Episode 52: The impact of Increasing use of technology on students mental health (Part 1

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Hello, I'm Emily Guille-Marrett.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is the School of School podcast. Welcome to the School of School podcast.

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Andy Psarianos

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the School of School podcast. We're really fortunate today, we've got Andy Ash with us. Andy, just tell us just a little bit about yourself for our listeners so they know who you are.

Andy Ash

Yeah. Okay. Hi. It's great to be here. So yeah, I work in England. I run what's called a maths hub, so we support a region where we've got about 500 primary and secondary schools. And alongside doing that, I also am doing a part-time PhD where I'm studying how teachers teach fractions and I'm hopefully in my last year, although you never know.

Andy Psarianos

Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Those doctorates, you never know.

Andy Ash

Yeah. Yeah, who knows?

Andy Psarianos

Anytime you talk to someone writing a doctorate, they're always in their last year.

Andy Ash

I was very lucky because I was doing some data collection and I was meant to do more, but then that was when COVID first hit. So I was completely stopped in my tracks, but I had to change what I was doing. So luckily I had some data and it was enough to go with, so...

Andy Psarianos

Right. Well today we're talking about technology, is it good or bad? It reminds me... Actually, this is a funny topic, reminds me of a great Ali G skit. I don't know if you've ever, if you got like, Ali G's my hero, right? He's so funny. Anyway, he calls it techmology, right? Techmology, is it good or bad? No. Is it good or whack? I think he said. Anyway, it's a bit controversial. So come on, Andy, what's the deal with technology here? What do you think? Is it good for kids or is it bad for kids?

Andy Ash

I think that's a very difficult question to answer. So yeah, I should first of all say I'm by no means an expert in this, but it is something that I have some opinions on really. And so I would say overall at the moment, I feel like the impact of a lot of technology is not great for kids at the moment, or kids and adults actually. I've got a quote, it's from someone who's probably quite opinionated, it's from a book, but he describes kids using sort of devices and things and he says, he describes it as the zombification of kids whose faces are illuminated by glowing screens. I've got young children, myself and it's kind of interesting because I feel like our eldest, I think we first got an iPad in the family when he was probably about seven or eight so he was kind of at the beginning of this really rapid development of handheld technology.

Whereas my younger two, that's all they've ever known. All they've ever known is that you can carry something around in your pocket and you can get videos on it, you can get answers to questions on Google and it just does stuff. So on the one hand, in a way it's kind of fascinating and it's really, really interesting, but on the other hand, I can see that it is potentially having quite a negative impact on them. So I know there's quite a lot of research studies around now that talk about the addiction of screens and technology. In particular, kind of the internet and games and things like that. It's even been described as electronic cocaine. I think that's quite an extreme-

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Andy Ash

Way to describe it. But I can see it in my kids and I can sometimes see it in kids at school who have too much screen time and it has a really negative impact on them in terms of their ability to concentrate for longer periods of time and their ability to actually even interact in social situations in some instances. And I guess in the last couple of years, because in England we've had a lot of homeschooling because of COVID, I think that things have perhaps been exacerbated. So yeah, in general I feel that we need to be really, really careful because whilst technology and screens, they are becoming part of life and they're unavoidable, at the same time they, like lots of things, have potentially negative and damaging effects on people.

Adam Gifford

I want to jump in because I often preface this when I talk about this, I always say the same thing. I said, I always say, at the risk of sounding like my granddad and my worry with this stuff is that, you know how you look at old footage and people sort of say, oh, these newfangled things, everyone's got a car and the, well, whatever it might be. I try to do a wee self check to try to think, okay, so what part of this is this sort of generational thing where it's just me stuck in the ways? Oh, this music on the radio is terrible, this newfangled rock and roll, it's-

Andy Psarianos

It is terrible, Adam. It is terrible.

Adam Gifford

See, this is it. So how? I think one of the hardest things I find when I'm talking about it, because I have quite strong opinions on it, I think that there are definitely negative aspects that I've seen in my own kids with relating to it. But I've also seen some really positive things, is how do I try to sort of judge it and regulate the fact that I'm from a generation that does has... Like the experience I have with digital technology is so nothing compared to what my children have.

Andy Ash

Yeah, yeah.

