When our worlds get too small there’s a bigger one we can turn to.

I learned last night from a guest, a young mom with her toddler and husband, staying at our river cabin, that the Medina river’s flow in front of our cabin has stopped. I think the best thing about the cabin is the river that flows just below it. As  I apologized, I was interrupted. The young mom told me they were enjoying their visit, especially one evening when they had fed some deer by hand below the deck of the cabin. 

I hung up the phone and quickly wrote all our upcoming Airbnb guests to let them know the river’s flow had stopped. I thought they should know the water there isn’t safe to enter. Flow means health. Stagnant water can mean danger. 

Years ago, my brother Al and I spent a few mornings enjoying his new JetSki‘s on the lake,  back when there was a lake. 

We flew across the mirror of water at 50 miles an hour, and I thrilled at the wind, thrilled at the sun, thrilled at the water spraying beside me, thrilled at the velocity. 

Sometimes we drove the jet ski’s at much slower speeds to where the river gently emptied into the lake. I maneuvered among boulders, watching for white water, directing the jet ski away to where the water was green and safe for me to move forward. Up we crept till the winding river’s current was too shallow to continue. 

The river was nature’s florid signature in colorful ink  on a contract I had with life and security. It was my heart’s consolation that there was more to the world than my short arms and sights could take hold of. What a relief to know my small world and its wobbling’s were safely contained within something bigger, where rivers flow and cypress trees tower.

In my mind’s eye I I see the river’s current come and go past the rocks on which I sit near my cabin. What I have is the moment. My hot feet refreshed from two hours or so of freshening up the cabin, hauling trash and weed eating the yard. I can neither keep that freshness nor give it away. 

I watch the water come and go. In my mind, it flows and keeps my hope and heart remembering this is how it goes: the water flows toward me, past me, and out beyond me, or my reach. 

It is a part of me, here now, then gone like a breath, a mysterious gift, like my brother, the sun, the trees and rocks. I don’t deserve or not deserve them. I remember them and their gifts flow within and through me to the next moment. 

This morning I read on my phone messages notes from each of the guests I wrote to last night. They thanked me for the information I sent them. Some may cancel their stay at the cabin. Others will come anyway, and take in the trees and stillness, the deer who come on their daily treks, early mornings and late in the dusk. They come to drink in, like the deer, the quiet and calm that reminds them, too, that there’s more out there, bigger and quieter than the wobbling’s of our work-world or our worries. More, much more.

Learn About Technology by Not Using It?

My student got up from her desk and went to stand at the front of the class. She was a young mother of a toddler she said. Her report would be on her experiences during her 100 Hours class project she had started in my class a week earlier. 

The 100 Hours assignment asked students to keep a written journal for a class presentation of their observations during a 100 hour abstinence from using any technology except for college-related purposes. That meant no TV, radio, music apps or social media normally used for entertainment purposes. The results from the assignment were always interesting, but none as much as the young mother's report would be.

When Is A Cell Phone More Than It Appears?

"One Saturday afternoon I was at home and I heard loud pounding on the front door," she told the class. "I ran to open it and saw my grandfather all shaken up. He asked me why I wasn't answering my phone and asked if everything was alright. He came in and I told him I wasn't using the phone for a few days because of this Communications class assignment." 

I held my breath, waiting to hear what her grandfather had to say. Teachers always think their assignments are good for students, but I'd never intended to frighten or worry family members.

The young lady at the front of the class continued, "He sat down on the sofa and we just started visiting. I noticed something was different, but I didn't know what. He talked about his childhood. He told me a story about his last name.  He said he had been adopted by his father when he was a boy, and that his birth name had been different. I asked him, 'Why haven't you ever told me this before now?' and he answered by gesturing with his empty hand to his ear, 'Well, you are always busy with your phone, you know. I didn't ever want to interrupt something important."

Wow. So that Saturday was a turning point in their relationship. Not only did she know more about her grandfather and how differently he interpreted her casual use of her cell phone, that day she found out her phone use might have kept her from ever knowing her grandfather's story. 

