The Attention (Hackers) Trap. And how we could stop children from falling victim.

For 1,260 hours a year, cell phones — and social media noise — is shut off.

When I tell someone that we don’t let students use cellphones in the classroom they look at me as if I told them that we banned mechanical pencils. But it’s true. There are about a thousand phones that arrive in school each day. Probably more! But when they pass through our doors, they remain turned off — never to be used for seven hours or so. The phone in a backpack is a lonely object, leaving its owner free to chat with a friend, or kick a soccer ball (or kick up a ruckus) in the playground during lunch. I sometimes notice a few students practicing violin in the nook of a stairwell, or another reading a book under a tree. Some come to my class to program an Arduino.

Seven hours a day for 180 days of the year. Do the math: That’s 1,260 hours per school year during which all social media noise is shut off. When those sneaky apps can’t break in or mess with their brains or their conversations. I think of it as a time when the ‘Attention Extraction Model’ is on lockdown. By the way, ‘attention extraction’ is a phrase I borrowed from Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT). Tristan and others like him know more about this than we on the sidelines would ever know. They worked at Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google, and say that they were the ones who once designed the ‘dials’ for those sneaky algorithms that led millions of young people down rabbit holes. They have come forward to send out early warning signals that neuroscientists and psychologists have begun to confirm about hate speech, device addiction, and mental health. In New Zealand, Dr. Sanjana Hattotuwa who has been documenting this for years, warns that with no framework or legal oversight, its getting worse.

But despite plenty of warnings, the business practices of these companies haven’t budged. (Look at the massive scale of Middle East disinformation on X, the company that we still think of as Twitter.) Why would they? More people sucked into their vortex, and the virtual cash register is kept ringing.

Add to the mix, AI generated content and images created by DallE2, Jasper and the likes, and it becomes part of the firehose of content pouring out through the pores of our devices. All designed to keep young people scrolling, clicking, forwarding, liking etc. Chat apps like Kik are particularly dangerous for kids. (Watch how Kik lures them into chat rooms thwarts parent’s ability to check a child’s browsing history.)

Which is where I like to turn your attention to how we could get young people to push back against Silicon Valley’s attention hacking.

I’m no Luddite. I use many of the apps and Technologies you do, though probably a lot less: Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, Venmo, Spotify, Speech Texter, Tusky, Signal, LinkedIn, Instagram, Libby…, you get the idea you get the idea. I try to practice the digital literacy safeguards I teach. Sometimes that means placing limits on how I use these apps, and refusing to use some others.

We know that students model their behaviors on us. A teacher who walks around with a cell phone in class, would find it hard to get 25 students to listen to an exploration of a topic, when apps like TikTok, Snap, and Be Real are pinging their pockets. Kahoot is a great way to engage a roomful of students, but it requires placing some limits to screen time.

I do blame schools that say they have a cell phone policy but don’t enforce it. Big Tech loves that! “To build a classroom around IT” is their rallying cry. Of course! It feeds into the attention hacking industrial complex. I’d rather we build a classroom around pedagogy, and how we could make students think for themselves rather than click on buttons for a moment of instant gratification.

Which is where I like to turn your attention to the most pervasive technology to arrive in the education space. AI. (Sigh! That topic again.) The ChatGPT bandwagon seems to have slowed down a bit. But other sexy models are tailgating it. But even as we educators address it — I have a class podcast on this, and produced another one for the school — we must pay closer attention to the developments that happen every day, every week.

First, we have to expect it will be used by students, just like Wikipedia is being widely accessed, despite the hand wringing it caused twenty years ago. I think it’s best we teach students how to use the nascent tool well, rather than leave it to them to figure out. Why? Because I know students will try it, and it’s better to broaden the thinking around this. We know AI is quickly been blended into search engines, so denying its use is like prohibiting someone from using a voice search when there’s that tiny little speaker icon in many search tools today — even in our phone address books. (I don’t know when that appeared, but I do know a 97 year old lady who uses it!)

Second, we must emphasize the value of human creativity and human ingenuity. I don’t think we do this enough especially since we grownups, and certainly the kids, love shortcuts — or hacks, as we now call them. I watched a class of preschool kids the other day collecting leaves and constructing words, and marveled at the awe they had for the most basic tools of creativity. I wondered what might happen to their developing appreciation of botany, and design, if we issued them iPads and asked them to download leaves from the Web, and create art with DallE2. Having them wander around the garden and identify spatulate, rhomboid and orbicular leaves would do more for a future botanist than a few clicks on an iPad using Procreate.

Third, we need to slow things down. [Note to self: I need to tap the brakes more often in class.] The Attention Hackers sold us on speed: faster processors, quicker downloads, livestreams. It has exacted a price, denying young people time to contemplate, to think through a complex web of information.

We tend to love distraction in all its guises. While I was typing up this post and editing an accompanying podcast, I chanced upon a TIME Magazine in the local library (the AI issue with Elon Musk on its cover) in which the CEO of TIME interviewed Intel CEO in a short piece titled ‘The Future is Now.’ How fortuitous!

When we get back to school after Fall break, my students will put the final touches to a 4-page technology report (called “The Future is Now”) they worked on. It’s an extension of a presentation they did on Patents, but with more research and references. In that TIME article, Intel’s CEO makes a pitch for what he calls the ‘AI PC.’ He talks of having some guardrails around AI, saying “We cannot let ourselves blindly follow economic and algorithmic innovations that run amok.” ‘We’ as in the tech industry? Or ‘we’ the end users?

We, not the algorithms, may be the ones currently running amok, chasing after shiny new objects that distract us from the real purpose of education, work, life and everything, all at once. Which is why in class, I often ask my students to take a pause, turn off their computer screens, and start a conversation. These may be small steps, but they deny the attention hackers the opportunity to weasel their way into our children’s lives.