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Refuting the Techno-Myth and Reclaiming Childhood

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Screens are so pervasive in society that we tend to think of them as inevitable. They have become extensions of our bodies. We might think that technology in itself is neutral and is only good or bad depending on how one uses it.

Catherine L’Ecuyer, a doctor in education and psychology, disagrees. L’Ecuyer is Canadian by birth but currently lives in Spain, and she has been a powerful voice against the introduction of screens—of phones, tablets, laptops—into the school system for children and adolescents.

In her book, Educar en el Asombro (Educate in Wonder), she makes the case that children and adolescents have lost the art of calmly observing their environment, of delaying gratification, and deep thinking. The environment for young people is more frenetic and stimulating than ever, and it has alienated them from what is natural. Screens have saturated their attention and numbed them to the beauty of the natural world and the wonder of life.

L’Ecuyer is an international voice confronting the “tecnomito” (technomyth) of the digital native–the idea that someone born into technology is more cognitively gifted than a digital immigrant (someone who transitioned into technology later in life).

She suggests that screen technology, for the developing mind, is actually inherently damaging. Even if people implement its use with good intentions, it undermines basic cognitive faculties. Screens are highly addictive and implement a reward system through the release of dopamine. This system is utterly mesmerizing to a developing mind that has yet to develop virtues like temperance and fortitude.

New technology can definitely enhance efficiency, but it also is addictive and profoundly distracting, as we all know from personal experience. Its effects on developing minds are so potentially catastrophic that its implementation seems like an unethical experiment to which no one has consented. We all feel the pull of our phones, as we constantly take mental breaks, often unnecessary ones, by checking our phones and idly clicking through them. Young people have even less capacity for self-control.

By 2020, 77 percent of U.S. schools had recognized the dangers of cellphone use by banning their nonacademic use in schools. France and China have imposed complete bans. We need to imagine a classroom as a quiet space, separated from the constant pull of technology, in which students can focus in a kind of prolonged fast from technology, before entering our digitized world as adults.

Many parents are organizing online to push back against the claims of large technology companies that their devices enhance student learning. One of L’Ecuyer’s well-formulated opinions is that we best prepare children for the online world by the offline world. Conventional wisdom is that more time online, as a child, is necessary for future online responsibility. But L’Ecuyer envisions the classroom as a tech-free haven, in which students develop basic values and boundaries, in light of which they can take on technology, a confrontation which, in today’s society, will inevitably occur—barring some exceptional removal from society.

There is a metaphysical presupposition underlying L’Ecuyer’s opinions on technology: The online world is not the real world. The online world is a manufactured world of words, images, and videos. We can manipulate the online world in a way that suits our whims, whereas reality has laws that are independent of us.

Learning must take place in reality, which consists of objective facts independent of social construction. Confronting reality will give children a well-calibrated sense of what is certain and what is not. We gain appreciation for certain basic moral principles in real engagement with peers, face-to-face, instead of in a virtual space that can suspend consequences for actions.

We have likely experienced, in the virtual space, the phenomenon of ghosting, in which someone simply disappears from us, lost in the depths of the internet, with the click of a mouse or touchpad. The virtual space confers great power on individuals to avoid people they find inconvenient, whereas in reality, we cannot simply hide ourselves from other people.

The online word is very superficial, rapid, and overwhelming, according to L’Ecuyer. Just scroll through Twitter. Its quick messages and videos do not explore a topic in any depth, and it rewards partisan bickering over thoughtful content. People raise their profile by shooting off hotheaded opinions instead of refraining from taking sides, for a period of preliminary reflection. This flood of low-quality and polarizing messaging is surely overwhelming and devastating for the young mind.

Much of the discourse on education is about the lack of funding and resources. But L’Ecuyer insists that the basic resource of education is attention. She has a point. If a child cannot pay attention, he cannot learn, no matter how many devices are available and no matter how upscale the learning environment. Appreciating educational and cultural sites and experiences, like museums, books, art, and fine music, require the ability for sustained focus.

Technology, on the contrary, accustoms the mind to rapid and intense stimulation so educational activities appear boring. Children become jaded and withdrawn, preferring to idly scroll their phones rather than doing anything that demands concentration. Attention is distinct from fascination, which is a passive chasing of new stimuli.

This is the subject for an event taking place this month, in Madrid, Spain, that has global implications and is of universal interest. Directed by L’Ecuyer, the event is a conference gathering medical and mental health professionals to discuss new technology and education. The title of the event is “Jornadas sobre Nuevas Tecnologías y Educación (Workshops on the New Technologies and Education).” The conference brings together an impressive panel of clinicians and educational experts who have written on the dangers of the new technologies in the classroom.

It offers a path forward and is an important first step to reclaiming our children’s future, but in our own lives, what can we do?

According to L’Ecuyer, we should consider giving kids a period of abstention from technology, so as to ground them in the real world and expand attention.

We might consider—from time to time—the same for ourselves, bringing, by example, our children into a brighter future.

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