 And welcome to Screen Time Reset. I'm your host, Lauren Pair. Today, I'm very pleased to welcome Mark Prensky to the show. Mark is an influential thought leader in the education and technology space. He's probably best known for coining the term digital native, referring to the younger generation who never knew the world prior to the internet and digital revolution. He's been a speaker at far more conferences than I can list in over 35 countries. This year, he has spoken to the Ministry of Education in Spain and Saudi Arabia. Has notable speaking engagements include the World Economic Forum at Davos, UBS's Megatrend Conference, numerous school districts in the U.S., and he was here in Hawaii a couple of years ago for the Schools of the Future Conference, the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools' big annual conference. Mark has written a number of books on the topic of technology in children, including Don't Bother Me, Mom, I'm Learning, Digital Game-Based Learning, from digital natives to digital wisdom, brain gain, and most recently, Education to Better Their World. Mark and I agree on some of the problems facing education today. We both agree, for example, that the current education system was modeled for an era where our economy needed factory workers and needs to evolve for the digital age. However, our solutions are radically different. Mark has been a strong advocate of bringing more tech into the classroom and gamifying learning. He believes that we need to go even further still in integrating children and technology. According to him, this will allow students to take full advantage of technology and excel in the 21st century. I, on the other hand, believe that in an age where students are going to have to compete with AI and automation, we must help them hone their human competitive advantages. Things humans do better than the computers they'll be competing against. This includes problem solving, deep thinking, grit, and interpersonal skills. I believe honing these skills will allow humans, students, rather, to harness the incredible power of technology when they're older. And I worry that excessive exposure and integration with technology, especially in elementary school and below, can stunt the development of these human competitive advantages. A growing body of empirical research and anecdotal accounts also suggests it's a contributing factor to the explosion in intention issues, as well as anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems that are rising among youth. In order to help children thrive in the 21st century, therefore, I believe we must rethink the amount and type of screen time we give them access to, so they can enjoy healthy development in their early years and develop capabilities to take advantage of the huge opportunity technology provides as they get older. And with that, welcome Mark, it is great to have you on the show. Thank you, I'm happy to be here. Aloha to everybody in Hawaii. So, I mentioned in the beginning that you have this idea about further integrating kids and technology. I don't think I mentioned the term, what is it, symbiotic hybrids, which is a bold new idea that we'll talk to about in the second half. But before we get there, I wanted to talk a little bit about the impact that the current level of integration between technology and children has had on them thus far. You've been a big proponent of tech in the classroom, and the importance of that for preparing children for the 21st century. And while I agree that there certainly are some positive uses of technology and education, to me it looks like we've rushed in and over saturated children and that it's having some concerning effects. So before we get on to the second piece, I'd like to spend a little bit of time to have you weigh in on these impacts before we get into the vision of symbiotic hybrids and the future of technology. But right before we get into the concerns, I would like to ask you just what you see as the top two benefits and the top two costs of integrating technology as we have so far into children. And adolescents' lives. The top benefit is that we prepare them for the future. I don't even know that we even need to go beyond that, except that we extend their brains and connect them to everybody in the world and help them understand the power that they have and will have. And those are things that we really don't do enough of at all. The negatives are that we don't pay attention to them. And I'm going to tell a story that there are two interesting stories that I wanted to tell you. The first is that the, I was talking to my, actually my massage therapist. I know his kids, I know all these things. And he was telling me that he was at parties. He goes to parties where he parties mostly with his friends, but it's the families that are there. And the kids spend all their time, even the younger kids, on their iPads. And his wife was kind of saying, well, why don't you do something with the kids? Well, his response was, I don't know what to do with a five year old. How can I possibly relate to a five year old? And he tried and he finally found that he could maybe teach this young kid boxing and the kid liked it and that was great. And what I take from that is that we don't really try, that we don't spend the time asking kids, well, what are you interested in? What are your dreams? What can I do? How can I help you? And when we don't do that, then they retreat to whatever is more interesting than