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Anxious Generation Study

Ted’s entire newsletter is a worthy read here, but this part about new research indicating that the current genertion of young people growing up in a phone-based culture (globally) is doing real harm and damage. It makes me think back to the tobacco industry trying to pretend that cigarettes don’t hurt people or the petroleum companies hiding the neurological effects of lead-infused gasoline and so on…

Crisis in the Culture: An Update – by Ted Gioia:

Haidt declared victory on social media: “There are now multiple studies showing that a heavily phone-based childhood changes the way the adolescent brain wires up, in many ways including cognitive control and reward valuation.”

We still need more research. But we can already see that we’re dealing with actual physiological decline, not just pundits’ opinions.

At this point, the debate isn’t over whether this is happening. Instead we now need to gauge the extent of the damage, and find ways of protecting people, especially kids.

AI and Bicycle of the Mind

I don’t have the same optimism that Thompson does here, but it’s a good read and worth the thought time!

The Great Flattening – Stratechery by Ben Thompson:

What is increasingly clear, though, is that Jobs’ prediction that future changes would be even more profound raise questions about the “bicycle for the mind” analogy itself: specifically, will AI be a bicycle that we control, or an unstoppable train to destinations unknown? To put it in the same terms as the ad, will human will and initiative be flattened, or expanded?

Why I am Using a Light Phone

I have lots more to say about this, but I wanted to share this vital part of a recent article about “dumbphones” in The New Yorker. I’ve been attempting to be much more deliberate about using technology and devices, especially in front of my children and students.

The Light Phone (and Camp Snap camera) have been a significant part of that effort. I’ve been in love with the Light Phone since converting from an iPhone earlier this year.

The Dumbphone Boom Is Real | The New Yorker:

Like Dumbwireless, Light Phone has recently been experiencing a surge in demand. From 2022 to 2023, its revenue doubled, and it is on track to double again in 2024, the founders told me. Hollier pointed to Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation,” about the adverse effects of smartphones on adolescents. Light Phone is receiving increased inquiries and bulk-order requests from churches, schools, and after-school programs. In September, 2022, the company began a partnership with a private school in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to provide Light Phones to the institution’s staff members and students; smartphones are now prohibited on campus. According to the school, the experiment has had a salutary effect both on student classroom productivity and on campus social life. Tang told me, “We’re talking to twenty to twenty-five schools now.”

Thinking About Screentime

I’ve become much more of a book person as I’ve gotten older. Also, notebooks. That would seem quizzical to my younger self that reveled in every new productivity and reading app released on iOS or Android as I combed through blogs, subreddits, and Twitter lists, looking for the latest and greatest note-taking app.

Alas, getting old is interesting.

Screentime is definitely something that’s been on the front of my mind for the last few decades as I’ve welcomed children into this world (including Lily as of August 1!) and young people ranging from 12 to 18 into my classrooms.

I plan to read this book, so I’m using this as a space-saver for myself to return to when I’m done (and in the middle of the school year).

Screentime is a fascinating cultural concept. The amount of “screentime” we actually consume is lower than it’s ever been (no, really). But is the measurement of “time” really what we should be focused on or worried about?

Regardless, my students will still have their devices in the “off” mode, and we’ll focus on the great ideas with our brains, pen/cil, paper, and each other’s voices like we’ll continue to not have devices on during dinners or downstairs time here in our home…

A Different Way to Think About Screentime:

Parents have a hard time when they don’t know something. I’ve written this elsewhere, but I think one of the basic things that underlies a lot of the book bannings and pronoun panics from parent-activists on the far-right is the very simple fact that parents don’t know what their kids do all day. My daughter Maeve is 7, and I volunteered this spring to help with a field trip for her first-grade class. The bus was late, and so I ended up just sitting in her classroom for about 45 minutes while the day went on as usual. Maeve is very talkative, and she loves telling us stories about her day, but it wasn’t until I sat in that classroom that I realized how little I actually knew about what the ordinary beats of that day were like, what the social dynamics were, what kind of job her wonderful teacher — hello, Mr. Diego Fernandez — is tasked with doing.

