This article's methodology leaves a lot to be desired. They throw out dozens of studies with a flippant, poorly justified dismissal and then proceed to take a cursory, high-level glance over a single other study that supported their desired conclusion. Having given that study a passing thought they proceed to wonder at "just how glaring this data is" from that single report and how it is that everyone else can't see it.
Ironically, the whole thing reads like someone did all the research and writing on a smartphone and didn't take the time to really construct an argument.
I don't disagree with the title—my assumption is also that parenting would have the largest impact—but the article does a very bad job justifying it and the conclusion that therefore technology isn't worth talking about is absurd. We do a lot of research that is aimed at helping out with marginal gains because marginal gains matter! The entire field of K-12 education exists to be a marginal improvement on top of what parents are already offering. Should we stop researching that field because there's evidence that parents are the single biggest factor in educational outcomes?
Most of our policy choices surrounding children are there explicitly to be a safety net for children whose parents can't provide the environment that they need.
I don't see why teen suicide rate is the definitive measure of how well children are doing. It's still extremely rare. Why not focus on anti-depressants? Surely kids being on a lot of meds is a sign something is off.
Everyone knows phones are a net negative for most children. You really don't need a study. Just go check out a local bus stop and see kids staring at their phones.
> The median amount of time a teenager in the US spends on their phone each week is estimated to be around 31 to 32 hours.
Do we think this is good? How confident are you that this is not harmful? Would you be willing to bet your kids development on it?
It could also be a sign of appropriate medication. What if depression is actually just that naturally prevalent, and anti-depressants, despite the tradeoffs, are actually worth it?
I understand the instinct to be concerned about prescribing indefinite, powerful, psychoactive substances to teenagers, but just because it's understandable doesn't mean it's necessarily correct.
the entire field of K-12 education also is based on a bunch of "non sense" historical stuff, like tests; which came from industrial revolution times where owners wanted to check who would be less likely to break their expensive machines by comparing who remembered more operation steps... which by now pedagogic science knows it's a great way to retain information but as it's done in most school environments is a completely absurd. go try to suggest a change on the system or even implement something effective, cheap and well known as retrieval practice on the school schedule
transfer of learning is a scientific fact but what are the applications of a bunch of stuff we need to learn as teens? Linus Pauling's thesis that won a Nobel? again, transfer of learning isn't a magic bullet that its effects spans across everything you do in your life, nor it's an easy concept to explain to children and get them convinced that learning stuff that you'll forget in some months or years is actually good!
then we have the amount of stuff parsed to children. take a look at data showing the amount of subjects of science taught on North Americans schools and Japanese; now take a look which culture has a better understanding of science!
etc.
schools needs to grow on other areas than parsing knowledge of the natural world, like emotional resilience, collaboration skills, how to deal with grief, not increasing score metrics that also has a problem on its own, like letting behind some districts (thus making it worse) that don't have resources to keep with advancement; and to make a counterpoint with the website OP, i strongly believe and trust professionals teaching children these skills than a bunch of unprepared parents that i have my doubts even half of them actually spend any time reading evidence based tips on how to grow children, let alone meta-thinking about their relationship with them
>schools needs to grow on other areas than parsing knowledge of the natural world, like emotional resilience, collaboration skills, how to deal with grief
I too support more investment in good old fashioned sports and arts.
I think one of the problems is that Substack has as much editorial oversight as a personal blog. Despite that we treat its contents as articles instead of opinion pieces that see no fact checking beyond what we in the commons bring up in separate forums.
I would have used the word 'article' for any post in this format and I don't view that as giving it an elevated status. I didn't even notice it was Substack and certainly don't view Substack as any different than WordPress or Medium for reliability.
It's an article of writing the way that a shirt is an article of clothing.
Ironically, the whole thing reads like someone did all the research and writing on a smartphone and didn't take the time to really construct an argument.
I don't disagree with the title—my assumption is also that parenting would have the largest impact—but the article does a very bad job justifying it and the conclusion that therefore technology isn't worth talking about is absurd. We do a lot of research that is aimed at helping out with marginal gains because marginal gains matter! The entire field of K-12 education exists to be a marginal improvement on top of what parents are already offering. Should we stop researching that field because there's evidence that parents are the single biggest factor in educational outcomes?
Most of our policy choices surrounding children are there explicitly to be a safety net for children whose parents can't provide the environment that they need.