conversations with adults that don't care about them. The other bad thing is that we haven't given kids good things to do on the phone. So the people who have are the games people. They're all adults and they get the kids totally engaged in using this technology. And I can give you another example. So my son, who is about to turn 14, gets up in the morning like any other teenage kid and says, I don't want to do this. I don't want to go to school. I don't want to do anything. I don't care. And he loves aviation. And I had found something really interesting on my phone about aviation. And I said, you might be interested in this. And I put this in front of him and suddenly he woke up and he read for 10 minutes solid. And I said, well, gee, that's kind of interesting that you're doing that. And why don't you do that in school? And he says, you know what? We're learning in school. We're learning about the Lowell Girls. And I don't care. I know I need to know it, but I really don't care. So it's kind of, I think we're responsible a lot for what we see that we don't like. Well, on the plus, I would have to say, I mean, I question the extending brain because there is research coming out that it's not having great impact on their brain, especially the younger they are. There is a JAMA research paper recently looked at 2,500 kids and found that kids that used more screens when they were two and three had speaking delays and motor delays at age five. I do think that as kids get older, that changes. So that's something that we'll talk about a little more in detail with the concerns. As far as the negatives, I think- And we can also talk about research because as I wrote you, we have to be very, very careful when we cite any research at all. Yes. I don't disagree. Although no research is perfect. And so I also don't think we should throw out all research just because it's not perfect. Well, if we want to take a couple of seconds on the topic, I would just say- Actually, I don't. I would like to get to the negatives because I know that we're just going to have so much to talk about. And then we will get back to that. We'll really get back to that now. It's affecting me. Okay. So on the negatives that parents aren't paying attention to what kids want, I do agree with that. But to me, like the story you were telling shows that technology kind of facilitates that. If this dad didn't have screens, he would know more how to deal with a five-year-old because he'd have to do it. And you can always just push a screen in front of them. Then you get to not be a parent, right? Just become this babysitter. So that's, I guess, a critique of how it's used. And I would agree with you on that. But I do see it as it facilitates that in a way. Let me interject another story, which is- and this is extreme. But this is the story of the kids, and this is not a pleasant story. It's a story of the kids who drown in the pools because their parents were right there with them but not watching them. They got engrossed in their own conversations and the kids happened to jump into a pool and unfortunately- They got engrossed in their own conversations or they got engrossed in their phone? That happens more, too, these days. No, I don't think that when they said that, and we can talk about who it was, but I think they were really just engrossed in their own conversations and their own friends and they were not paying attention to their kids. Now what's interesting is that there's technology that you can put on kids' wrists and your own wrist and as soon as the kid hits water, your wrist starts going crazy vibrating. So it's one of those things where you can use technology to do lots of different things. If you decide that technology should be a babysitter, you can use it for that. If you decide that technology should be a way to bring you together, you can use it for that. It really is up to you. I don't totally disagree with that, but I think we have to be realistic in how it is being used and in an awful lot of cases, it's being used as a babysitter and displacing more time between parents and their kids and it is very tempting to use it that way. So it's not to say it couldn't be used better, but I think we have to look at- We've been really quick to rush into bringing it into the home, bringing it into kids' lives. I think we have to look at how it's actually being used versus how in an ideal world it would be used. I do think in an ideal world it would be used very differently. And let's make the same argument about sugar. Sugar is very tempting and we have a population that's very overweight because of all these drinks and all these other things that we have. And it's really important, do we ban the drinks or do we help the people not drink them? I think that we encourage kids not to have as much as they want when they're little, right? Because they don't have the self-control and that we give them healthy limits to the amount of sugar they can consume so that they, by the time they're an adult, have had those structures that allow them not to over-indulge, which absolutely is a problem. I ate way too much sugar as a kid. It's something I still struggle to cut back on and I do think it is addictive. So I find that a perfectly reasonable analogy. And let's not say blanketly that kids don't have self-control. Remember the marshmallow test? There were kids who had self-control. There were kids who had less self-control. So why don't we go kid by kid and to say, okay, if