Since this week I have a weekly column on BNR, called Unsolicited Advice (Ongevraagd Advies)! I do this column together with a number of others who do the column on other days. You can follow all Ongevraagd Advies via Spotify (in Dutch), I will add links to my column at the bottom. I’m going to try to write out my column here every week (more or less) because then I can provide just a little more information, and because you never know whether those audio files will still be there in a few years! Writing is forever, also in 2023!
It may take some time to find the form, but for now I’m going to use the form in which I prepare it, as a kind of interview with myself!
This advice is for…
Parents of teenagers. The new school year has started, so it’s a great time for parents to think again about the house rules, not only about pocket money and bedtime, but also about telephone use.
What are the current rules in Dutch schools?
Phone use is a big deal at school, the Dutch government would actually like to see a ban, but schools found that too extensive, and is now issuing urgent advice as of January 1: Your phone should be either at home or in am locker. I often agree that it is good that schools are allowed to make their own decisions about matters, and here too you see that it is more nuanced than just “banning and on”.
Students sometimes come up with very good arguments, for example: can I take out my phone, because I have to log in and I have my password in a password manager. Yes, that’s a good idea! Better than 1234 as a password. Oh well… Then I say yes, and then they’re back to typing away on their phone. If, like me, you have 30 in your class, then enforcement is really difficult, and a complete ban is therefore difficult because there are sometimes excellent reasons.
Why are phones so addictive?
Because that’s how they’re made! A phone itself is not inherently addictive at all, but apps are made to keep you watching because after a while the commercials come on, and the longer you watch, the more commercials you see. That is very different from the past, when I watched TV on the couch as a teenager. After a while the program is over and you have a natural “stop moment”. Now it just never ends and you keep busy.
And that is not at all inherent to social media, that is a fairly recent development! Not so long ago you only saw messages from people you followed and after a while you were “done”, you had seen everything. Now when you get through your friends, you also get recommended videos, ads and messages from people you don’t follow. There is no end to it, so you have to make sure you know when enough is enough.
Now you have to have a lot of metacognitive skills to be able to think: “Whoa, wait a minute, I’ve been lying here for an hour, my brain is turning to pulp now.” As adults, we already have that feeling, that every now and then you think: “Have I just watched another hour of cat videos?” But that requires precisely those skills that teenagers have often not yet developed properly, namely thinking ahead and planning and self-regulating.
How do we better help learners with this?
We have agreed on universal human rights of the child. We should expand this to include digital rights! And not the right to make as many phone calls as you want, but this, for example:
The right to be done with your phone
The right to be able to say after an hour with less effort: and now it’s over, I’m going to do something else.
The right to withdraw from contexts
When I was a kid, you got your homework and grades at school, but at home you were at home and school could not reach you. Nowadays, many school apps (including those from my school) work in such a way that when I, as a teacher, enter a grade, a child sees it immediately. Even if it is a failing grade on Saturday at 9 p.m. A child cannot ask why, and is suddenly busy with school at home, or when he is in the canteen playing hockey. Very stressful and unnecessary. School apps should be able to close on weekends. Not only for grades, but also, for example, for children who are bullied, then school should mainly remain at school and not be transferred to home.
The same applies the other way around. At school, children should not be bothered with things from home, which are not always pleasant.
The right to fully concentrate (or be bored)
If you really want to concentrate on something, your phone shouldn’t just be out of your hand but out of your room. That’s very difficult even for us adults, but it really works that way. Research shows that people do worse when they have to perform a task with their phone in their hand. That is of course predictable. But even when they had their phone face down on the table, their performance decreased! So having your phone in your field of vision just costs you IQ points, and why would you do that?
This also means that you get bored every now and then, that you get distracted by a difficult piece of text, but it is precisely at those moments that you come up with something beautiful or fun. Learning to persevere when you get distracted, and when you’re stuck to go for a walk instead of going on your phone, these are very important lessons.
Should parents pay attention to this?
Yes, that’s a good idea, and it works! Anti-smoking advertisements only started to work well when they were aimed not at smokers themselves, but at their children. Only when “secondhand smoke” was proven and smokers realized the bad effects on their children did smoking really slowly become less popular. I hope that we can also achieve that effect for “telephones”: if parents see how bad it is for children, we might get things moving. A kind of “niks18” by Erik Scherder, but for telephones. (A Dutch campaign to convince parents not to give their kids alcohol).
And of course, a good examples are important! Research also shows that a quarter of parents look at their phone while eating, but the majority (70%) of children find this annoying. Children actually know what is sensible, but they still need help to do it themselves. As with many other things!
Audio links (Dutch)
Luister deze column op BNR
Luister deze column op Spotify
