Digital Guidance & Support

Nebraska Revised Statute states the duties of the School Safety & Security Director subsection (10) is to recommend curricular and extracurricular materials to assist school districts in preventing and responding to cyberbullying and digital citizenship issues. Digital literacy, digital laws/issues, and digital privacy are also topics of support and guidance provided. As a digital best practice all schools should have a digital policy addressing student device and platform usage in schools.

The NDE is aware of devices and digital platforms positive impact on learning, obtaining information and student outcomes, however digital concerns also need to be discussed with students, parents, staff, and school communities. The school safety and security team believe in educating and promoting digital wisdom to help communities develop better digital practices to overcome the issues technology can bring to a school environment.

The current evidence from Dr. Jean Twenge’s research documented in her book ‘iGen‘ has shown since 2012 children have been losing purpose, sleep, and had an increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide while school performance has decreased (see image above). What was the big change in 2012 causing this rise in youth issues? It was the switch from flip phones to smart phones where Apps and social media platforms began utilizing algorithms to manipulate and calculate our viewing habits and online behaviors. The business model from these big tech companies has been to capture and keep our attention on their platform as long as possible by any means necessary. They use our online ‘clicks‘ to learn how to influence us on a much larger scale due to us all carrying these devices in our pockets.

Tristian Harris Co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology

Tristian Harris, a former big tech employee with Apple and Google and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology is quoted saying “Today, technology has infused itself at a very intimate level with how we form our identity, how we form relationships, how we make choices, and make sense of the world. The technologies of social media and the smartphone have allowed the influence and manipulation of human biases and weaknesses. They can overwhelm our psychology in ways that we simply aren’t aware of.  The prevalent business models in technology are entirely based on manipulating human weaknesses…” Everyone who uses social media deserves to know how it works. The Center for Humane Technology Youth Toolkit will help youth understand how it operates.

Tristian also stated in the award-winning Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma‘ “Never before in history have 50 designers made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people.” Platform designers’ capability to alter the culture and climate of human civics and the way we interact with one another is alarming and demonstrates why we as digital consumers need to be more aware and digitally wise. We need to learn to control our tech use.

Geoffrey Hinton the Godfather of A.I.

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has raised even more concerns with its ability to mislead mass amounts of people while at the same time creating an inability to determine if what we are viewing online is even factual or true. There are positive aspects with A.I. technology, however we have a tendency to disregard any negative aspects it produces. A.I.’s potential for bad outcomes is explained by Tristan Harris, he states, “…the world is about to change in a fundamental way, except the way it’s about to change, it (A.I.) is not being deployed in safe and responsible way, it’s being deployed in a very dangerous way.”  Even the Godfather of A.I. formerly from Google and the CEO of Open A.I. have appeared on 60 minutes stating we need to “regulate A.I.” and “we are at a point we can’t get this wrong…” It might “escape control” by rewriting its own code to modify itself. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things…”

With all this knowledge of where we are with technology, social media platforms, and the nuances of A.I. we need to use this information to prevent the continuing cycle of digital damage control and rethink how to improve digital competence, fitness, and wisdom!

 “The Anxious Generation – How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness’ by Dr. Jonathan Haidt discusses how smartphones have led to phone-based childhoods over play-based. If you want a quick snapshot of the book listen to Dr. Haidt talk about his book on our YouTube Channel.  One example is how playground equipment is empty without children due to them being plugged in at home on a device. In the process, children lose the ‘practice’ to have little stressors in life like when dealing with other kids on play-ground equipment.  Children lose experiences in social skills, emotional bonding, self-governing, and free-play culture. Another example similar to what Dr. Haidt shares in his book is kids today are typing their emotions into a phone instead of experiencing the emotions. Kids typing LOL, sad, or mad into a device, instead of truly laughing out loud, or getting mad and then learning to get over it or getting truly sad, crying and then learning to work through it. Without this ‘practice’ by the time they are young adults with real life issues they end up having even more anxiety, depression, or other issues due to these ‘experience blockers’ in childhood. Rather than being anti-fragile children, they become more fragile due to the lack or presence of life’s stressors needed to learn and grow from as we get older. In Dr. Haidt’s book he suggests these four foundational things for digital health:

• No smartphones before high school. Their brains and emotions are not prepared when younger.
• No social media before age 16. (Australia just began this as a country mandate).
• Phone free schools from bell to bell. To give teachers their full attention and have face-to-face experiences.
• More unsupervised play. To allow children independence without parent direction or protection.

When anyone is asked, ‘would you let a stranger into your home?‘ The answer is almost always ‘no‘, however most if not all parents allow their children online. It is called www (World Wide Web) and when a child is online, they are opening their door to anyone in the world to have access to them. Predators exist online and they target children for a variety of concerning reasons. Parents should be more vigilant with knowing who their children are speaking with or allowing into their online persona’s. A quote that has been often used is “Show me your friends, I will show you your future.” Knowing who your child is hanging out with in the virtual world is just as important as knowing who they are hanging out with in the real world. A child’s future depends on a parent looking out for them in both worlds!

The only way to gain digital health, safety, and wisdom is to look up from our devices!