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Technology in education shouldn’t feel overwhelming, confusing, or disconnected from what actually works in classrooms. This show keeps it real. Each week, educator and K–12 EdTech Advisor Lindy Hockenbary shares practical strategies, stories from real teachers, and no-nonsense conversations about how to use tech in ways that feel human, joyful, and grounded in learning.
Whether you’re a teacher, a school leader, or an EdTech product builder, this show helps you Make EdTech 100 — real, relevant, and rooted in what matters most: kids.
Speaker 2: Welcome to MakeEdTech100.
I'm LindyHoc, educator, K-12
edtech advisor, and your host.
This is a podcast where we keep it real
about what actually works in classrooms.
No hype, no overwhelm, just practical
strategies, honest stories, and
tools that make a real difference
for teachers and students.
So come along with me on a
journey to MakeEdTech100.
Speaker: Today, we are going to continue
my series on the screen time debate.
So if you haven't listened to
episode 13 yet, I wanna encourage
you to go back and start there.
It's called "Not All Screen Time Is
Created Equal." It sets up everything
we're gonna talk about today.
You can absolutely listen without
it, but that episode is kind of
the beginning of this series, and I
will put the link in the show notes.
To start, I want to talk about TikTok.
I have been posting clips
from this podcast on TikTok.
I am a big TikTok user, if you
follow me, and so I'm trying to
post a lot more rather than just
consume, but actually contribute.
And recently, I posted one of my
tech check or tech rec clips from the
podcast where the guest and I were
discussing school cellphone bans.
The challenge with pulling these
clips from, you know, a 30 to hour
minute long podcast episode is
you only get a tiny glimpse of the
conversation and not all of the context.
And the argument that we were making in
the clip was that instead of having full
phone bans, especially the statewide bans,
they're not even allowed in the school
building type of thing, that instead we
should teach students responsible use.
And boy, oh boy, the comments that I
got on that video, I wanna start by
reading you some of these comments to
kind of frame our discussion today.
" Easily the best policy in schools this
year AKA someone who is really firmly in
the "we need to ban cell phones" camp.
"Eh, wrong.
Parents need to be looped in on this.
Engagement went through the roof
when we took them away and when
I ditched the Chromebooks even
more." " Maybe the parents should
teach them how to properly use a phone.
Not everything can be on teachers." "I
agree they should be taught the right way
to use a phone, but that's on parents.
We can't keep adding to teachers'
plates unless we are going to take
some things off." "It's too late.
We should have done that 20 years ago.
It's far gone now.
Banning is the only answer." " That is
like saying we can teach them how to
moderate drug use." "Nah, ban the phones.
Students do not need
these devices constantly.
An adult using one is
completely different.
It's an already developed
prefrontal cortex.
If we can get away from Chromebooks,
that would be perfection." This person
went on to argue that we should keep all
technology away from people until age
25, when our brain's fully developed.
Talk about a completely
unrealistic scenario, IMO.
But, so that was kind of like-- And that
was a good summary of, like, most of the
comments, but then there was this one
comment and it said, "Explicit teaching
has a large place in education." Yes.
That.
That is exactly what I
want to talk about today.
Now, before I go further, I want to name
something important because I think a lot
of those comments, the frustrated ones,
the just ban it ones, are responding to a
position I'm not actually taking and the
guest in the clip was not actually taking.
Again, they didn't have the full
context of the conversation.
Several commenters seemed to assume
that we were arguing for unfettered,
unrestricted phone access in schools.
Absolutely not.
We were not saying that students
should just have their phones out
whenever they want with no expectations
or no structure or no guidance.
I 100% do not think that
that's what we should do.
I think that's what led us to a lot
of the current challenge that we're in
now that's leading to these phone bans.
So, that's not my position.
That has never been my position.
My position is that
there is a happy medium.
There's a centrist approach that
the current conversation keeps
skipping over to go to one extreme,
which the completely ban it extreme.