She then described another day leaving her house with her toddler without a phone. For the first time since living there she noticed that two doors down lived a child the same age as her daughter. She walked to her neighbor's house and introduced herself and her daughter. The moms got to know each other, now trade babysitting and enjoy each other's company. All because the student left the house and noticed the natural world around her instead of the phone in her palm.

The rest of the class presentations continued in the same vein. I remember one student reporting losing the buzzing sound in his ears after taking time off from technology, another reported sleeping better, and one older brother announced he would spend more face to face time with his younger brother and roommate, after discovering via the assignment that his phone habits caused his sibling to feel lonely.

New Research On Teens and Technology

The 100 Hours assignment I used to give to my college students came to mind when I read The Child Mind Institute's report on recent research about teens and social media, How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers. 

The report includes tips for parents who want to minimize the risks associated with technology. The good news is a lot can be done. Parents are the key. They model behaviors to their children from A-Z 24/7!!

Changing habits, especially those that creep up on you without your noticing is not easy, but the payoff, as I saw during semester after semester of the 100 Hours project, is definitely worth it. 

How to start:

Decide if a change in your tech use habits is needed. Observe yourself and your family for a few days around technology. Notice if things change when you remove the cell phone from your kitchen, living room, bedroom or office meeting. 

Do you notice communication if improved? See where less tech at certain times and places can take you. 

What options exist short of pulling the wifi connection out of the wall? (My wife's father was a chemistry professor. Each summer he pulled a tube out of the TV set and told his four kids the TV set was broken. The kids created their own entertainment and experiences instead of being shut in watching TV. Is there something to this "trick"?) 

You have options for changing your family's relationship with technology.

  

Start small and over time decide if you want to expand. Call a family meeting and ask for feedback on your questions about how technology affects how we live. 

Start by observing yourself and your own relationship to smart phones. Try a mini version of the 100 Hours assignment (Full Version Link For The Truly Brave)

Pick a time during your commute or a room in your home and decide to not use the phone there as much as possible. Try putting your phone out of reach, hearing or sight. Decide if you want to let others in on what you're doing or keep it to yourself? (As a life long habit changer, I recommend keeping silent about your inquiry for the first few days.)

How does it feel to not have your phone beside you? Do you notice any differences?

How do conversations change when in the middle of talking with someone they glance at or use their phone to text or answer a call? How does this make you feel?

Have you ever wondered how someone else feels when you are distracted by technology during a conversation?

Collect ideas from the whole family and then discuss ways your family can approach change. Change is hard, but some habits, especially those hastily-made, unexamined ones need to be examined!

Use technology with intention and purpose instead of out of habit or boredom. You can improve  your time during family meals, car-time, sleep patterns, and strengthen your family connections.   

 

It’s About Time

 Dissatisfaction and unease had crept into my day-to-day. Everything else being equal, I could only guess the culprit was my online time had become less of a conscious choice than an unconscious habit. 

I awoke to my Facebook feed, and actively consulted and contributed to it throughout the day until I fell asleep. 

At first it was exciting,  but some years after I began, I noticed something was off. While I loved being more in touch with relatives and with friends and coworkers from past jobs, schools and locales, there was a growing unease I sensed in my spirit. Was it fear of missing out? Was it a bit of jealousy? Was it being slightly bored? 

Finally, I landed on the answer. It came down to time. My training as a broadcast news producer for radio and TV newscasts and documentaries helped me identify what was going on that felt so off. 

Hours and minutes are the currency of a news or video producer. A producer uses time segments to plan a television newscast or a documentary project. We use a “wheel“ of 30 or 60 minutes to plan and execute a news program. 

My mental wheel while on Facebook was full of holes. I sensed a problem, but I didn’t know that I could do something about it. 

My feed on Facebook was full of material I would never allow in a newscast or consider newsworthy, joyful or interesting enough for me anyway. 

Finally, it hit me. Because of my experience handling time as a material in my work, I knew what to do: I had to cut. 

