"Present Shock" Author on Kids and Digital Media: When and How to Use What

Forget "future shock" — the stress of dealing with rapid, accelerating change. Our problem is the present — the real-time, "always on" immediacy of today's digital culture, says media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in his new book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now.

Rushkoff has been studying the impact of digital media on society for the past 30 years. It was Rushkoff who coined the phrases "viral media" and "digital native." In his latest book on media, technology and culture, out today, Rushkoff argues that trying to keep up in the digital world can be overwhelming — and comes at a cost.

"Thanks to the Internet, we travel more on business not less, we work at all hours on demand, and spend our free time answering email or tending to our social networks," Rushkoff writes in Present Shock. "Staring into screens, we are less attuned to light of day and the physiological rhythms of our housemates and co-workers."

Rushkoff, who made the 2010 PBS Frontline documentary Digital_Nation, calls us "citizens of the virtual city that never sleeps" in Present Shock. He describes such new phenomena as "digiphrenia" — the divided attention that results from being in multiple "places" at once and having multiple "selves" existing online simultaneously.

I won't dig much deeper into Present Shock here — you can read excerpts published in The Wall Street Journal and on "Medium;" read the reviews in The New York Times and Forbes; watch Rushkoff's recent speech on the subject at WebVisions New York 2013; listen to his interview on NPR's "On Point" today; and read this Q&A, just posted on Edutopia. It's all great stuff from a man who writes, "The future is so yesterday." 

Instead, I'd like to devote some space to what Rushkoff has written recently on children and digital media. Rushkoff has said that the constant pings of texts are taking kids out of the present moment rather than helping them live in it. And that growing up on Facebook — developing socially in an online spotlight — can put a lot of pressure on young people. (See why Rushkoff quit Facebook himself last month in this CNN.com piece — a scathing critique of what he calls an "anti-social social network.")

In two recent blog posts on Edutopia, Rushkoff offers parents advice on introducing digital media to children of different ages. The father of a 7-year-old himself, he has some firsthand experience. Here's a look at what he says in each post:

"Young Kids and Technology at Home," on Media and Younger Kids

Babies and toddlers are still developing the ability to understand the 3D world, Rushkoff writes here. "They don't fully understand the rules of opaque objects (that's why peekaboo behind a napkin poses endless fascination), so high quantities of time spent sitting in front of 2D screens may actually inhibit some of their 3D spatial awareness."

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and indeed most pediatricians, recommend that children under age 2 have no screen time whatsoever, for this reason and others. It's a time of tremendous, critical brain development, and the AAP stresses that young children need to learn through interactions with people, not screens.

Rushkoff acknowledges the stresses and realities of parenting — and the lure of the screen — and suggests a compromise: no more than 20 minutes of screen time twice a day for the very little. Still, he says, this should only be DVDs designed for kids that have long scenes their brains can process and elements such as nature that they wouldn't otherwise see. "And no, they can't sit next to Junior while he watches Lego Star Wars," Rushkoff writes.

Rushkoff says this is good policy for kids even up to 7 or 8 years old when it comes to devices like the iPad or Nintendo DS. That's because there's so much else kids need to learn first — such as gravity. Rushkoff writes:

"Little kids play with balls, seesaws and slides as they develop their vestibular senses, and come to learn about the wonders of gravity. They move on to Frisbees, bikes and Hula Hoops as they explore angular momentum and harmonic motion. The weightless world of a digital game or virtual environment fascinates us for the way it defies the rules of the real world; until we are firmly anchored in the former reality, however, these new principles are not neurologically compatible with a developing sensory system."

In other words, it's best not to mess with developing feedback mechanisms in a child. Let kids learn to navigate the real world before they venture into virtual ones, Rushkoff says.

"Technology at Home: Developing the Social Self," on the Tween Years and Beyond

Once your kids hit the tween years, it's important that they understand the various media they're using "from the inside out: who made this, how does it work, and what does it want from me?" Rushkoff writes. Kids should understand the motivations of the developers behind all the media that's competing for their attention, he says.