That centrist approach
kinda looks like this.
We guide students, we set clear
expectations, we establish boundaries
Around when and how devices are used,
and within that structure, allow
use when it's appropriate, when it's
purposeful, when it adds to instruction,
when it adds to learning, when it's
intentional, when the teacher actually
maybe needs that technology access.
Not unfettered access, not zero access.
The happy medium, the centrist
approach right in the middle, the
guided, intentional, taught access.
The key word there is taught.
Now, two of those comments said something
I wanna address before we go any further.
Two separate people said some version of,
"Maybe parents should teach them how to
use a phone properly. That's on parents.
That on-- That's not on teachers," right?
"That's on parents, not on teachers."
And I wanna say, you are not
wrong that parents have a
role here, 100%, absolutely.
Parents have to have a role here.
It can't completely be on schools, but
it also can't completely be on parents.
The home is the first place that
the habits with these devices are
formed, and the place where a lot
of this needs to be reinforced.
But I also replied to one of those
comments and said, "Parents don't know
how to use them properly because they
were never taught either." And I come at
this from a very personal perspective,
from both being a part of the generation,
the very first part of generations that
started to get tech access in schools.
When I was in high school,
we had a computer lab.
We did a lot of PowerPoint
and Microsoft Office things.
It was right when MSN Messenger was
a thing, so in the computer lab, we'd
log on to MSN Messenger, and then
we'd like hide it from our teacher.
So like I was there as a student, so
that's part one of my personal experience.
Part two of my personal experience
is being a teacher, and I'll, I'll
talk a little bit more about that.
Nobody had conversations with
my generation about digital
footprints, algorithms, how platforms
are designed to capture your
attention and keep your attention.
Nobody ever taught us the difference
between productive use and
passive consumption of technology.
Nobody.
Now, I know The parents of the kids
that are in school were not taught
these things either, or at least the
vast majority of them, because again,
the parents are either my generation
or they are my former students.
My former students grew up,
became parents, and now they are
handing smartphones to their kids
without the tools to guide them
because nobody ever guided them.
It's like we have this chain, this
never-ending cycle chain, this just
infinite chain that goes round and
round, and it has to be broken somewhere.
So when we say that's on parents,
that can't be on schools, that can't
be on teachers, teachers are too
overwhelmed, yes, both are true.
Part of it is parents, part of it is
at home, but part of it has to be in
school, especially public schools.
Public schools are a public service,
and this is a public crisis, so
if schools aren't addressing this
crisis, there's a problem there.
You're a public service.
You've gotta address public crisises.
Crisises.
Crisises?
Is that a word?
I think it's crisises.
Crisises?
Okay.
All right.
We'll go with crisises.
We have to reckon with the fact
that we never equipped the parents.
We have a mega-generational
gap in digital literacy, and it
started long before smartphones.
It started when I was in that high
school classroom and computer lab in
Ekalaka, Montana, trying to hide MSN
Messenger from my teachers, and now it's
compounded a lot since then with every
new platform and every new device since.
Parents cannot teach what they were
never taught, what they don't know.
By the way, I get requests from parents
all the time for workshops for them.
I've done a few things.
I did a webinar for Varsity Tutors
that was focused on parents.
I've tried to kind of like connect
with libraries, public libraries, and
offer some workshops over the years.
I haven't tried in a
while, I will admit that.
But it's really tricky
for multiple reasons.
I won't go down that path.
But they... Parents are hungry.
Most parents are hungry
for this information.
So one thing to take away here from
being a school employee is that schools
have got to teach the parents too.
You can't just say, "This is on the
parents," and then just let it hang.
There's gotta be... I actually was in
a school a couple weeks ago, and this
conversation came up, and The person I was
talking to said, "We've tried to offer,
like, after-school events and hardly
anybody shows up. Like, we get a handful
of parents that show up for these things."
And I said, "Okay, how about this?" I
am all about right now micro-learning,
and especially micro-learning for
video and catching them in the scroll.