Just as news producers had to cut sections out of reports or parts of a program, I had to edit my own use of time. I had to decide what to remove, and what should remain of my Facebook time and experience. 

Changing my media habits was a decision I made to improve my daily life. 

In the past I had quit biting my nails to improve the appearance of my hands. I had quit smoking tobacco when I realized my health was affected. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I quit alcohol because I learned the sugar in alcohol didn’t help my efforts to become healthier. I decided if I wanted to improve my media use, I needed to quit Facebook. 

Here’s what happened when FB and I called it quits. I immediately noticed I seemed to have more time for other more joyful tasks and activities, such as cooking, reading, exercising, or being with friends in person instead of online.

Five or so years into my no-Facebook life, I have finished a novel, landscaped my front and backyard, produced videos, been in a friend’s play, had a Readers Theatre performance of my own play,  and with a friend,  co-founded a zoom writing group that has fed my creative life beautifully. 

It may not be for everyone to quit Facebook cold turkey or even to quit all together. But my other experiences quitting taught me that all or nothing usually works for me. 

For you, other approaches to moderating media use, including setting time limits or for business-related purposes may work equally well. 

For now, I will continue to measure my media use habits by what the no-Facebook experience has taught me: Real life, face-to-face (even on zoom ) experiences with the myriad degrees of information of eye twinkling, stirring shoe soles and nuances that feed the moment’s richness are worlds apart from digital flatness and limits. Being with another person brings me the sense of joy, learning and connection that I find most rewarding.

When you think of your day-to-day media use experience, what parts are most enjoyable and which simply gobble up your valuable time without giving you joy? 

For yourself,  or as a parent and caregiver to children, tweaking, or editing your media use may be worth exploring and experimenting with. 

For one, you may gain more time in your day. More importantly, however, you can model for your family helpful ways to become active rather than passive media consumers by teaching them to direct and drive their media use instead of having it direct and drive them.

My hours on and off media and why it matters

Numbers too large for me to calculate. 

Like so many American children of the 1960’s and 70’s, I practically lived sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the television set.  There must be serious chunks of my brain so steeped in the fiction of the stories and ideas I consumed that they are as much a part of me as my DNA.  

TV was a window to the world. Like so many kids, at my home there weren’t many other affordable past-times such as sports leagues, music or art lessons. There were few parks or public pools, and no museums to hang out in my small town. My older brothers and sister, however, did not grow up with a TV in the house. My family was a bridge between the eras before and after TV's explosive growth.

I grew up and began my life-long study of communication. After college, I worked in commercial and public radio and television.  Ultimately, I obtained advanced degrees so I could teach communication at the college level.  I spent thousands of hours with hundreds of college students over the past 35 plus years, fifteen before the Internet, and the remainder after its arrival. We explored the evolution and business of mass media industries, their impact on society. We studied the emerging Internet-based communication platforms that now form the fabric of so much of our current social, educational and work lives. 

Before and After Smart Phones

Like my generation of test pilot TV viewers, my college students were also test pilots, who lived in the world pre and post the arrival of the Internet and social media platforms. When I compared students engagement in my classes before and after the introduction of the smart phone and social media I noticed a marked decline. 

The distraction of their cell phones on the desk was like an itch they couldn’t help but scratch. The immediate attraction of a new text message from home or from a friend, or a notification from Facebook or Twitter was too compelling to set aside during note-taking for lectures or lesson activities. 

Their focus was lost for a few minutes each time their phone distracted them with alerts or to be glanced at for updates of any kind. After the smart phone interruption was attended to, the student then mentally returned to the course material. There were now gaps in their learning. Time was lost in the ramping up required to catch up. Multiply this by several times each class period by the majority of students.  The loss in learning was the same as if  a student arrived a few minutes late or left early each class period.  A few minutes may not have mattered, but in the aggregate would come to matter quite a lot. I saw the distractions of a smart phone were a disadvantage that out-weighed its advantages.