Adam Gifford

Comparatively. And I don't just mean, yeah, I work on a computer and an iPad and stuff every day, and I use my phone. But let's be honest, the usage that I sort of do is nothing comparative. And I try to think, how can I be reasonable in understanding this and do a self check? Does that make any sense whatsoever? Do you know what I mean? Just-

Andy Ash

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

Just so I don't form the trap of watching BBC archive footage going, ah-

Andy Ash

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

Look at this guy now, look at what he's saying. What a fool, that sort of thing.

Andy Ash

Do you know what? That makes total sense to me and I'm sort of similar in a way. I should say that I love technology and I use it in many, many different ways, I think to great benefit in my work and in my personal life, in my hobbies and things. I don't think technology is bad, I think that we have to be careful and recognise the dangers with it. So let's just think as an example, as adults, we've got mobile phones but none of us grew up with this kind of technology. It's been new to us as adults. I certainly, myself, noticed that a couple of years ago, I would just check my phone to check Instagram or Facebook or something just for no reason other than I was standing there with nothing else to do.

And I suddenly realised that I was wasting actually, when you added up all the time, wasting hours of my life doing nothing that had any kind of creative merit or benefit to me as a person. And I know from talking to other friends, it's very anecdotal, but this is something. Not just me, this is other people as well. So I think there are good things about technology and certainly in terms of learning, there are good things about technology, but equally we've got to recognise the dangers of them. One of the arguments that's sometimes used is that, well, children are going to grow up in a world where technology is kind of everywhere and everything in a way, so we need to expose them to it early so they learn to manage it.

So that seems reasonable, but I'm not sure it quite works actually because, if we applied it to something different, let's say, I don't know, something that adults do. Driving a car. You don't go, well, they're going to need to drive a car when they're older so let's expose them to it when they're really young, because we know that would be really crazy. It'd be really dangerous. They're not ready for it until they hit a certain age. And I think sometimes technology can be a bit like that. As a parent, we can think, oh, look at all this great technology, it makes my life way easier. But actually, they're not seeing some of the negative outcomes of it, and in a minute, I think we should come to talk about actually then how does this relate to education in schools? Because I think we see an increasing use of education technology and I'm not convinced we've thought enough about it. We've sort of jumped into it, just thinking that it's great.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Well, a bridge... For me, Andy, a bridge, I think is, into what you are going to discuss is, I've been listening to what you've been saying and I, because I am not anti-technology either, I think there are some amazing things that technology can allow us to do. I think it's around behaviours and I try sometimes to step back and line it to other things like too much TV or too much chocolate or too much-

Andy Psarianos

Too much reading?

Emily Guille-Marrett

Too much reading. Too much anything. Too much of anything, if you're... There's too much of anything is not a good thing and I guess the issue is that with some technologies and some gaming, there is that site that we know as a fact that they're using certain things to hook people in. But if you're going into anything with awareness and you are equipping children with the ability to know when to stop up, when to say... Then you're getting into the... For me, it's more around that because, a bit like with teachers, I've been into classrooms, I'm sure you have, and I'm like, why is that on the screen? When actually it would be just better to get a piece of paper-

Andy Ash

Yeah, yeah.

Emily Guille-Marrett

In this moment or it'd be better to get a book. And then there are other times when I'm like, what is just being done with that technology there is incredibly transformative and I don't think there's a better way that we could have used and we could have recorded and we could have captured that moment. So I guess that's where we've had this thing where it's technology, technology, technology, and then it's like, okay, so let's have a more balanced approach to it.

Andy Ash

Yeah.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Potentially.

Andy Ash

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

But also, I think you need to categorise when we need to talk about technology, it's just such a general thing. So this technology, as we could define it by devices, I guess, or we could define it by its purpose, or we could define it by some other measure. But I think we need to narrow it down a little bit because, I don't know, a bicycle is technology.

Andy Ash

Yeah.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

We're not talking about bicycles here. Effectively, I think for young people, and adults as well, the challenges is that sort of education, not education side, that entertainment, technology for entertainment seems to be really dangerous to me. Technology as tools, I don't think we could even survive without it anymore. We need the tools, the tools are a force for good. Okay, Google is kind of, I don't know, we all sort of feel like, hmm, the kids don't need to remember anything anymore because everything's at their fingertips. So is that good or bad? There's an argument for it being bad, there's an argument for it being good. But I don't think that's really what we're talking about here, I think we're talking about the sort of addictive entertainment side of technology that kids seem to get sucked into.

