Technology: television, video games, web, cellphones
Boys will always need us, but if we hate their play they will retreat more from us and into their compelling virtual worlds.
Students don't understand web, etc. as "technology." They just understand it as "stuff."
Author of Growing Up Digital. His son is embarrassed that his dad refers to essential elements of adolescent life as "technology." It's not separate concept for them.
Son was embarrassed that dad did a show about using a web browser. Son thought it was like doing a show about how to use a toaster.
Academic achievement gap: look at the the last five year average in coed schools, the top 25% of the class is 70% girls, and the bottom 25% of the class is 70-90% boys
During a presentation a boy pointed to the fact that World of Warcraft's existence ensures that the gender achievement gap will persist
Boys have an experience of a little school world and a world wide experience through things like Warcraft and the web
Are boys using tech more than girls, or are they using it differently?
Yes, but if you factor in cellphones for tech use it's equal. But boys are the champions of screen time. Average of 30-40 hours a week of screen time.
Boys from 5/6 to 37 years old log serious time with video games.
"Wiikends"
Boys from low income families watch more television.
Independent school parents know the dangers of television and are better at limiting it.
But independent school parents know less of what's on the web, and laptops for schoolwork complicate ability of parents to manage tech usage effectively.
Boys post video content (20%), girls dominated in posting for blogs or pictures
Biggest change is that current generation is abandoning TV because it demands a level of passivity that they can no longer stand.
Is it affecting the physical lives of boys, less involved in physical world? YES!
Parents report difficulty in getting kids away from video games.
If parents don't allow games, then boys' friends won't come over.
Parents reporting worrying about the amount of video game playing. But MT thinks that parents secretly prefer that their children stay inside rather than outside. They're gripped by fear. We don't know our neighborhoods (breakdown in thin trust in neighborhoods, vs. the thick trust we have with our friends).
Not helping the obesity epidemic.
Phenomenal rise in organized sports, but it hasn't had an impact on obesity. The way sports are structured (drive, wait, play a bit, drive home) leads to much less exercise than if a child is sent outside to play for a whole afternoon.
Obesity-bad parental modeling (adults model 5 hours of TV watching). Also a loss of undirected free play and rise in time spent in cars (1.5 hours per day) and rise in time spent with technology.
Children who cycle/walk to school or who play regularly in the neighborhood are of normal weight.
By age 12-13 children who have been (Richard Ginsburg
Whose Game is it Anyway) in organized sports for 5 years are dropping out because they're burned out.
At TSB only a few 8 grade boys had walked more than 6 blocks from home when Thompson visited.
The bus pass leads to responsible independence.
Boys are using laptop computers as the "new outdoors" They disappear into the computer rather than disappearing into the neighborhood.
Is it changing boys brains?
We know that experiences can shape the brain much more than we've known in the past.
Changes in tech usage will have an impact, but we don't know what kind of impact.
We know that TV shortens attention spans.
Experienced video game players may alter visual attentional processing and improve hand-eye coordination, helpful to surgeons (e.g., laproscopies sp), improves spatial skills
Also evidence that "net gener" kids in schools follow directions in pictures better because they're less sequential
Studies: reading online isn't bad, just different. It's nostalgia or prejudice to say that reading online isn't as good as reading on paper. Likewise research in books vs. online.
Is the internet destroying our capacity for sustained, deep attention?
We don't have the evidence for this. We actually have evidence that this is the smartest generation ever (IQ scores are going up). Even teachers are saying that 3rd graders are better able to manipulate and synthesize information. Writing for communication is better.
Lead drone pilot for the Air Force is a 19year old. The Air Force is having designers write video games to train pilots.
No evidence that violent video games translate into violent behavior.
Among other studies, Japanese play violent video games and have no murder rate.
How has porn/social networking affected psychosexual development?
Social networking increased 90% between 2006 and 2008.
Report on social networking came to a series of benign conclusions about social networking. Kids are developing social and technical skills they need through their use of social networks.
Alarming for parents because they can't track their children's lives in the way that their own parents tracked their lives.
Children don't leave the house physically, but they leave the house via web.
Girls seek friends online, boys are trying to get mates.
First age of pornography online: 11 years old.
Largest viewers of internet pornography are users between 12-17. Very few people in those boys' lives have talked to them about sexuality.
Current stats for first sexual experience haven't changed much. Age of first intercourse (17.4 girls, 17 boys) has gone up, not down.
No increases in rape (that might have come from pornography).
No increase in child sex abuse-kids are not meeting predators online. Predators are meeting 15-17 year olds, not young kids. We should be talking about porn, not predators in relation to kid internet use.
MUDD (multi user digital domain) risk taking-physically solo sexual encounters that involve another person online.
Has tech eroded ethics of boys?
Is it turning them into sophisticated plagiarizers and cheats? Thompson says no.
Boys will always try to game the system and if they can get away with it they will.
It's the teacher's job to be on top of it. (e.g., Randomly trade calculators before a test.)
Has tech changed relationship between boys and families?
Thompson himself lives in a house where everyone is on their own individual computer.
Some say: at least the TV was a communal experience. Thompson thinks that's nostalgia. More TVs per household than people now.
Parents get immobilized by the new technologies and they have a hard time employing their natural authority.
Tascott-the greatest challenge is that kids are more expert than their parents. Has shifted the power balance. But Thompson thinks this is overstated: the kid's skills don't trump the parent's authority.
By the time boys hit their 20s, they will have logged 20,000 hours on internet and 10,000 hours with video games.
Boys will be (and now are) used to immediate feedback and interaction. Boys will be less tolerant of being taught to. Must be more interactive. Must teach "with" the kids rather than "to" them.
The web has undermined the notion of the teacher as the expert because kids know that there is more information online than in the teacher's head.
Lecturing to kids who have the experience of the power of communication, information, and control online will seem nothing other than patronizing.
Teacher will need to find out what kids already know and how they get their information and manipulate that information before launching into their material to avoid the, "Screw you." decision where they tune out.
But boys will always need us, but if we hate their play they will retreat more from us and into their compelling worlds.
The challenge of the expertise gained online and through games. What do we do with it, how do we recognize. If we don't figure this out, boys will write us off.
Has tech changed relationship between boys and schools?
Didn't get to this one.
He asked boys to make videos about what technology is to them. Project for us?
