The executive function/screen time trap

A little research on screen time: Research indicates that adolescents who spend excessive time (more than 2 hours/day) using screens overall are more likely to experience: 

• obesity and increased consumption of unhealthy foods
• poor sleep habits and patterns  
• anxiety and depression
• attention and concentration problems  
• lower academic achievement
• reduced creative imagination 
• Limiting children’s screen time improves their memory, attention and language skills
• Too much screen time may double cancer, mortality risk of already unhealthy people
• Bedtime use of technology and associated sleep problems in children
• Increases in depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide rates among U.S. Adolescents after 2010 and links to increased new media screen time
• Electronic overload

Not all screen time is equally bad, and given our current situation, some experts are calling on parents, students, and educators to think about screen time more liberally than ever before. The main message that psychologists and doctors are sending right now is that we must balance educational screen time with time for playing and exercising, relaxing, outside time, and socializing.

I’m going to discuss two different students and their experiences this fall so far with Covid-19-impacted education. One is a high school junior attending an excellent U.S. public high school, and one is an undergraduate junior double-majoring at an excellent university in Scotland. We’ll call them student A (high schooler) and student S (college student).

So far, Student A has had an average of 22 hours required synchronous screen time per week, with another 14 hours a week of assigned work that can only be done on the computer. Occasionally he has assignments that can be done away from a screen.

Total required screen time per week: 36 hours

Student S will be beginning classes tomorrow morning but can see all the requirements for all her classes. So far, she has 5 hours of recorded lectures per week to watch/listen to online, with approximately 2 hours of synchronous chat discussions online. She may also be able to meet in small groups for in-person learning sessions. The bulk of her instruction comes through assigned readings, all of which are online but can be printed out in order to cut down on screen time. Each reading is approximately 15-20 pgs in length. For an example of the amount of reading required, Anthropology of Capitalism (30 credits and just one class of four) gave her 26 readings for the first week ~500 pages.

Total required screen time per week: 7 hours

So, a junior in college who is double-majoring has a lot of work to do compared to the junior in high school who is taking several honors/AP classes. But the bulk of the college student’s work does not have to happen on a screen. Student S, having printed out her readings, can take them to the park, get fresh air and green time, and do the kind of ¹deep reading necessary for optimal learning.

The high schooler is caught in what I’ll call the executive function/screen-time trap.

Typical adolescents’ brains don’t have the executive function skills to do really well with a schedule that is mostly asynchronous learning where they set their own schedule and where learning is largely self-motivated. So schools have stepped in to address the executive function gap by scheduling hours upon hours of screen time. Some may say that Student A, having elected to take challenging courses, has chosen to take on an inordinate number of hours on a screen. However, the baseline number of required screen hours is quite difficult to square with existing research on overall health and well-being.

Typical adolescents’ brains don’t do well with so much screen time that they can’t lead a balanced life. 

I’ve been mulling this over, reading everything I can, since February. And I still don’t have a solution that would fit every need in the midst of a pandemic. But I do know that what will keep our students learning the most, physically fit, emotionally healthiest, and mentally sharp, is if they feel that their life is balanced. Everyone needs to feel in love with life. I’ve had that as the subtitle of this blog for years now, and it’s the key to everything.

A stoic attitude is maybe a more realistic hope, given our circumstances, and throughout the year, I’ll be paying attention to both students’ experiences as they make their way through these two institutional systems of learning. I do hold out hope that there will be joy.

¹Deep reading is our bridge to insight and novel thought. “To skim to inform” is the new normal for online reading. What goes missing are deep reading processes which require a quality of attention increasingly at risk in a culture and in a medium in which constant distraction bifurcates our attention. 

Physical books in print engage slower, more attention-and time-requiring processes. (neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf)