dangers of excessive distraction for children and then act upon these beliefs. The very health and wellness of our children may depend on our current guidance.

Pascal was worried about too much information being provided by books. That seems ludicrous to us today. Yet it was very real back then. Societies were able to cope with this information overload and surely ultimately benefited from it. This process of change took time. We, too, can create environments where solutions to this current conundrum are possible.

Building our new Athletic and Wellness Center could not come at a better time in this regard. It will provide a space where healthy minds and healthy bodies will combine to create a more balanced approach to school life. This, in turn, will equip Portledge students with the emotional skills they will need to be successful in college and the workplace. Skills such as adaptability, calmness, confidence, creativity, decisiveness, innovation, entrepreneurialism, resiliency, and greater self-awareness, to name but a few.

Time to check my messages :)