Showing posts with label FOMO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FOMO. Show all posts

Monday, March 11, 2019

Five Tips to Manage Technology For a More Relaxing (Spring Break) Vacation


It's the time of year when many people take a week off for a spring break. Perhaps to a warmer location, a ski trip to the mountains, or just a staycation. Minnetonka students will be on break at the end of the month. Regardless of what you may do, consider disconnecting and possibly going off the grid completely to make your time off even more relaxing. If you have kids, help them to do so as well. Consider the following:
  1. Decrease or fast completely from social media for the week. Rather than spending time monitoring what others are doing on their vacation or posting about what you are doing, just enjoy your own time. If this is too hard for you (or your kids), try smaller amounts of time away from social media- perhaps limit time to a couple check-ins per day. While you're at it, talk about FOMO.

  2. Take a break from--or at least not continually monitor--work email. Most likely less than 20% of the email you receive needs your attention anyway. Personal email can wait, too, if not a week at least not more than a couple glances/week. Consider breaks from texting and Snapchat, too, perhaps using Do Not Disturb to create free times and help your kids experience this, too.

  3. Turn off notifications and interruptions on your phone. Remember that each buzz or beep distracts you from relaxing and being present with those around you. Turn off the badge app icons displaying missed messages and alerts (the red circle with the white number in the top right corner of each app). These are designed to get your attention and cause you to open the app to see what you're missing--FOMO again.

  4. Don't check the news. Lately on vacations I've eliminated my reading of the news and avoided apps/sites with headlines. Rather than being discouraged by what's happening, I've found it freeing to not be in the know. Try it. Encourage kids to do this, too, whether it is news, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat.

  5. Spend time with friends and family in conversation without technology in use. Set aside time to play games. Show your kids ways to have fun without needing micro entertainment, apps and video games filling their downtime. If you don't normally keep tech away from meal times, a vacation in a new location is a great place to introduce this practice.
Hopefully these tips will help you better enjoy an upcoming vacation or time off. If you can't get completely off the grid, hopefully you can at least decrease the time you spend on it so you can enjoy a vacation more. Of course, you can do all of these at other times, too, such as an evening or a weekend. It's often easier to implement changes in small increments, but getting a vacation away from devices can be a great catalyst for change. Let me know if you try any of these tips or have your own, too.

    Read more about this topic through these related posts: 

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    Monday, December 24, 2018

    Be Where Your Feet Are: High School Edition



    I first wrote about "be where your feet are" almost four years ago. It was a phrase I had heard from one of our media specialists, Kelli Whiteside. She used this phrase with her family to remind them to focus on the people around them and not their screens. I adopted this phrase with my own family and share it with students and parents when I present on digital health and wellness. 

    Recently our high school students and staff put together a video (above) for the students to help remind them to be where their feet are in the hallways and classrooms at school, encouraging them to be present with those around them. This was shown during the morning school wide televised announcements. Through some funny scenarios students can see what might happen when they are too distracted by their personal devices to really be aware to what's going on around them. At the end the principal, Jeff Erickson, quotes Ferris Bueller and reminds students, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."  Very true! With the New Year just a week away, consider setting a resolution so spend more time being where your feet are. It's certainly something one which many of us could improve.

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    Monday, October 2, 2017

    Top Tips for Educators to Help Students & Parents with Technology (video)

    A few days ago I had the opportunity to join Mathew Meyers once again for a presentation about technology. Specifically, our presentation was designed to help teachers understand ways to help students and their parents use technology in a balanced and appropriate way. This conversation is one that I’ve had in the past with Mathew—last spring we recorded two parent webinars on this topic. (Watch Part I or Part II of Parenting in the Digital Age). In this latest presentation, we cover some of the same topics with teachers that we addressed with parents, but focus more from the perspective of how teachers and educators can help students and parents. A more detailed outline is listed below.

    We all want our students to have safe, healthy, and responsible relationships with technology. Mathew points out that
    “adults don’t have a template for this—we really are historically blind with how we lead people into a safe, healthy relationship with technology. Parents and educators don’t have the wisdom of those who came before us in regards to how to raise kids with technology. We need to be thoughtful and mindful about how we are engaging with technology. It is resetting how we do relationships, human development, important to be thoughtful so the the implications aren’t detrimental to our future.”  
    The K-12 school years are the opportune time to help students learn to have  healthy relations with the technology in their lives, and educators play a critical role in helping with this. As the lines between personal and school related technologies becoming increasingly blurred, it is more important than ever that today’s students hear about these topics in the school setting. 