you're a kid with no self-control, just like my teenager is a kid with no time management skills and he's always late, then we have to work on that. But there's plenty of kids in the world who are not time management handicapped and they're fine. And so one of the things that's happening, especially with technology, is that we're able not to go on a blanket way. We don't have to do things by class and by date of manufacture anymore. We can look at individuals in terms of their education, in terms of what they need, in terms of how we interact with them. That is the greatest promise or one of the greatest things that technology brings. I don't disagree with that. I think it's another case though when in theory it's a lot easier than in practice because, first of all, in practice people are not only giving it to kids that are responsible enough to handle it, and then there becomes this social pressure that when enough kids have it at school, kids feel they need to or they're going to be left out. So it becomes like a culture that is more than just what is good for the individual child and becomes more informed by the culture around them. And while there are some kids with self-control, we do have the prefrontal cortex. It's not developed till the mid-20s, and especially teenagers, for example, will not even just teenagers, little kids too, they struggle with self-control. That's why a lot of them would not eat healthy, well-bound. There are plenty of kids that think they should get to pick their dinner and would be happy to eat ice cream every night, right? I'm so glad you brought up the prefrontal cortex because here's what I think about the prefrontal cortex. It is true, we know, that it develops in the late teens and early 20s. My sense, what the prefrontal cortex does is it puts controls on you. And one of the reasons that I, one of the things that I'm interested in is that there's a lot of conversations about how kids when they're young are so creative and kids when they're older are not so creative and Ken Robinson is famous for having people raise their hands about this. But I wonder whether kids are more creative because they don't have that fully developed prefrontal cortex. And one of the things that artists struggle with is they fight against that and they fight against the things that are imposed by this developing part of the brain that's supposed to protect you. Yeah, I mean, I don't totally reject that out of hand. I think there could be a connection there, but the truth is in the world we can't all be artists, right, that are just, creativity is important, but there are also, you know, good reasons to have controls on ourselves. So we show up to work on time and things like that, a growing complaint of employers. At least I was working for a state senator, Russell Ruderman last year and among our business community, that was one of the top complaints, just not showing up when the surf was good, rolling in really late, right? So there are good reasons for control, but it's an interesting point and I wouldn't discount that it could tamp down creativity in some ways as well. And the reason that's important is because so many people now are talking about the problems with education as being so many people. Certainly the Ken Robbins inside of the world are talking about education as being damped down by the schools which kill creativity. And I'm not 100% sure that that's right. On the other hand, let's move on to some other things. I'm happy to keep talking. Yeah, no, I know. There is so much to talk about. And, you know, I'm conflicted on that too. I think that schools probably don't do enough to encourage a love of learning in some ways. I think it has to be a balance between what kids are naturally drawn to and the fact that like in the real world, sometimes you have to focus on things that you don't think are super interesting. And that's part of being an adult. So I see it as like a competing interest. But moving along because we are going to have to have another talk I can see because Oh, we sure are because my whole perspective on being an adult is very different. And my whole perspective on love of learning is very different. If the initials for love of learning remember LOL. Well, let's stick to this. But I am curious. I mean, that's a topic I'm very interested in. So we will have to come back to that. But so, you know, something I wanted to mention is or ask about is that, you know, many creators of these apps write that when we give our kids devices, they are they go on apps often social media, often video games, often YouTube. And a lot of the creators of these apps have sort of come out and admitted that they are intentionally trying to hit dopamine reward centers because you have to compete and that their goal is to maximize the amount of time we spend on each app that they produce, right? So when we hand kids technology, it's not like we're handing them something neutral. There are a lot of people behind them that are trying to bring them in and are using tricks that they figured out and gambling to really hijack their reward centers. And I mean, I have some quotes from some of these people, right? You know, are you pleased with the quotes because I'm going to talk about what teachers do after this? Yes, OK, so Sean Parker, Sean Parker, who is the first president of Facebook, said, we sort of need to give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on your post. It's a social validation feedback loop. It's exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. He said the inventors, creators, it's me, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Zeistrom of Instagram. It's all these people understood this consciously. And we did it anyway. And he went on to say, God only knows what it's doing to our children's brain. You know, we have C'month, Holly. He's religious. Sorry. He's religious. I doubt it. I doubt it. But C'month was ahead of, like, increasing Facebook user growth. And he now talks about feeling tremendous guilt that tools are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works, that the short term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. He said he doesn't let his kids use that. Tony Fidel, who co-created the iPhone, said that adults are addicted. It's not just kids and not tech companies. Have a responsibility to help us manage it more responsibly. So when we have quotes like this from the people that are creating these apps, isn't that pretty concerning to just allow children so much access? I have a very different perspective. And I respect all these people. What I really don't like about the video game creators is not that they've engaged kids because I think that's great. I think that what they've done that's terrible and they should feel guilty about is how much money they take from the kids when they're in-game apps and things like that. And those companies are extremely rich and undeservedly so in many cases. But, you know, we talk, you mentioned this dopamine. Well, first of all, dopamine is something that we know a little bit about from the brain science, but it's the pleasure. It's what you get whenever you have a pleasurable experience. So what do you think when a teacher is standing in front of the room trying to engage their class? What do you think they're trying to provoke in these kids? They're trying to provoke a dopamine hit. They're trying to provoke, oh my God, yes, I like that. I'm so happy. I want to learn more. I want to do this kind of stuff. There's nothing wrong with exploiting psychology. That's how we deal with people, how we persuade people. What there is wrong with is something where you, we're not aware. Like we're not aware of the various biases that Kahneman talks about. So if we take advantage of biases that people are not aware of, that may be wrong. But there's nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with using psychology, using the way the brain works, using all this stuff to engage people. And I think the fault is not with the game developers. I think the fault is with the teachers and with the education system, not individual teachers, but with how we have viewed education. We have viewed education in a way that really, really is boring and really bores a lot of kids. My kid, who's 14, has a terrible time in school and he's doing okay because I've taught him that he has to play school. But he hates every single minute of it. And when he comes home, he immediately fires up his computer and fires up his airplane simulator and starts flying 737s and 787s around the world. And he's incredibly engaged by that stuff. And then he will go and learn whatever he needs to learn about aviation to get better at that stuff. And he'll do that totally on his own and then with the help of anybody that he can find, which he can find the mostly on YouTube. So there are actual pilots who put out lots of YouTube's to teach people like that. And so I think really, I think that we could do it. We, the adults, the educators of the world, could do a hugely better job of engaging these kids and giving them dopamine hits if that's the term you want to use about things that they like. I think that's a bit unfair, right? Like when you talk about the game developers, it's true that it's not like totally, you know, everyone uses human psychology to a degree. I agree. And teachers are trying to make their lectures interesting, but they can't compete with a video game that's using really graphics and quests that have been tested with real-time feedback to hit the dopamine networks so relentlessly, which they absolutely do. And so the concern is that if kids are used to this supernatural stimulation, which it absolutely is, nothing in evolution for kids has come close to modern video games in hitting those reward centers, except maybe social media, then it sort of recalibrates their reward system. So they're expecting this high level of stimulation that a teacher cannot realistically hit. Things like a-ha moments that used to register more on their reward scale. They don't register as much because they're used to this unnaturally high level. So teachers always get blamed, and I'm not saying no teacher can do better at engaging students, that there isn't room for improvement there, but the idea that they're going to be able to compete with video games whose sole purpose is to be entertaining and get kids stuck when teachers actually have curriculum, that's difficult. Even before these kind of video games, kids didn't love learning math or certain history lessons. So I just don't think that that's a fair, I think that's unfair to teachers. Well, I think that if you really want to know, I think that a lot of what you're saying is in some extent made up and exaggerated and that the idea that you can do stuff that influences kids with technology and influences people is clear. We can do this. Russia's been trying to influence our election. There's no question that we can have an