That's part of what this episode is
gonna be about, by the way, if I ever
get to that point and quit babbling.
So I said, "Hey I, I'm thinking of it
from the perspective of teaching teachers
and teachers teaching students, but
schools need to think about this as
teaching parents and caregivers as well.
So what if you create some 30-second,
maybe 60-second videos and post
them on your social channels?
Post them as Instagram Reels.
Instagram Reels are also Facebook Reels.
Post them on TikTok.
Post them on your YouTube channel
as YouTube Shorts, so you're giving
multiple avenues for parents to
be able to get this information."
So just something to think about.
So back to my point, parents can't
teach what they were never taught,
which is exactly why we can't afford
to keep waiting and exactly why
explicit teaching in schools with
students right now matters so much.
Now, the other part of those
TikTok comments were, we can't
keep adding to teachers' plates.
I hear it 100%.
Teachers are overwhelmed.
They're burnt out.
I get it.
Um, I wanna make the case today that
this isn't one more thing added to the
teacher's already impossible list, but
this is the thing that makes everything
else make more sense, and we've gotta
figure out some other stuff to cut because
technology can't be the thing to cut.
Technology infiltrates every
single part of our lives.
It affects how we vote.
Most people get their voting
information from social media now.
They don't get it from newspapers and
magazines and watching the evening
news at 6:00 like my grandparents
did, and still do to this day.
Every single evening they watch the 6:00
news, to the point that when they're
at my house, the TV goes on at 6:00
and they wanna figure out how to get
to live TV to watch the evening news.
Maybe it's 5:00.
What time is the eve-- See?
I don't even know what
time the evening news is.
5:00, 6:00, somewhere around there.
And we don't even have
live TV at my house.
All we have are streaming services.
So every time my grandparents come visit,
we have to figure out how to get to
live TV so that they can watch the news.
My grandma is going to be 90
In August, and my grandpa just
turned 87 a few weeks ago.
They've been married 67 years.
They still watch the evening news.
They are of a very, very, very, very
small percentage that still get their
information from the evening news.
But guess what?
They both have smartphones.
My grandpa is on Facebook.
My grandma doesn't really use
her phone, but my grandpa uses
his phone all the time, and it
is literally attached at his hip.
And he is on Facebook, and I know
that he is getting very specific
algorithmic content fed to his
Facebook feed at the age of 87.
So moral of the story, technology is it.
It's not the extra thing.
It's not the thing to
add to teachers' plates.
It's the thing that needs-- Not the only
thing, but it needs to be a central part
of what teachers do and what they teach.
I know the frustration is real.
Like I said, the exhaustion is real.
Teachers are stretched thin.
They're being asked to do more
with less every single year.
There are platforms out there that
are genuinely harmful in their current
form to many people, especially kids.
The concern is valid, but also, we can't
ban our way out of digital literacy.
We can't restrict our way to
responsible technology use.
Students live in a world
filled with technology, whether
they touch a device or not.
They encountered you just on your
drive to school or the office this
morning, encountered all sorts of
technology, security cameras that
scanned your face, stoplight systems.
You might have driven through, now we
have the lanes that adapt to traffic flow
if you live in a more urban metro area.
That's all technology.
It doesn't have a device.
It doesn't have a screen.
But it's all technology that
literally you can't live in modern
society without encountering.
If students are coming to your
school, even a virtual school, they're
definitely in virtual school 'cause
they can't interact with you without
technology in a virtual school, right?
They're interacting with technology.
So what do we do to prepare them?
That's the question.
So today's episode is about the thing
I think is most missing from this
debate, not more bans, not more access,
instruction Explicit, intentional,
skilled instruction in how to use
technology well, because that is something
we can do, and it's something we are
not doing nearly enough of currently.
Right now, the conversation about
technology and kids has two sides, and
both sides are shouting past each other,
and I realize I'm on one of these sides.