    Watch the presentation recording in full or skip ahead to a section:

    Introduction

    Staff-Student-Parent Triangle
    Parent Anxiety, The Device is Not the Problem, the Importance of Alignment and Working as a Team to Help Students, The Power of a Phone Call vs. Email

    Screen Time & Balance
    Entertainment vs. Educational Screen Time

    Attention & Focus, Addiction
    Two Different Attention Systems
    Turning off notifications
    Addictive apps like a pocket slot machine

    Stopping Cues & Natural Consequences
    Humans are finite, but technology/computers can work forever
    Look for logical breaks, incremental time
    Using Apple Guided Access
    Address the behavior vs. taking away technology
    Allowing failure, letting go

    Modeling & Personal Balance
    Being present—be where your feet are

    Relationships & Social Media
    FOMO vs. JOMO
    What age should a child get a smartphone?
    What age to start using social media?
    Relationships, Connection, and Rice Cakes

    Next Steps
    Resources
    Mathew’s blog, Relationships That Heal

    Also, if you are in the Minnetonka area, check out Mathew’s upcoming parent workshops on Teens & Technology through Minnetonka Community Education: 
    • October 10 - What Kids Do on the Internet and its Impact on Development
    • October 17 - Identify Strategies to Keep Technology from Controlling Your Family
    • October 24 - Taking Back Control – Create a Family Digital Strategy
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    Monday, July 24, 2017

    Just 3 Taps to See Your Total Time of Phone/iPad App Use per Day/Week

    Ever wonder how much time you spend on your phone? Or perhaps believe you don't spend much time at all but want to confirm it? Here's an easy, super fast way to see your personal phone use. In just three taps, you can view how many minutes/hours you have spent in every app in either the past 24 hours or the past week:
     
    1. Tap Settings
    2. Tap Battery
    3. Tap the clock as circled in the image.

    This will display which apps you have used the most and for exactly how long. As I've written in the past, having personal data is an eye opening reality check. Data helps us see the difference between our intentions and reality. It can help us get motivated to change our practices. When you do this with students or your own children, spouse, or friends, it can lead to great discussions. Take, for example, the two phone screenshots pictured. I'm pretty sure you can quickly determine which one is     from my phone and which one is from my high school daughter's phone. This personal data makes for a good discussion starter about the beliefs and values we have around the role of technology in our lives and how we choose to spend our time.

    There are apps like Moment which use this battery use/time data to track and graph these totals for you, and even help you set goals and alerts to remind you to not use your device as much if you so choose. Moment now works for entire families, too, helping you share and set goals and hold one another accountable, too. Parents may wish to check out Curbi, too, to remotely access this report for your child's phone and set up rules, filters, and time limits. I'm currently testing out XooLoo, which works like Curbi but makes the data available to the kids, too, so they can self-monitor. 

     Even if you don't use a special app for this, try reviewing your battery usage totals for a few weeks. Create a reoccurring calendar appointment to take a weekly screenshot of your phone use and compare your totals. Reflect on where and how long you are spending your time. Set goals as necessary. Ask yourself whether the amount of time you are spending in apps reflects your values and beliefs about how you want to spend your time (and who you want to be). Take a careful look how you are keeping busy and therefore what you aren't doing. Personally, I just finished another Facebook fast, this time for six months. If I wasn't paying attention to my personal data and app usage, I'm sure I wouldn't even realize how much time I spend on my phone. Set a goal for more JOMO!

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    Monday, June 20, 2016

    Single Tasking to Combat Self-Induced Distraction and Infomania

    Image Source
    I frequently have written about something I first learned about on the Note to Self podcast, such as the Attention Economy, JOMO, and Crystal. Back in January, Note to Self issued a challenge for listeners combating Infomania and I participated.  Recently they revisited the topic with an Infomagical Bootcamp and it was a great refresher. I encourage you to listen to it (20 minutes is all it will take). Here are my highlights:

    • Multitasking is actually switching many tasks rapidly rather than doing more than one thing at once; not really new information, but important to understand. Switching attention uses glucose and is tiring, as well as increases stress. Scientists have determined that it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds after an interruption to get refocused. Yikes!
       
    • There are external caused interruptions (such as a new email ding or incoming text message) and internally instigated interruptions (checking Facebook or surfing the web without being prompted). Scientists have observed that interruptions are "self perpetuating", meaning that if you have had a hectic hour of external interruptions, you are likely to frequently self-interrupt your work and thoughts the next hour even when not prompted to do so externally. We are making things worse for ourselves!
       
    • Research shows that the more urbanized you are, the more likely you are to be a "digital junkie" who spends more time consuming information and talking about it with others. However, only half the information we take in daily even gets stored and used in the future.
       
    • One solution: single tasking. Make lists and prioritize these to-do lists. Get things out of your mind that don't need your attention at that moment which would be a distraction. Our brain can only hold four items at a time anyway.
       
    • Another tip I found beneficial- don't let the environment dictate what you do. For example, starting your day off by sitting at your computer to answer the most recent emails allows those items to dictate what you are focusing on vs. spending time deeper in thought on a more important task or project from the previous day. 

    Personally, I have found the Things program great for my lists and to-dos. I have also found it beneficial to take control of my phone and its apps by turning off almost all notifications, badges, and alerts. I believe it's important to reflect on our use of technology, which I've called Techcognition, as well as help our kids (who can't imagine life any differently) learn to do this. Single tasking is a skill I can help my kids learn and try to practice myself.  I hope you will, too!

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