"An app is not just an app: it is a marketing plan, an influence platform, and an effort at manipulation. This doesn't mean it's bad – just that it has a purpose," Rushkoff writes. Young people especially, he says, "are unaware that the virtual environments they inhabit may not be constructed with their best interests in mind." Parents should help them understand this.

It's OK to let tweens play with and learn from digital media for one or two hours each day, he says, but it should not be their primary means of social engagement.

"Why? It's not really social!" Rushkoff writes. "Social development is a body-to-body, face-to-face affair. As our social selves form, we learn to read and send messages to other people. This is when we learn most of the 94% of communication that occurs non-verbally: body positions, tone of voice, pupils dilating or contracting... in other words, the stuff you can't see in a chat room or even a 4-inch video window."

Rushkoff doesn't recommend letting tweens on Facebook or other social media until they are "fully socialized" themselves. And if you give a tween his own mobile device, he says, make sure you're in charge of when and how it's used. Keep computers and other media devices in family rooms where you can monitor kids' usage. Do not allow them in kids' bedrooms.

"Let your children enjoy and learn from this stuff, but let them know from the outset that these are not mere toys; there are people on the other side of the screen — developers and programmers — whose job it is to make it really hard for a kid to stop playing." Empower kids to turn games off, Rushkoff writes. "If you can't turn it off, it means you're losing the bigger game." Let every minute a kid goes over her allotted time for the day cost 5 minutes of time the next day, Rushkoff advises.

As for teens, Rushkoff says they "shouldn't be online until they understand how to create their own online spaces." Teens should learn basic HTML and learn about databases. They should be exposed to coding languages and should learn to think critically about digital tools and virtual worlds. Schools and parents alike have the responsibility to encourage this education, Rushkoff says.

"The computer isn't a bad or dirty thing, but it is a portal to the outside world," he writes. "It provides access to love and hate, sex and war, ideas and ignorance, support and abuse. Just like the front doors to our homes, computers may welcome our dearest friends, but anyone can knock."

And when the lights go out, he writes, so should the smartphones. "Exceptions to the rule are that Hurricane Sandy hit, or the kids are at a sleepover. 'Johnny may ask me to the dance' is not an exception."

Note Rushkoff's great list of resources for parents and other interested parties at the end of this post, too. It includes Talking Back to Facebook, a 2012 book by James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, that addresses many parents' concerns about social media and offers practical advice. In this age of "present shock" and in-the-moment digital living, it's advice many parents will eagerly hear.

Sesame Street Did It: 1 Billion YouTube Views, and the Count's Counting Every One

Count von Count is beyond excited today. He got to count to 1 billion — and in just under 3 minutes — to celebrate Sesame Street's YouTube channel reaching 1 billion views on YouTube, the first nonprofit ever to do so.

"There's no time to sleep and there's no time to snooze, cuz I'm counting the 'you's in YouTube!" the energized Count sings, polka-style, in this "top secret video" released this morning after Sesame Street hit its big mark:

Sesame Street is the first U.S. children's media outlet to reach this impressive digital milestone. (See the February 18 post on this topic on "The Digital Child"). The achievement reflects the rapid growth of educational content on digital platforms such as YouTube.

Sesame Street has long been the market leader in creating multimedia children's content. And it won't stop at 1 billion views.

"I want to keep counting, yes that's what I choose," the Count sings, "so I'll make you an offer that you can't refuse: you keep on viewing and I'll count the views." A counter on Sesame Street's YouTube channel this morning shows 1,000,555,802 video views already. The Count had better be ready — there will be lots more counting to do.

A "School in the Cloud": Kids, Computers and Learning on One's Own

A child who's never seen a computer before suddenly has one at her fingertips. She has no knowledge of the Internet and knows very little English. There are no adults around to teach her. What happens?

The answer, says Indian educator Sugata Mitra, is some extremely impressive learning. For the past 14 years, Mitra has been conducting experiments with kids and computers, showing how quickly they can become computer literate without any intervention from adults. 

