Teens aren't all right, and they know it!

Every fall I attend the Learning and the Brain conference in Boston. The topic this year was the distracted brain, or how technology is impacting students’ mental health and academics. One session in particular was of great interest to me… and I believe to you, too. Two researchers from Harvard’s Project Zero shared the results of asking 3,500 teens the following question: What are you worried about growing up in a digital world? Their responses were candid, insightful, and concerning.

Five themes emerged:

1. Teens know that they are addicted to technology but don’t know how to or are afraid to break the addiction. 

2. Teens find being a friend hard. If they are not available to respond all the time, they could lose a friend or a friend could hurt him/herself.

3. Subtle jabs from friends and peers are as hurtful as blatant hostility. Being left out of a picture, seeing your friends out somewhere, not being tagged in a photo, and getting too few “likes” makes them feel isolated and depressed.

4. Teens know that their digital footprint endures. 

5. They report feeling the “grind of technology.” They have to be productive and busy all the time: scanning social media to stay “in the know,” responding to friends, getting their work done in school, etc. 


The presenters offered several ideas for supporting teens in each area. One in particular had a tremendous impact on phone use in the classroom. For one class period, a high school teacher asked students to document the number of alerts, notifications, and texts they received. At the end of the period, each student had to record the number of distractions. The visual is below:



While difficult to see, the chart shows approximately 400 distractions in one class period. This visual provided a great starting point for a discussion about the impact of these distractions and how they together, as a class, could change their behavior to help each other focus and learn better.  After recovering from the shock of that visual, I thought to myself, That’s a great idea!


After the session, I texted my oldest. Notice Anthony’s response.


Hopefully, some of these tips can help students avoid the inevitable.

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