The Case for Digital Detox

1/26/2017

by Mike Davis, Ph.D.
Head of School

I received a number of favorable comments about my January column on digital-free zones in schools in OnCAmpus, CA’s monthly print newsletter. It is clear that the permeation of digital technology in all areas of our lives is getting some push-back. Bottom line: human contact matters.

My father saw my column and weighed in with a reference to Russell Shorto's Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, in which Shorto offers a historical detective novel about the creation of the modern mind.

"Hiroshi Harashima is communications engineer. The prime difficulty researchers found with videophones not technical, but the role of the human face. Faces convey emotional rather than practical information. People become used to the narrow emotional space of telephone communication and don't feel comfortable with the deeper level of opening up in showing their faces. The face is essential in developing humanity, ...the face is the basis of social order. The face is the oldest communication technology, a sophisticated one exposing a range of meanings...making promises, asking for trust, ...knitting the culture together.” (233-234)

Colorado Academy alumnus Brian Robinson ‘02 sent me a Wall Street Journal piece titled, “What Happens When Cafes Pull the Plug on Wi-Fi.” The article, by Anne Kadet, noted how a number of New York cafes have cut their Wi-Fi services, hoping to recapture the original intent of a café as a place to meet and talk.

While he had prepared himself for negative feedback from his customers, Jeremy Lyman, co-owner of Birch Coffee café said with surprise, “Sales are up and tables are turning over faster.” Furthermore, says the owner, “There are people talking. It’s such a beautiful thing.” Lyman asked himself, “Why not use our space as an opportunity to disconnect and connect to someone sitting next to you.” After getting rid of the Internet, customers continued to visit his store: “When you walk into our store, there are a few laptops, but nothing close to how many were there.”

Since the beginning of this school year, I have pondered and floated the idea of creating places or times where we ask students to refrain from using digital devices. While we already have specific rules around that during the school day, we know that providing a refuge from the daily digital onslaught is something that many people say they would appreciate. In our opening assembly in August, I mentioned the idea, and the majority of voices in support of such an idea came from students.

Momentum for it seems to be building. I asked our three academic principals to think about what we can do as a school.

Currently, our Lower and Middle schools have a “no phone” and “no social media” policy in place from school arrival until departure. This is clearly communicated to students, and there are consequences for phone or social media use during the day. Also, email is supposed to be used on campus for school purposes only.

In our Upper School, we are working with faculty and student leadership to consider the potential benefits of making CA’s Dining Hall a “phone-free” zone, and the idea of doing the same during certain parts of the day or week in the Upper School student lounges.

All of this provides faculty and administrators with opportunities to discuss with students the necessity of mindful use of phones and social media. All agree that the focus should be on encouraging face-to-face social skills and that technology in classrooms should be viewed as learning tools and not substitutes for human interaction.

Multiple studies in the neurosciences tell us that the human brain is evolutionarily adapted for face-to-face communications. A 2012 Chinese study showed that neural synchronization, or in other words, the ability to understand one another, significantly increases in face-to-face communication. (Journal of Neuroscience, 7 November 2012, 32 (45) 16064-16069).

What about the impact at home? Multiple parenting sources, including books, magazines, and many of our CA SPEAK lecturers talk about the deficit in family time that is being created by our absorption in digital technology. Dr. Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist and MIT professor, wrote a book called Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. She advises, “These technologies are with us, but we have to learn to live with them in a healthy way, according to our human values…”

For younger children, face-to-face communication is the basis for a how a child learns to establish and maintain interactions with adults. It is how children acquire language skills, develop the ability to read non-verbal cues, and create relationships with other humans.

For the families out there, I hope you can reinforce this message and do your part at home to place a premium on human interactions, because we all know that teaching young people how to engage with their fellow humans through face-to-face conversation has limitless benefits.

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