Mitra, who was awarded the $1 million 2013 TED Prize this week, argues that the future of learning demands a new system in which adults merely spark children's curiosity then let them teach themselves. With a little help from computers, that is.

Mitra calls this approach "self-organized" learning. "It's not about making learning happen, it's about letting it happen," he said in a speech at the TED2013 conference in Long Beach, California, on Tuesday, where he was awarded the organization's first-ever $1 million prize. (See Mitra's full speech here.)



Mitra's experiments began in 1999, when he dug a hole in a wall between the New Delhi research center where he was teaching computer programming and the slum on the other side. He placed an Internet-connected PC in the hole, facing the slum, and left it there.

Within hours, the kids from the slum had learned how to use the computer and surf the Internet — and were teaching each other how to do it — all on their own. They also taught themselves English over time so they could do it even better.

Mitra replicated this "hole in the wall" experiment in many more locations in rural India. Hole in the wall learning stations have since spread to Cambodia and to several African countries. (The New Delhi hole in the wall project was an inspiration for the novel Q&A, which later became the Oscar-winning hit Slumdog Millionaire.)

"In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer in any language will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West," said Mitra, who is a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in England.

While he does not favor direct teaching or intervention from adults, Mitra said he discovered that encouragement and admiring words from an adult — such as a grandmother would give — did help the kids in his experiments to learn better. This led to a new experiment called the "granny cloud": a community of English grandmothers who volunteer time to Skype with children across oceans and simply tell them that they're doing great.

"The granny cloud sits on the Internet," Mitra told the TED2013 audience. "If there's a child in trouble, we beam a 'gran.' She goes on over Skype, and she sorts things out."

Sugata Mitra's "SOLE Toolkit"

Mitra has developed a new model of education based on his experiments called SOLE, or self-organized learning environments. In this model, adults merely ask children big questions — "What is a soul?" "Can animals think?" — and let them learn on their own using computers and working in groups. Mashable's Chris Taylor explains SOLE this way in the article "How This Teacher Won the $1 Million TED Prize": "Give kids a computer, ask them a serious adult-level question, encourage their efforts to answer it, and stand well back."

Mitra plans to use the TED Prize money to build a "school in the cloud" — a learning laboratory where he can test out his SOLE principles and continue various experiments in self-directed learning. The school would be a physical building, likely in India, that's managed completely by cloud technology. It would be practically unmanned, Mitra said, with only one "granny" present to oversee health and safety issues. Everything else would be done via the cloud — even switching on the lights and AC, Mitra explains in this one-on-one interview with The New York Times.

Mitra has compared the school to a "safe cyber café for children," where they can connect with information and mentors online and work collaboratively with other kids. Mitra would like to see how such self-organized learning centers can be scaled globally. For now, though, the school — along with the $1 million prize that will fund it — is a testament to the wondrous innate capabilities of children. And to the tremendous appeal of a computer, even one that's just stuck in a hole in the wall.

(TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a global nonprofit organization devoted to "ideas worth spreading." The TED2013 conference ran this week from Monday through today. You can download the "SOLE Toolkit" from Mitra on the TED website to learn how to apply the SOLE model in your own community.)

Cyber Sticks and Stones: A New Book on Cyberbullying

Harrassing texts. Private details about one's personal life posted on Facebook. Mean comments and cruel lies spread via Twitter. These are just some of the forms that cyberbullying is taking in today’s digital age.

Emily Bazelon, author of a new book on cyberbullying, Sticks and Stones, discussed how the Internet and social media have intensified bullying for today’s always-connected kids on NPR's Fresh Air today.

“It really can make bullying feel like it’s 24/7,” Bazelon told Fresh Air host Terry Gross. Unlike in the pre-Internet, pre-texting past, today “when you come home, if you’re a victim of bullying, you’re likely to see this kind of continue on a social media site or via texting,” she said. Indeed, a generation ago, kids were able to get a break from bullying when they left school for the day. Today they can experience it alone in their bedrooms at night.