My Music Since 2005 … with Kids

I’m very particular about my algorithms. Whether it’s Netflix or Disney Plus or (especially) my Spotify account… I don’t have much grace for those who mess with my beloved stats and recommendations.

Music was one of those things that changed my life as a young person and opened my eyes to a wider world of thought and expression. I would lovingly arrange my CD collection weekly by descending order of how much I liked albums or artists as a 14-year-old. That continued into my binders of CDs we all kept in our cars in the late 90s while I was in college.

Of course, Napster and the trading community around bands such as Phish and the Grateful Dead led me to many late-night sessions working on papers and burning CDs on my trusty desktop in the early ‘00s while a grad student at Yale.

Then came the iPod. I had the second generation (yay Firewire!) and had a revelation about the portability of 1,000 songs in my pocket (A THOUSAND!). That also meant that whatever remaining physical media I had quickly became digital and I began to pour money into iTunes. Pandora came into the picture around this time, and I still have a playlist there going back to 2003.

All along the way, I waited for the day I could keep track of what I listened to and track long-term trends beyond what the iTunes interface offered. Then Last.fm launched, and I was beyond excited to have that service finally (complete with API’s and an open RSS feed that I would even tie into a Twitter bot that tweeted out what I was listening to in my house… sadly that broke in 2015). When Spotify finally arrived in the USA from Europe, I jumped on the bandwagon immediately and hooked it up to my Last.fm profile. And so, I’ve had a music catalog of what I’ve been listening to since August 2005.

Way back in 2012, I made a post about this as well. However, the Google Home and Apple HomePods were still a few years off, and my algorithms were protected. I’ve been good about keeping accounts separate and all of our children have their own Disney Plus, Netflix, and especially Spotify profiles.

However, in a moment of weakness, I connected my Spotify account to the Google Home profile that works for the device in our 4-year-old’s bedroom. BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO LISTEN TO PEPPA PIG STORIES. You can glimpse the carnage wrought on my once pristine and full of indie jangle pop Last.fm page documenting my personal music history. After just a week of torment, I now see this in my once-beloved Daily Mix.

And what is this madness on my Spotify dashboard… Grizzley and the Kids?? THE LEGO MOVIE 2 (ok, the movie was good and the ending made me cry)??

I thought about spending a few hours going through my Spotify and Last.fm profile and deleting all the 2,130 plays of Peppa Pig and associated music befouling my algorithm.

But then I stopped. And I laughed. And then I smiled. The story of my 4-year-old and our relationship is also being told here. I’ll never get back this time with her and her resolute love of Peppa Pig Stories or whatever Grizzley and the Kids is. I’ll always have this record of the seven days we got to share something very important to me and hopefully one day to her.

Being a parent means giving so much of yourself in completely unexpected ways. We know that we will have to give our young ones time, money, attention, lessons, sleep, etc. We don’t ever imagine something like a Spotify algorithm or list of songs that seemingly meant so much over the last 20 years could be impacted by a child or given over to them for a week.

But they are, and that’s amazing.

In the giving and sharing of ourselves as parents, we find the real soundtrack of our life and how our selfish wishes or want of specific songs to be played do not always determine that soundtrack.

So thank you to my 4-year-old for the reality check and the lesson she has given me with her songs. And for sharing those with me on my algorithm. Her playlist is amazing. I can’t wait to see how the soundtrack of her life develops and to know I will carry a little snippet of it here.

But rest assured… I changed her Google Home device’s default music service option to Apple Music since I don’t care about that algorithm. She can totally take Apple Music 🙂

Apple Shutting Down ‘Dark Sky’

I’m going to miss Dark Sky. It was one of those important iOS apps that made a generation of early adopters into lifelong users.

As a reminder, Apple says it will be shutting down Dark Sky on January 1, 2023. The popular weather app was already removed from the App Store in September and it will stop functioning for existing users starting tomorrow.

