Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention,

on purpose,

in the present moment,

non-judgmentally.

 

—Jon Kabat-Zinn

Claudia L’Amoreaux

Mindful Digital Life

Above the Noise

#GetMoreMeta

© by Claudia L’Amoreaux

It’s so easy to take the Internet for granted (until our power gets shut down or we lose our phone). Have you noticed? This week I’ve rounded up a few links to help you and your families or students #GetMoreMeta with your relationship to the Wild World Web.

Here are a few resources to fuel your investigations, and enliven your weekly technology conversations this season.

1. In the Age of AI, a PBS documentary. This video is four minutes short of 2 hours long. It’s divided into 5 sections. If you have tweens and teens, consider co-viewing a few sections a week and talk about it.

2. Youth and Artificial Intelligence: Where We Stand (free PDF download). This report by a team at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard is an excellent companion to the PBS documentary. The authors give you some great question sets to consider. I wrote about the report here back in June, 2019.

3. The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens. This new Common Sense Media report presents results of a nationally representative survey of more than 1,600 U.S. 8- to 18-year-olds, about their use of and relationship with media.

4. YouTube Algorithms: How to Avoid the Rabbit Hole. I love Myles Bess and KQED’s Above the Noise. This 6-minute video walks you through YouTube’s recommendation algorithms. And after you’ve watched the video, you’ll find the list of sources that informed the piece to take you and your family deeper into an investigation of the role of algorithms in media consumption.

I believe investigation is an essential practice for bringing forward a mindful digital life. Investigation takes time. Alas. But it’s time well spent. 

Lifting the veil on the tech we use

© by Claudia L’Amoreaux

Photo by Liane Metzler

Conversation. I’ve written a lot about conversation. I will keep coming back to it. An essential part of conversation about technology in our families is learning how to share with our kids, from toddlers to young adults, what we’re doing with our technology. What do I mean?

Dad to toddler: I’m going to call Grandpa on Facetime. Would you like to talk with him, too?

Grandma to 3-year-old: That’s a text message from your dad. I’m going to text him back and let him know we’re walking home from the park now. Then I’ll put my phone away again.

Mom to teen: I read something today in the New York Times online about the “beacosystem.” Have you ever heard of that? I didn’t have a clue. The article describes a level of location tracking using Bluetooth beacons that I was completely unaware of…I’ve learned how to stop some of it on my phone. Can I show you the settings I’m changing?

Those early conversations build the trust levels over time that allow that young teen to be receptive to whatever we want to share and hopefully, vice versa. Teens will be in the habit of sharing what they’re doing and they’ll even be enthusiastic about sharing it. They will have witnessed us modeling how to talk through our experiences—positive and negative—with the ever-changing technology in our lives (in authentic, non-preachy ways ;D). They will know that we’re actually really curious to hear what they’re up to. And they’ll be confident, based on previous experience, that we won’t judge them for the new and weird things they’re trying out.


What I am reading

The Beacosystem. It’s a thing. Read The Privacy Project by Michael Kwet. Awesome graphics and illustrations by Tala Schlossberg and Max Guther. And here’s the NYT Guide for how to stop apps from tracking your location. If you have tweens and/or teens with phones, walk through it together.

What I am watching

For teens: the next episode of KQED’s Above the Noise—False Equivalence: Why It’s So Dangerous. Summary from the website: Not every topic warrants a “both sides” approach. Some viewpoints are simply not backed by empirical evidence or are based on false information. And journalists have to be careful not to present them as legit debates. If they do, they are creating a “false equivalence.”

For youngers: Kids on Earth: Travelling the World to Understand the 21st Century. It’s an online collection of more than 500 videos of children from around the world talking about how technology has shaped their learning and plans for the future. Interviews are with children and teens (mostly 9–14) from countries all over the world. Start here—the videos are on Vimeo.

Let’s talk with young people about AI

© by Claudia L’Amoreaux

We call you ocean.

We call you sea, gulf, strait, bight,
bay, lagoon, river, falls, creek,
stream, lake, pond, spring.

We call you rain.

We call you pool, puddle, snowflake,
glacier, dew, mist, cove, channel, inlet,
cascade, brook, tributary, bayou, tarn,

H2O.

Those are the opening lines to “Prayer to Protect Water,” a piece I wrote several years ago (click the link on H2O to read the rest). And that’s the Pacific Ocean underneath the fog layer visible on the horizon in the photo above. I took the shot at the crest of Highway 46 before heading down the hills to Highway 1 South to Morro Bay…for a long weekend immersing in Blue Mind. I mentioned in the last post that I was reading the book Blue Mind by marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols. I did read some of the book that dives into the neuroscience of our relationship with water, but mostly, I set my digital media aside, and enjoyed living outside for entire days at a time—canoeing out to the sandspit in the bay with my daughter, her husband, and my granddaughter, wading in the warm, shallow water, communing up close and personal with the Black-crowned Night-Heron and Downy Woodpecker, appreciating the crescent moon in the dark night sky, delighting in how a particular type of Eucalyptus pod fits on tiny fingers like a funny little fairy cap.

Restorative nature time. Precious family time. An essential reset for how I interact with the vast flows of digital information surging into my daily life. Strengthening my ability to focus on topics I really want to investigate.

Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). Photo by Calibas.

Two questions I’m asking myself are: What does a 12-year-old who has just been given a smart phone need to know? Who is working on answering this question in a creative way?

In my last post I mentioned I was reading the Spotlight by a team at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society titled Youth and Artificial Intelligence: Where We Stand. I finished it this week. What I appreciated about their work is that instead of answering questions, they focused on the questions we need to be asking about AI and youth in the areas of education, health and well-being, the future of work, privacy and safety, and creativity and entertainment. The questions they ask are really important. I encourage you to take the time to read their work. When you prioritize studying a bit on this area of technology that is advancing very rapidly and is already affecting our children’s and teenagers’ lives profoundly, you’re modeling engaging with the technology more responsibly, and you’re educating yourself for deeper conversations with our families about our relationship with technology.

For some kid-friendly content for conversations on artificial intelligence, start with this article in The Journal: Transforming Education through Technology to see how some teachers across the country are engaging students with AI. And with Deepfakes very much in the news this month, tweens and teens will be interested in the new video Deepfakes: Can You Spot a Phony Video on KQED’s Above the Noise, hosted by Myles Bess. Great series! [Note: Preview the video first to make sure you’re comfortable with sharing the content with your tweens—the video includes some sexual content. You should just be prepared. Above the Noise is for teens.]