"It's really hard for kids not to look when they think there's some mean thing being spread around about them," Bazelon said. Another difference for bullying victims today? Since the offending words are written down online, the harrassment can feel more visible, and permanent. "The bullying can take place in front of quite a large audience," she says.

Bazelon, a senior editor at Slate and also the Truman Capote fellow at Yale Law School, discussed her new book at length with Gross. (You can hear the full interview here). A main topic was how parents can navigate — and help their children navigate — the ever-changing world of digital media kids are growing up in today.

"Technology use is such a struggle for parents right now," she said. "It's so different than when we were growing up" — without social media, for example. "These sites are encouraging kids to share widely and habitually. That's good for their business models. The more brand loyalty they can build among kids and teenagers, and the more they can habituate all of us to just sharing, the more money they make. So we need to make sure to help kids think about whether they really want to be putting intimate details, intimate photographs about their lives online."

Bazelon also told the story of spending a day at Facebook — which has 20 million American teen users — to learn about a program Facebook is currently working on to help young people deal with bullying on its site.

"Facebook has a lot of influence over kids who are mean," she said. "They know from their own data that when they tell kids that they've posted something inappropriate [and] they ask them to take it down, those kids don't re-offend." The problem, though, Bazelon said, is that Facebook has been reluctant thus far to use its influence for too much good because "it doesn't want to be seen as uncool."

You can read an excerpt from Sticks and Stones on NPR’s website here. For more information on cyberbullying, visit the Cyberbullying Research Center.

Playing Digital Learning Games at Home Improves Early Math Skills: A WestEd Study

Can a digital Cat in the Hat help boost preschoolers' math skills? A new study from WestEd found that using a collection of online games and related at-home activities from PBS KIDS — including some based on "The Cat in the Hat" — increased preschoolers' math knowledge and skills, making them better prepared for kindergarten. The San Francisco-based nonprofit agency reported that a group of low-income preschoolers who used the PBS KIDS materials (called "transmedia suites") outscored a comparison group on the Test of Early Mathematics Ability (TEMA), a widely used standardized assessment.

But the study was as much about parents as it was about kids. In fact, it was all about parent-child interaction. The children's parents participated in weekly meetings to learn about the PBS KIDS games and related hands-on learning activities over an eight-week period last summer. They were encouraged to spend 30 minutes a day, four days a week, using the games and activities with their kids. In general, they played more than five games a week with their children, the study says.

One of the study's key aims was to see if parents' awareness and support of their children's mathematics learning at home would increase after the eight weeks. And guess what? It did. Parents reported that they felt more empowered to teach their children after the experience, and they became more aware of their kids' mathematical abilities. Parents working closely with their kids using educational games: a simple win-win. And more evidence supporting many-an-experts' view that kids learn best from digital media when their parents use it with them.

The content and games in this study were developed through the Ready to Learn Initiative, an early learning project of PBS Kids and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The DOE posted this article on the study on February 4. Find the study's executive summary here and the full report here.

Swiped Out?: Parenting Magazine Cover Story

The topic of young children and touchscreens made the cover of Parenting magazine's February issue. The article "Swipeout!" covers a range of topics, from how one kindergarten class uses iPhones and other technology to the use of iPads with children on the autism spectrum. Parenting senior editor Brian Braiker discusses the new Hacking Autism initiative by Autism Speaks, which invites programmers and developers to create technology-based ideas to help autistic children develop various skills.

The piece discusses the flip-side too. Children's increased screen time has led to decreased reading time, Braiker reports. And while some 7-year-olds may be designing computer programs today, they may be lagging behind in other areas. Braiker highlights a 2011 survey by Internet security company AVG that found that more children ages 2 to 5 knew how to play a basic computer game (58%) than ride a bike (52%). That same AVG study, by the way, showed that 69% of kids 2 to 5 could use a computer mouse but only 11% could tie their own shoelaces. And opening a web browser versus swimming without aid? Twenty-five percent of small children could do the former but only 20% the latter.