 

What Tech Hath Wrought

As exciting as technology has been for me professionally (I am retired from teaching and now I write, shoot and edit videos), there are downsides to what tech has brought us. Like that of my students, I notice my ability to focus is a constant struggle. 

Where was I? Yes. That bad. On the surface, I look steady, reliable and attentive. That’s the front yard. Come see the burning dumpster in the back yard, where half dressed projects prance around teasingly, wagging hands and fingers from their ears, wearing socks that don’t match.

I tried hard to focus and stay on task. I wrote daily to-do lists, practiced mindfulness and meditation, and I read and re-read hundreds of self-help books. Yet, the seductive siren call of the screen beckoned. I stopped to read texts, checked to see if there was a new text or email. I stopped and started my work several times every few minutes. I scanned social media, podcasts, and news sites. Just as for my students, time slipped stealthily away for in-real-life pursuits like face-to-face dinners, face-to-face walks with friends, getting to know more people and learn new things. 

As my hours on social media increased so did my dissatisfaction.  At the end of the day, I felt tired of constantly stopping and starting, setting and resetting my focus. I saw the hours slip away from the day and many of my goals recede further in the distance.

Screens accompany us everywhere we go. They help us get where we drive to, and act as our adjunct brains for learning, work and entertainment. Smartphones have become so familiar we often consider them a natural part of our life and home. But our phones and the platforms they contain are not natural. They are an industry. They offer us entertainment and access to information. They then sell our personal information and preferences to others for their advertising and profit.  It is convenient to the industry that we keep thinking of smartphones as tools we employ, rather than see ourselves as employed (and exploited) by these tools. 

Turning An Ocean Liner

The essays and activities in this book are a result of my efforts to do something constructive about my backyard dumpster fire. I want to transform my dissatisfaction with social media and its impact on the quality of our communication. This e-book is a contribution from a teacher in the frontlines of college teaching, whose boots are worn and muddy. 

My goal is to have us rethink our contract with social media. From my classroom experience, I offer ideas and options to parents of children and teens to help them harness the tools in our purses and pockets.  We can set up guardrails of our own design into place and practice, long before regulatory bodies can climb across lobbyists whose job it is to keep us blissfully unaware of smart phones' adverse effects. 

The time has come for my college classroom to spread its message of empowerment and potential into homes and school campuses everywhere.

It is important for us to study how our tech tools, like all tools, can hurt us and our kids, when they are used without preparation or carelessly. Years from now, we may think of our culture's rapid embrace of smartphones as unfortunate, just as we now think about to the dangerous era of dynamite's early days, or when physicians and surgeons were uninformed about germs and refused to clean their hands before operating on a person. So many avoidable deaths. 

Rethinking our relationship to something as familiar as our technology is easier said than done. For me it's been like turning an ocean liner. It takes focus, time and energy.

 The good news is we are not alone on our journey. More importantly, the prize for our efforts is regaining for ourselves and our loved ones the priceless time and experiences that might otherwise have gone unnoticed in moments of distraction.

Are You New To Media Literacy?

Are You New To Media Literacy?

Ugh. Like many new things, media literacy may be hard at first. It was for me. I had to get used to a new way of thinking about my dear old friends, movies, TV, music and books. I was so used to the idea that these shows, movies and books appeared magically from some other world, like fairies or chariots in the sky from religious scriptures.

Demystifying media was uncomfortable at first, like turning the bright lights on in a dim theater. Dorothy pulling back the curtain on old Oz.  

Here are the tools. Are you ready to get started?

Media Literacy Five Questions

If technology tools like social media are your jam, and you want to take your skills to the next level, media literacy will separate the chimps from the King Kongs. The questions and concepts of media literacy are accessible to most if not all students from middle school and beyond. 

Uncovering layers of meaning in a media message by asking the five media literacy questions can be as exciting as finding buried treasure. As a thinker and a creative artist, media literacy can become second nature to you, and a valuable part of your wheelhouse. It happens with practice and over time. 