I'm on the side that is
saying, " Technology is powerful.
EdTech matters.
Don't throw out the
baby with the bathwater.
Kids need digital literacy." And
then the other side is screaming
at-- I'm screaming at them.
The other side's screaming at
me, "Technology is harmful.
It's frying our brains.
Algorithms are addictive.
Kids can't handle it.
Take the phones away.
Ban the devices.
Protect childhood." Right?
We're screaming, and both sides are
talking about access and the device.
More access, less access,
restrict, allow, moderate.
But nobody's talking about instruction.
Not access, instruction.
Because here's the thing,
we don't protect kids from
hard things by removing all
exposure to those hard things.
We protect kids by teaching them how
to navigate those hard things with
skill, awareness, agency, knowledge.
We don't teach kids about
stranger danger by keeping them
inside, locked away forever.
We let them walk to school.
We let them ride their bikes to school.
I see it every morning.
I live about three-- two, three blocks
from an elementary school and maybe
five, six blocks from a middle school.
So every morning, 8:00 to 8:30,
there's the mass, Monday through
Friday, the mass going to school,
kids walking, kids riding their bikes.
Especially this time of year
in Montana, they can actually
ride their bikes to school.
And then every day, 3:00
to 3:30, it's the opposite.
They're headed home, a lot
of them aren't with adults.
So we don't lock them inside forever.
We teach them what to do when an
adult makes them feel unsafe, so we
have the conversations with them.
"Hey, while you're walking to and from
school, what happens if an adult pulls
up and rolls down their window and starts
talking to you? What do you do? How
do you react?" Education, instruction.
We teach them.
We don't teach kids about alcohol by
locking them in a room until they turn
21, and they're legally allowed to drink.
We teach them what alcohol does to
their brain, why it's designed to
feel good, what responsible choices
look like We don't teach driver's
ed by keeping teenagers off of roads
until they're 18 and then handing
them the keys with no instruction.
We send them to driver's ed.
Driver's ed used to be
all involved with school.
It very much still is in Montana,
but I know a lot of states driver's
ed has been put outside the
school now, but it's still there.
It's still something that if
you're gonna drive before you're
18, you have to take driver's ed.
And then you also have to take a
test in order to get a card that
says you're able to drive, that
you know how to drive responsibly.
You know the ways of the road,
the laws of the land, the laws of
the road, I guess we should say.
And yet, when it comes to technology,
and specifically to social media and
the way algorithms work, our primary
strategy has been remove access,
ban it, take it away, and then hand
them a phone and wish them luck.
I just had a conversation with
someone the other day about how
you literally can't function in
society without a smartphone anymore.
I gave the example of my grandparents,
who are 87 and almost 90.
We had to get them smartphones
several years ago because even
going to the doctor, now the
doctors all have online portals.
So they would get these messages that
would be like, " Oh," or, you know, they'd
hand them a piece of paper at the office
that was like, "Hey, you need to log
into your online portal to access this or
complete this." And they're like, "What?"
They don't have internet at their house.
Like, what do we do?
So they have smartphones now.
Not having a device isn't logical.
You can't, unfortunately, the way
our society works now, you can't
operate in society without a device.
I think where I had this conversation, I
was in Orange County, California, and we
were talking about how even to park at
the location of the event that morning,
you had to go scan a QR code and log
into an online portal to pay for parking.
You can't even park
without having a device.
Back to that comment I got about
how our prefrontal cortexes aren't
fully developed till we're 25.
Yep, that's correct.
That's what science and research tells us.
Our brains aren't fully developed
till around the age of 25.
Their argument was, we just don't
give tech access till age 25.
That is not feasible unless all of
society are gonna collectively go together
and get rid of our smartphones and all
technology, which is not gonna happen.
I have done this, by the way, in many
workshops where I ask people in the
room, I said, "Raise your hand if you
are willing to hand me your phone right
now and just go without your phone." And
I usually will have anywhere from zero
to one to two people raise their hand,
depending upon the size of the audience.