Apple Irony on Choices

Pretty funny because I read this via Apple News and there’s no way to share it out to a web browser on my iPad…

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, told The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern that the company’s goal is to “give users a choice.” Those four words are at the core of the problem with the position Facebook has taken since Apple announced the changes last year at its developer conference.

apple.news/Abn8vqkkBTbSgzqaCzwjnAQ

Apple’s Podcasters Program Agreement

Have to say it again… host it on your own. Don’t rely on Spotify or Apple or Google to grow your podcasting audience or business. That path only leads to destruction.

I read through the “Apple Podcasters Program Agreement” and related documentation so you don’t have to. Here’s a thread of 11 things that caught my eye that I hadn’t seen mentioned anywhere else.

Source: The Future of Apple Podcasts

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Since I was in college (maybe before), I found the concept of pillows strange. So, I started sleeping without one. I’ve always primarily been a “stomach sleeper” (which is a benefit if I ever do contract Covid, I guess). My normal sleeping posture involves my head resting on my left arm face down with my right arm curled up so that my right hand is curled just below my chin.

I’m not sure why I have such an aversion to pillows. I’m not alone, evidently. King Henry VIII banned the use of soft pillows for anyone except pregnant women.

Maybe it’s that independent streak I have and my assurance that I shouldn’t have to rely on things like external pillows for comfort and sleeping posture if I can do it all on my own. Which seems to be a good metaphor for this time in our lives where we are all forced to reconsider what is important and what we rely on to make it through our days and nights. Whether that’s the camaraderie of a busy office space with our co-workers, or meals with friends, or opening night of a major movie in a crowded theater… our brains are undergoing cognitive loads that many of us aren’t realizing but definitely feeling the effects in our day-to-day walk through life.

But in times of change and disruption, the creative spark is made more available as our brains try to make sense of a new reality. Perhaps that what’s the pillow was supposed to prepare us for over the last 10,000 years or so that we’ve actively been using them as human beings. Learning to find comfort in the dark and mysterious time of night with all of its dragons and witches and spells while we give our brains time to defrag from a long day of processing being human.

Most of us aren’t spending our days gathering barley, millet, and emmer or stalking a herd of antelope hoping for a successful hunt to feed our families and appease our gods… but 2020 is weird. Give your brain time to rest and process at night whether you use a pillow or not. Dream up new avenues for your own creativity whether you’re looking for a business angle, a sermon message, or just a new hobby to replace Netflix binging.

What I’m Thinking About Today

How Twitter and Facebook plan to handle Trump’s accounts when he leaves office – NY Times

At Tuesday’s hearing, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said the company would no longer make policy exceptions for Mr. Trump after he leaves office in January. During Mr. Trump’s time as a world leader, Twitter allowed him to post content that violated its rules, though it began adding labels to some of the tweets starting in May to indicate that the posts were disputed or glorified violence.
“If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away,” Mr. Dorsey said.

Well this out to be interesting…

Yeah, Apple’s M1 MacBook Pro is powerful, but it’s the battery life that will blow you away – TechCrunch

This thing works like an iPad. That’s the best way I can describe it succinctly. One illustration I have been using to describe what this will feel like to a user of current MacBooks is that of chronic pain. If you’ve ever dealt with ongoing pain from a condition or injury, and then had it be alleviated by medication, therapy or surgery, you know how the sudden relief feels. You’ve been carrying the load so long you didn’t know how heavy it was. That’s what moving to this M1 MacBook feels like after using other Macs.

Keyword search is coming to Instagram – The Verge

Instagram users’ ability to search is getting an upgrade. Today, the company announced that English-speaking users in six countries, including the UK, US, Ireland, and Canada, will be able to search the platform using keywords. Before today, they could only search for hashtags or accounts. So, for example, if you previously wanted to find “healthy recipes,” you’d only be able to search for posts that tagged #healthyrecipes or accounts with variations on “healthy recipes” in their name or bio. Now, however, Instagram will let people search the keywords themselves, meaning posts that feature healthy recipes should surface, even if the specific tag is missing.

This is super helpful for content creators in specific niches and should help elevate quality posts that otherwise get buried in heavily trafficked hashtags.

Buy AI Created Art

Well that’s interesting.

To be updated throughout the day…