influence on people with technology. What we have to be better at, and certainly what educators have to be better at, is influencing them in positive ways. And if what we have traditionally done up until now as education is not influencing them in positive ways, we'd better change education. That's really where I come from. And we want our kids to be positively influenced. I think you and I would agree on that in a heartbeat. But the idea of how we do it has to be figured out. Now, at one point in my career, I said, oh, okay, look at the games. They have all the engagement, but no content. And look at the school. They have all the content and no engagement. So wouldn't it be a great thing to put the two of them together? And I spent several years of my life trying to make video games that were for learning. And those things still exist. It turns out that they're very hard to make. And that they only work in a narrow range of certain kinds of things. And technology changes so quickly that they go out of date very quickly. So it's not an easy solution. But the idea of taking the engagement that technology can offer us and putting it together with what we want to have happen in society, I think that happens mostly through real world projects. And so that's what I advocate now as education. I say that education as the academics have left it to us is really only about thinking is not broad enough for what we need anymore and we need to become capable of getting things done which we can do if we have kids doing real world impact projects, not PBL. I mean, again, I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but it seems like it's idealized, right? Like you were a big proponent of bringing tech into the classroom, but now you say it wasn't done in an effective manner. It's not that easy to, like in theory, these ideas sound really good. I don't disagree. But in practice, you know, what was the LA school system that bought all these iPads and then sued and wanted their money back because the industry research showed it was going to be great, but in reality it became this massive distraction. They weren't pleased with it. So I think that we've really rushed in and that we have to be really intentional about how we insert tech into the classroom. I do agree that it has some amazing capabilities, but especially in younger years, very limited. And in older years, like thoughtfully created and not the ubiquitous presence it is but rather a targeted presence. And I have to say, Mark, I'm so sorry because I'm listening to you as the same earpiece as I'm listening to the great people here at Think Tech. I couldn't hear that they were calling for the break and we now only have two minutes left and we didn't get to talk about your symbiotic hybrid piece. So we will have to do another show soon. Really apologize for that. Next time we'll make sure to have communication better. I also didn't get through tons of questions. Obviously, we could talk about this for hours. I want to just add one last thing. I'll try to do it very quickly. It's not easy to make video games and especially good video games. The people who do it and have wound up engaging all these kids have spent enormous amounts of work and time thinking about how to do it. If the teachers, again, I'm not blaming individual teachers. If education and educators had spent the same amount of time figuring this out, then I think things would be very different. I think we've just dropped the ball. Yeah, I think that educators have a much more complex task. Video game creators just want eyeballs. They just want people spending time on it. They can have it be as useless, as entertaining, be shooter games. They don't care about the effects it has on kids other than them making money. And I'm glad we at least agree on that, the amount of money that they're extracting from kids is problematic. I'm not saying it can't totally be used. I am a little bit skeptical of too much gamification. In school, I do think part of school is learning to pay attention to things that aren't immediately entertaining and interesting because when you go to the real world and you have a job, your boss isn't going to gamify every project you have. You have to use your own resources to focus. I think things are changing. And I actually would never want to have a teacher who had your perspective. Well, luckily, you probably won't ever have a teacher who was mine. I love you. I'm sorry to do that. But the perspective that life is boring and so you'd better learn to be bored is a terrible, terrible perspective. That's not what I said. It's that sometimes you don't get to have everything that's optimized for your entertainment value. That's often the case. And so I just think that that's realistic. But obviously this debate will have to continue. I am really glad that you're willing to come on. I'm very glad that you're open to debating this. I have not noticed as much debate in this space, which we talked about briefly. I see a lot of people that agree on both sides talking with each other. And so I thought this was interesting. I look forward to continuing the debate. And I apologize again for missing the break and we will certainly get to your symbiotic hybrid theory next time. Thanks so much, Mark. And thank you for this. I will come back anytime and continue the discussion. I think it's hugely important. Great. Thanks to here. And thank you to the audience for tuning in to Screen Time Reset. This is Lauren Pair signing off.