That's it.
Now, I said this in episode 13, I'll
say it again, there are absolutely forms
of technology that warrant restriction.
Personal smartphones with addictive social
media algorithms running during school.
Yep, don't, don't need that.
Don't wanna do that.
Platforms engineered to exploit
dopamine systems and feed kids harmful
content, those platforms deserve
regulation at the company level,
not just at the classroom level.
I said in the last episode, we need to
regulate the algorithm, not the device.
Again, I'm not arguing that kids
should have unrestricted access to
everything digital at all times.
That is not my position.
I think that most, for some ages, all
technology access needs to be restricted.
That's my position.
Not taken away, restricted, managed.
Restriction alone without
instruction is not a strategy.
It's avoidance, and eventually kids
leave school, and if the only thing we
ever did was take the phone away, we
sent them out into the world unprepared
Now, I told you this is personal
for me because I was, as an elder
millennial/Xennial, I was the generation
that had just started to use technology.
Had just started to get cell phones,
not smartphones, but flip phones.
And then also when I was teaching, I
started teaching when I was only 22, I
think was when I started teaching, and I
taught middle school and high schoolers.
So I had students that were only
three or four years younger than me.
Some of my seniors were only,
like, three years younger than
me when I started teaching.
And when I was in college, Facebook
became a thing, and at the time it
was only open to college students.
It's amazing how many people don't
realize that, that Facebook actually
started only for college students.
So that was when I was in college.
I actually vividly remember the
day my roommate showed me Facebook.
She was in her room on her computer,
and she was like, "Lindy, come here."
So I ran across the hall, and she's
like, "Look at this thing." "I'm
connecting with all these people
that I haven't talked to in forever."
And I was like, "Oh, this is
really cool." So then I went in
my room and op- got on my computer
and created a Facebook account.
So yeah, college students only.
So then when I started teaching, that
was right when Facebook had opened in
the previous year or two to anyone.
So it was open to anyone.
It wasn't just college students
anymore, and this included my
students, especially my high school
students all had Facebook accounts.
And the advice that I got from the
adults around me, my mentor teachers, the
other teachers in my school, et cetera,
everybody told me to just ignore it.
As a new, brand-new teacher, a
very young, brand-new teacher, they
said, "Just act like it exists.
J- just ignore it.
Don't friend your students on Facebook.
Don't engage with it.
Kinda just act like it doesn't exist,"
was the advice that I was given.
And over the years, I've realized that
that was the worst advice possible.
Possibly the worst advice that
I ever received as an educator.
I've received some not great advice
in my first few years of teaching.
That is definitely in the top three.
I don't know if I could rank it the
worst, worst, but definitely in the top
three of worst advice that I received
as a new Especially new, young teacher.
Because what I should have done,
what I wish someone had told me
to do, was the exact opposite.
I should have been having conversations
with my students about what they were
posting, about the fact that nothing
on the internet ever goes away, about
how a photo or a post or a comment
that they made when they're 15, 16, 17
could affect their ability to get a job
at 20 and 25 and 30 and 35 years old.
I should have been talking about
digital footprints and what
they are and why it mattered.
But nobody told me to do that.
Also, nobody taught me, so I didn't.
I didn't teach my students.
I acted like it didn't
exist, and I moved on.
And I'm still haunted about that
to this day, especially considering
what I now do for a living.
Those students, the ones I never had
those conversations with, are now adults.
Many, I would say most of them, are
now parents, and they are handing their
kids smartphones with access to apps
and algorithms far more sophisticated
and far more addictive than Facebook was
at that point in the mid to late 2000s
.
And why are they doing it?
Because nobody ever guided
them through it themselves.
There were no restrictions at that point.
Things like Bark, the Bark app
that parents can put on phones,
that didn't exist at that time.
Facebook was really the only social media
for a bit, then we got Instagram, and
I don't know what order that came in.
