“We don’t have to remove all tech,” says Stephanie Malia Krauss, author of “How We Thrive: Caring for Kids and Ourselves in a Changing World,” in an article in The 74. “We need to remove toxic tech’” and bring back play and adequate sleep.
Krauss says banning digital devices isn’t enough. “Removing devices without addressing stress and safety, among other issues, will be an empty gesture,” she says.
In her new book, Krauss argues that schools have allowed addictive technology, stress and chronic busyness to erode basic human needs like sleep, play, wonder and connection.
“Rehumaning” is the term she has coined to describe what schools can do to protect these needs. Krauss made the following points in an interview with The 74:
- “After six years it’s hard to still consider COVID as the consequence for what’s driving the overwhelm in our lives. My own survey results have shown that people are more overwhelmed and overloaded and stressed and tired than they were six years ago.”
- “There’s one exception. When I asked a group of hundreds of early childcare educators how the kids were, the answers were: ‘Full of joy, curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, unending energy’.”
- “Toxic tech — tech that hooks and harms our kids — is what I call one of the ‘dangerous weather conditions’ of modern life. Young people go on addictive platforms and they’re looking to have their normal developmental needs met. They’re curious, they want to connect with somebody, they’re bored and looking for entertainment. They end up on a platform that’s designed to keep them coming back.”
- “This is ‘ultra-processed content,’ designed to be hyper-palatable. But it’s fake, and kids are less likely to want to socialize, play or experience recreation outside of something designed to be available 24/7 and feel much more fun and connecting.”
- “In the classroom, computers can sometimes address capacity issues, cost issues and burnout issues — and they are, like ultra-processed food, a convenience and a cost saver. It’s still a level of ultra-processed content.”
- “Any time we have technology that actually assists or amplifies the ability to tap into the essentials that keep us healthy and happy, that’s humane tech. It’s technology that should stay. I would say the antidote to addictive tech is the abundance of healthy developmental opportunities that promote human essentials like play and creativity. We don’t have to remove all tech; we need to remove toxic tech.”
- “My worry is if we go into schools and remove computers and other digital devices without attending to the other ‘dangerous weather conditions’ — being overtapped, overworked, and overwrought, really afraid for our lives, safety issues that students feel — we’re going to see the persistence of the problems that right now are sometimes being exclusively attributed to technology use.
- “What I have come to understand is that for kids, phones aren’t only communication devices, they’re comfort objects. If I have my phone and something terrible happens — a school shooting, a disaster, something scary — that is my way to get in contact with my family and to be safe. And when phones were removed from classrooms, schools either did too little or did not attend at all to the safety needs that crept in.”
- “In conversations with kids, it is clear that every day they come to school worried that something bad and dangerous can happen to them. Without addressing that safety concern, kids will be more dysregulated. And the signs of dysregulation look nearly identical to how we would characterize a misbehaving student or a lazy, disengaged student. Teachers receive little to no training on the science of dysregulation, but it’s possible that some of the problem behaviors that they are seeing are really dysregulation and not discipline.”
- “The scienceis absolute that tweens and teens should not do school or anything before 8:30 in the morning, because their body clocks shift the moment they hit puberty. They are wired to want to go to sleep later. We wake them up hours before they’re ready and deprive them of the types of sleep they need for learning, memory, emotional regulation, and a whole bunch of other really vital things for learning behavior and future success. We would be amazed at the improvements in adolescent mental health, adolescent learning and motivation if kids simply felt more rested.”
- “Whether we’re talking about sleep or play and movement, this is part of a broader move to say it’s really time to ‘rehuman’ schools. Human-centered schools and education really protect and prioritize our natural human capacities to learn and develop, but also to endure and enjoy life, to thrive. Groups like the National Institute for Play have shown that we need play at every age and stage of life. When play is prioritized, there are physical and psychological benefits, in addition to quality-of-learning and work benefits. By injecting small moments of movement or small moments of play, we improve not only the culture of our classrooms, but also, ironically, the performance and quality of work that students can do.”
- “In doing a listening tour of middle schoolers, I heard from young people every time about the vital importance of their afterschool and summer programs. And there were instances of schools that bring that kind of youth development programming into the regular school day, and in those cases that was what I heard the most about. These are activities and experiences that lead young people’s abilities to engage socially, to engage in play, to engage creatively, to celebrate each other.”
- “The antidote to addictive, toxic tech is not the absence of devices, it’s the abundance of healthy, positive developmental experiences, which are often found in afterschool and summer programs and experiential project-based learning in the classroom.”
The 74