Andy Ash

That's it. And I think there's a couple of things that are really important here. That the first thing is, I think we've got to be careful making a link between too much tech, use of addictive technology and too much reading or something, because what we do know about most technology that... I'm talking about things like apps, internet based programmes, things like that, that an immense amount of effort is put into trying to make them psychologically addictive, because they want people to repeatedly go back to them and go back and use them. So, they almost have, I think, a more psychological power than a lot of things when it comes to being addictive. So I think that is quite important.

But the other thing here is that one of the reasons I think schools need to think very carefully about their use of technology is that both the educational and useful aspects of technology, and all those other things that are just kind of pure entertainment or mindlessly doing something, they're done on the same thing so when you hand a very young child an iPad, I guess the question is, what do you think goes through their head if they've got one at home and they use it all the time to play on Minecraft or to watch YouTube or whatever? I suspect their thought is, oh yeah, that's an iPad and I know what I can use an iPad for. And then you're going to ask them to do some reading on it or something. I think we've got to be really careful and I guess it even relates to some of the cognitive loads theory stuff and things like that, that actually what's going on in their head might not be what we want it to be because there are so many associations with that technology that we're giving them.

And I think about, in most schools, and my school is the same here, we've put, instead of having a whiteboard at the front of the room now, we have a giant screen. And teachers use iPads, I think iPads are incredibly useful, I use one all the time. But we have Apple TV and we use that to mirror the iPad onto the screen. But what happens when you switch the Apple TV on and there's a minute or so before you've mirrored your iPad on where all they're seeing is all the apps and things, and I've seen it for-

Andy Psarianos

Netflix and Disney Plus or whatever.

Andy Ash

Yeah. I've seen it firsthand and-

Andy Psarianos

Let's have some of that.

Andy Ash

Yeah. I just think we've got to be really careful with what message we're sending to children and particularly thinking in primary schools in England, very young children. I think the reason I thought it'd be useful to discuss it is I don't think it's something that is discussed very much. I think it's just assumed.

Adam Gifford

I just, I think that where I think there's a confusion, and I was having this conversation with my sister in New Zealand last night, and this particular subject terrifies me and I don't use that word lightly. No, seriously. Is that I think that when we think about technology or digital devices or using apps or those sorts of things in school, I actually think that in terms of just that part of our functionality in our life, that ship sailed some time ago. So everything now is going to be run by apps and we're going to be looking at devices forever. There's fridges that'll tell you what you're out of before you even know you're out of it, like all that sort of stuff so that ship's sailed.

What terrifies me is that I think that what children need to be learning in terms of technology is being critical and understanding what goes on, like the reality. Because I know for my children, I know that the level of sophistication that they bring to someone else's life on Instagram or something else is not where I feel it should be because it suggests that this is how I live my life all the time.

Or these are the types of things that I buy all the time, or this is, all I do is sit around on sun loungers in exotic locations all the time, not understanding the work that goes behind it. And I think that in the same way that we would ask people to be critical of what they read, that the devices are going to be 24/7. They're always going to be there now. That's just, that's to me, statement of fact stuff that'll be built into everything that we do. And that's, like Andy said before, that that's fantastic because it's functionality, we can't even dream of the amount of effort that would need to go into it.

But I think having a level of sophistication to work out what is real and what is not, and like you say about manipulation and say gaming and getting to buy stuff in game. How many stories do you read about some parent going, I got a credit card bill for 3k because my child really needed this certain thing? And I think that's where... That's the part to me that is, when we talk about technology in schools, it's about being critical of the messages and what we are seeing and trying to see behind the facade of these things and not trying to replicate what they see in front of them without being... With having some awareness, and I think that's the scary part.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, there's a power shift. Go ahead, Andy.

Andy Ash

Well, I was just going to say, it's kind of education of how to use technology for positive impact. I do think one of the problems though is that, as technology gets better, it becomes more intuitive and therefore you have to think less when you use it. So, if you compare how an iPad or your phone works now, you don't really have to know very much about it, you can just pick it up and use it because they're so intuitive. 10 years ago, when you bought a computer you had to think quite a lot about getting it set up and uploading your operating system and everything else. In a way it's kind of like a bit of a conundrum because the better technology gets, the less you have to think when you use it and therefore the less you're actually learning from using technology.