Media Literacy Concepts
Try this. Pick any random image or any media message from an online source or from a magazine or book. 
Next, look at the image or media message through the lens of media literacy concepts.
Finally, reflect on what in your opinion works best in the image or media message and why. What made the message effective or not?

We love media. For many, it's the friend who is always there for you. Even if we enjoy the comfort that our old friends provide, it is still important to ask critical questions. Because media is not magic, it is a mega million dollar industry. Being media literate means more than having skills to access, analyze, evaluate and create media messages. Media literacy helps us to see media as a business that trades in our attention to make money.  
Knowing who paid for the message, what its purpose is, what techniques were used to catch our attention, how others might see the message differently, and what lifestyles, values and points of view were included and which were excluded help us to see the message from new perspectives. 

 
The Pay Off Is Worth The Work
In my work with college freshmen, I've found that for most students, becoming media literate requires time and willingness to experiment and play with media literacy questions and concepts. We ask deeper questions as we learn about more about media, its business models, history, and powerful impact it has on our lives. The movie lover directs their first feature length project. The doodler of classroom notebooks completes their first graphic novel. The music buff writes her first song and performs it at a talent show. The dancer becomes the choreographer of a stage production. A pastime turns into a passion, a casual interest into a committed creative journey.

The shift happens over time with playful experimenting. The fairies and chariots in the clouds give way to understanding media and its potential for truth telling or truth shaping. 
This is ultimately the most important gift media literacy offers: Use the questions and concepts to identify and prevent persuasive and powerful messages that don't have our best interests in mind. 
Is that worth the time, effort and adjustments of learning a few key questions and concepts? Absolutely. 
Media literacy and its gifts has been one of my life's most rewarding insights. I've been a lifetime student of media literacy and apply the questions and concepts to  my own video and writing projects. I think it's also influenced me to rein in my social media consumption and spend less time doom scrolling or comparing myself to others.  

 

Active Media Use vs. Passive Media Use

Anyone interested in the well-being of infants and children might wonder how much screen time is too much? 

Whether a child's time is spent accompanied by an engaged adult in active, not passive, viewing is equally important.

Infants under the age of 18 months should have no screen time, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.  Babies 18-24 months can watch children's content as long as they are accompanied by a parent or caregiver who can reinforce the lessons with questions and learning. After the age of two, a one-hour time of screen time applies. Check out this brief article with guidelines on infant and children's screen time.

Screens Are Not Baby-Sitters

We know infant care is the most demanding of jobs. While some time in front of a screen is great for adult relaxing, it is the last thing a baby needs. They are not ready for screen time. 

Some images on screens move too quickly for young, developing brains and eyes. Also, viewing material created for older audiences is unsuitable for children and may be confusing. 

Supervision of infants and children's viewing is key.  

Children who use media with no time limits or monitoring from parents or teachers miss out on important opportunities and gains in their skills in socialization. They also unknowingly trade passive viewing and learning for more valuable active learning with engagement, exploration and problem-solving experiences in the real world  . 

 

Tiers of Learning

We are always learning. It is parents and caregivers who decide for kids if their learning is passive or active.

Active learning is better than passive learning. Researchers who study the effects of TV viewing on kids report that children who spend their time actively learning in play, sports, doing art projects, building things, visiting museums, and reading make more gains than children who spend time passively learning in front of the TV screen.

TV screen time vs. Internet screen time

They look the same, and there is a lot of overlap, but one very important difference is that TV programs are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. TV stations can lose their broadcast license if standards for programs are disregarded. That is a strong incentive.

No such guard rail exists on streaming sites including YouTube and other social media that enter the home via the Internet. That's why parents and caregivers need to think of the content of TV and the Internet as being distinct and requiring different approaches. 

Interrupt the Hypnosis 

My busy mother must’ve thought TV made a great babysitter. I was quiet and out of her way for hours in front of the TV. That electronic babysitter, however, was a regulated business. 

Today, anything that comes in to the home via the Internet has no regulation. Content is governed only by the principle that more watching on the consumer's part equals more money for the producers. The consumer's health is of no concern to them.

