Given my subtitle, you might be thinking that I’m a Luddite or some crackpot Chicken Little (“The Skype is falling!!”). But I’m not some anti-tech kook (really, I’m not). But over the years, I have assumed the role of a modern-day Paul Revere (“The techies are coming!”), wanting to alert people to the real harm [...]
The conventional wisdom among social-media experts is that social media is neither good nor bad; rather it is how social media is used that determines whether it is life affirming or life damaging. These same social-media experts (myself included) have been reluctant to speak strongly against these technology platforms for fear of being labeled a [...]
In my first article in this two-part series on the forces that shape our lives, I explored the five forces (genes, upbringing, popular culture, technology, and unexpected events) that I believe are most impactful on who we become, the choices we make, and the direction our lives take. In this article, I will introduce what [...]
Choices, options, alternatives, preferences, opportunities, decisions; these are all words that have a powerful impact on our collective psyches as human beings. They evoke free will and self-determination, the ability to become whomever we want to become, and the ability to opt for whatever road we choose in our life’s journey. Yet, whether we actually [...]
I was recently interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the NPR of Down Under) about the impact of the emerging metaverse that is being talked about by leading tech companies. If you're unfamiliar with what the metaverse is, here's the definition from Wikipedia: "...typically used to describe the concept of a future iteration of the [...]
Back in 2012, Common Sense Media, the leading independent nonprofit organization dedicated to helping kids thrive in a world of media and technology, published a groundbreaking survey examining the use of technology and social media among young people ages 13-17. The results were shocking in how much children were immersed in technology six years ago. CSM [...]
Technology has certainly been under scrutiny of late, whether the massive data privacy breaches that have been occurring with alarming frequency, the nefarious use of social media in politics, the internet trolls who have become a sad and inescapable part of our techno-culture, or the tobacco-like cover-ups and disinformation war by Big Wireless as reported [...]
As the author of a book on the impact of technology on children and families, Raising Generation Tech, I have a strong professional interest in the role that the myriad of devices and screen time now found in the hands of children and their parents alike plays in the development of young people and the [...]
Here is a fascinating article offering a provocative new theory that the decline in drug use in the past decade is due to the rise in smartphone use. Epidemiological data has demonstrated that young people are using alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs significantly less than 10 years ago. This relationship between drug and smartphone use has [...]
You have probably already heard about the research that found that children spend as much as 7.5 hours a day on non-school-related media. That is a crazy amount of time spent in front of a screen if you do the math of having 24 hours in a day, about 8 hours of sleep, and another [...]