Andy Psarianos

If you step out of the micro view and try to go into the macro view and look at what's happening, there's some really interesting power shifts that are happening in the world right now that we're right in the middle of. And some of us are aware and some of us are completely oblivious, and I think the vulnerable people are quite oblivious to what's happening sometimes. And that's, I guess, where we worry because it's not just young people, I worry about my mother on the internet all the time, because my mother-in-law's been done on scams on the internet before. She's vulnerable. She doesn't really understand what she's doing sometimes. I don't mean that in a bad way, she's a lovely person, very intelligent. It's just not her world, it's not her universe so it's foreign to her, and she's been caught out more than once.

The thing is, so from a device usage point of view, there's a shift where we became... So we used to use these as a tool, we used them. And now it's kind of, the shift of power has come around where now they're starting to determine what we do, and the technology is. And when I say technology, I mean, we're not just talking about the devices, but we're also talking about algorithms that have been written that are self-learning algorithms and artificial intelligence, their whole purpose. And we don't even understand how they work. All we know is we just created this little thing and gave it some guidelines and said off you go and learn everything you can. Your objective is to make people spend more time on this device and look at ads.

And that's basically what most social media networks and companies like Google do. So then it's out of control now, these things are making their own decisions. And when you start looking in this in the context of the stuff that you're talking about, Adam, this other trend, which is the internet of things where now, all of a sudden, your fridge is aware of how many eggs you use. Why isn't your fridge manufacturer going to sell that information to the grocery chains who can then use it to start predicting, forecasting how many eggs they need every month because they now know how many people in the neighbourhood are using how many eggs and at what time of year and so on and so forth? And then we're creating this incredibly complex web of technology that if it ever falls down, like the flooding that we have here or COVID, or when... These are like, we're really vulnerable because it's everything's intermeshed.

So I worry a little bit about that but the other thing I worry about is the power shift that these companies now... We seem to sometimes almost not notice how powerful the technology companies have become. Like yeah, Google and Amazon, they transcend governments. Can you turn Google off? Who could turn Google off? Who could turn Amazon off? You can't.

Andy Ash

Yeah. I think you're spot on there. And if we even just relate it just back to education for a minute specifically, well, Twitter has become a huge thing in education, hasn't it? Many, many teachers on Twitter getting, I think, sometimes useful ideas and useful things. But if you think about it, if I... Let's put myself, let's say I was an educational consultant or something in England, and I know that through Twitter, I can make people more aware of what I do and therefore that's going to increase how in demand I am, et cetera. Well, am I not going to start to, whether consciously or not, am I not going to start to try and deliberately put things on Twitter that get reactions? And therefore I'm... That's what you're saying, isn't it? About, at that point, at some point-

Andy Psarianos

It's driving your behaviour.

Andy Ash

Technology is starting to control me. That's driving my behaviour rather than me making a use of that technology to deliver my vision or the thing that I'm trying to achieve. And I think that's so dangerous. Yeah. And for that reason I'm not that active on Twitter.

Andy Psarianos

No, and same here. And I used to be, and it's become kind of a popularity contest. So you look at quite prominent figures, for sure politicians. Oh, God. Look at Donald Trump, heaven forbid. But that's a great example of how powerful Twitter can be. But you see this in professionals and there's a couple of behaviours that kind of worry me. So I look at people who are really important and have positions of great responsibility using Twitter as a popularity contest to push their own particular points of view, opinions and propaganda. And often just because, just seemingly for the sake of becoming more popular.

And it's a lot of this kind of look at me, look at this thing that we did, it's so clever, aren't we smart? Kind of bragging about what they're doing and creating an entourage around it. And it's kind of like, okay, that's all great. Where are you going with this? How does this help society? How does this help mankind? Or people kind, I guess the word is nowadays. How do you help it? Because you're not helping, you're just kind of really selfish. But anyway, it's dangerous, it's driving selfish behaviour.

Andy Ash

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

In a lot of people and a lot of prominent people.

Thank you for joining us on the School of School podcast.