Are my students addicted to technology?

IMG_8027“A typical teen’s day includes up to nine hours of texting, gaming, watching videos, and posting on multiple social networks — even while doing homework. It’s enough to make you wonder: Are my students addicted to technology?”

To find answers to these questions — and, more importantly, to help support a healthy digital lifestyle — Common Sense examines the latest scientific research about problematic media use in their new report, Technology Addiction: Concern, Controversy, and Finding Balance.

Here are four things you can do in your school or classroom to address these potential pitfalls with technology addiction:

  • Talk to students about digital balance.
  • Use classroom-management tools to help you limit digital distractions.
  • Make classroom technology integration deep and engaging to minimize the potential for distractions.
  • Provide guidance to parents.

Learn more about this Common Sense report and download it here.

You can also join the Common Sense communities on edWeb to connect with peers who are sharing and learning together about how to integrate technology into learning and help students be responsible digital citizens. Here are two Common Sense communities on edWeb that provide great information and resources:

Digital Citizenship provides ideas and discussions about how to help kids be safe, responsible, and respectful participants in a digital world.  This community will help you stay connected, share ideas, and get support from colleagues on issues such as: cyberbullying, privacy, digital footprints, copyright and plagiarism, information literacy, and Internet safety.

Digital Classroom: Teaching with Tech helps educators share ideas and best practices around meaningful integration of technology and teaching. Members can participate in lively monthly webinars and community discussions to learn how to transform teaching and instructional design with technology.

edWeb founder and CEO, Lisa Schmucki, attended the Common Sense Media Awards on May 3 when this report was released. She commented, “The Common Sense Media Awards celebrated great work that has been done to help students use media responsibly and recognize such a wide coalition of educators, parents, community and government leaders who are coming together, with the help of Common Sense, to ensure that technology makes a positive impact on students’ lives.”