Education Week - April 3, 2024 - 17

Q&A
It Terrifies
Me': Clinical
Psychologist
On Tech
Overuse in
The Age of AI
L
isa Strohman, a clinical psychologist
who specializes in technology overuse,
makes the case that you can track the
rise in youth mental health problems
from the introduction of Instagram and
Snapchat in 2010. Those social media sites and what
would come later-TikTok-fueled the overuse and
misuse of technology, especially among school-age
kids.
That is why she has dedicated her career to connecting
the dots between technology overuse/misuse
and mental health problems. She is not a Luddite,
far from it-she tests out new technologies like
ChatGPT and other AI tools and believes technology
has a meaningful role in teaching and learning. But
she has grave concerns that many kids in the current
generation are using technology in ways that are driving
them into a mental health hole that will prevent
them from reaching their true potential academically
and personally. And Strohman-the author of Unplug:
Raising Kids In A Technology Addicted World,
and Digital Distress: Growing Up Online-believes
schools and parents can help turn the tide in a better
direction.
Education Week spoke with Strohman via Zoom
about her work. This interview was edited for brevity
and clarity.
Q: Walk into a school and you often see
kids at a table together, all on their phones,
not talking to each other. What are the
downsides of that kind of behavior?
I go into schools and look at their tech policies, I
look at their school lunches, and I walk the campus
because I want to see how they're managing that
[challenge]. It is one of the biggest complaints about
recess in the elementary schools or lunches in middle
and high school. What it does to the kids is it really
gives them a buffer and an excuse. It gives them the
ability to manage their decisionmaking based upon a
phone, and they don't really have to have the difficult
conversations or learn how to create a conversation.
So eye contact is gone.
Q: Tell us about the work you're doing
with schools.
I created a program called Digital Citizen Academy
that was my effort as a clinical psychologist working
with families for almost two decades to give support
where I could see it needed to be. I did a K-8 program
so we can start in elementary school. The approach
is really going to the school, help the school understand:
What is your tech policy? How are you creating
a partnership with the parents? Because the shift
that I saw for almost a decade was that schools would
say these devices were the parents' issue because
they're buying them for their kids. And the parents
would say, " But you've got my kid for eight hours a
day, so why aren't you fixing it? " And so there's been
a standoff.
And, so, I came in and I was like, " Hey, look, we
can actually educate both of them. " We can have the
parents go through a parent program that gives them
the education on the research, the structural damage,
the neurochemical damage, the things that happen
from a technology-overuse standpoint, and we can
get them educated and then we can get the kids [involved].
They are the most powerful technological
cohort in history, and the industry is banking on them
being siloed and separated without being able to band
together and understand that they have a voice. We
teach kids how to become ambassadors in this space,
Interview with
Lisa Strohman
Psychologist and
Founder/CEO,
Digital Citizen Academy
By
Kevin
Bushweller
Technology Counts 2024 | 17
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Education Week - April 3, 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 3, 2024