If screen time is monitored for time as recommended, and when children watch along with their caregiver who actively asks and answers questions about what they both are watching and listening to, screen time promotes learning. 

Without these safeguards, the free and easy babysitter may bring more harm to our kids than benefit, and no one can afford that. 

Why Study Media Messages?

We all use them. We all love them. Media messages are important parts of our lives. 

Fish don't ask about water. Birds don't ask about air. We humans have a more evolved and complex brain than any other living creature. Yet, we often react in the same way to our media saturated environment as our brothers with fish and bird brains. 

Media messages, from those in books, to the latest software, are such a welcome presence in our lives (think all the fun we have). While we spend our time being entertained, they may rob us, without our awareness, of our privacy, personal data and, most importantly, precious time.

This is About Money

Media, for all its attractions, is first and foremost an industry. Media takes our attention and time and uses them to make money. 

We are the product, not the images that captured us. Those are bait. Media companies sell our eyes and interests to advertisers, businesses and mailing lists in order to sell us stuff. 

We are entertained in the bargain. The transaction is ingrained and automatic. Each time we browse, stream or listen to music, a podcast or a book we signal our agreement that the transaction is acceptable to us. 

Until we stop, take a moment, and put a pin in it. 

Try This At Home: Five Questions

Asking questions about the media we are immersed in protects our time and how it's used. Over time we become more conscious consumers of media.  

Welcome to media literacy and its gifts. It is an important road to start on whatever our age. The benefits are enormous. With media literacy, we add to our enjoyment of media, we feel more sure about how we use our time and resources, and when we Don the writer/producer hat to create our own media messages, they are more effective because we are media literate.

Why should we improve our awareness of media? Don’t we have enough to do already?

Fostering a questioning attitude towards media products does not come naturally. An entire army of programmers  exists to keep our attention moving along, not stopping to ask pesky questions. We’re not supposed to stop and inspect media or ask questions about it.

If a media message is a piece of chocolate cake, think of the five questions of media literacy as knowing not only how the cake tastes, but also how the baker made the cake, what is inside it, how long it took to bake it and how and when to serve it. 

Some may be content to have their cake and eat it, without aspiring to know its journey from ingredients to our teeth. Some may be content to know we consumers are the product, not the messages we consume.  

The benefit of asking questions of our media breaks a belief that media messages are akin to magic. We learn that mistakes can happen and the people who create media messages have their own biases and agendas as well as put their pants legs on one at a time. 

Our curiosity about media helps, protects and serves us.  Since our time is limited, it is important to select with awareness and care how we spend whatever time we allot to media.

Questioning Media Messages Is Active

When we passively watch whatever is on the set or find ourselves down another rabbit hole on our phone, we often ask where did all that time go? The five media literacy questions break the spell that media so deftly casts. 

Media Literacy Questions Awaken Us From Slumber  

Dorothy landed in Oz to discover an old man behind a drawn curtain, pulling ropes and sounding otherworldly while putting on a show for his benefit alone. Dorothy and her journey to return home began when she awakened to what she had not known before she drew back the curtain. 

Asking questions around media messages is not something we need to always do, but,  because media messages shape our views and lives, it's something we always need to know how to do.  

Our engagement deepens when we explore the message to uncover assumptions and biases. The practice gets easier, even automatic. 

When we are passive, our minds are unguarded, receptive, and un-questioning. When we ask questions, we shake off our comfort. We lace up our sneakers. This is no longer a sit-down spectator sport. 

Studying a scene in a movie or an image looming over us on a bulletin board can be a way for parents to engage with their kids on values or assumptions. It models to kids that asking questions of media messages is not only allowed but helpful to someone growing up.

Drawing back the curtain to show the hidden sides and angles of any message or story, even one made with multiple millions of dollars, pays us back with even greater riches. Media literacy allows us to thrive, instead of aimlessly wonder as we wander, serving other's interests before our own, in the media rich world that surrounds us.