So again, to those people that
are saying this is on parents,
we can't add to teachers' plates,
they don't know.
They don't know how to do it
'cause we never taught them.
I was one of the teachers who had a chance
to start that conversation back when the
stakes were lower and the technology was
simpler, and I was told to look away.
So I did, and now those students are
the parents, and the cycle continues.
We missed a generation, and
I think about that a lot, and
I think about the timeline.
Facebook launched in
20- around 2005, 2006.
It took 10 to 15 years for the negative
effects of not just Facebook, but
Instagram and all the other social media
platforms out there to have negative
effects on mental health, attention,
create political polarization I should
say extreme political polarization.
I shouldn't say it creates, it adds to.
That's better.
Adds to extreme political polarization.
The negative effects on wellbeing,
especially of teens and preteens, it
took 10 to 15 years for those things
to become visible enough and documented
to really make headlines, and then it
took another five to 10 years after
that for policymakers to actually start
acting on it, and that's why we're
just now seeing these device bans,
especially the ones happening at the
state level from state legislators.
We're living in the delayed response
to a problem that started 20 years ago.
Now, that's the social media timeline.
That was-- It was a pretty fast
timeline, especially I remember hearing
stats over the last 10 years about how
fast, like the number of signups for
every social media platform got more
and more and more in the first days
of each one as they were released.
Like Facebook was pretty low, but
then by the time Instagram came
out, it had more signups at the
beginning than Facebook did, and then
Snapchat and et cetera, et cetera.
But now let's talk about
and think about AI.
ChatGPT launched in November of 2022
to the public, so we're a little
over three years, almost three and a
half years in to generative AI being
accessible to anyone that has an
internet connection and a device, and
we are already seeing negative effects.
Three years, a little over three
years, and we're already here.
That timeline has compressed dramatically.
We do not have 10 to 15 years to figure
out how to respond to generative AI and
agentic AI, other advanced forms of AI,
the way we had 10 to 15 years to figure
out how to respond to social media.
We don't even have five years, honestly.
The effects are arriving
almost simultaneously with
the technology itself now.
We're not seeing this delayed
negative effect like we did
with social media, for example.
Which means we can't afford to
make the same mistake twice.
That's the moral of the story here.
We can't afford to act like it doesn't
exist like we did with social media.
We can't afford to wait until the
damage is fully visible before we
start teaching responsible use.
We have to teach now while we're
still in the early chapters, because
the window we have to shape students'
relationship with these tools is much,
much shorter than it was before, and the
cost of missing it is much, much higher.
Okay.
I will quit with my magnum opus now
and get to the meat of the episode.
I'm gonna say something and I want
you to sit with it for a second.
Kids are doom scrolling because it's
the only model they've ever been shown.
The unhealthy use of technology is the
default because it is all they know.
Nobody has shown them another way.
The algorithm has been their only teacher.
I was at that event in Orange County
last week, and I had a conversation
with a tech director there who has
13-year-old twins, by the way, and
he said-- He-- I loved his analogy.
He said it used to be like when we
were kids, we would say to our parents,
"Hey, we're gonna ride our bike down to
so-and-so's house." And your parents knew
that you were gonna go to so-and-so's
house, and that's where you were gonna be.
And they knew where so-and-so
lived, what their house looked like.
They've met their parents before.
Now, students open up a phone, and they
open up social media and the internet, and
they're transported somewhere around the
room to an influencer's living room or a
house or house that they rent to film in.
That's a thing, if you didn't know that.
That's what influencers do.
They rent special houses to film in.
So we no longer, like, know where
kids are going when they open up
their phones and, and the internet
in general, especially social media.
So think about what a student's
relationship with social media
actually looks like from the beginning.
They get a phone.
, I just saw, by the way, the Social
Institute came out with a survey
they did of, I can't remember, like
tens of thousands of kids and asked
them their feelings about technology,
yada, yada, yada, and they asked
them: What age did you get a phone?
The average age, 11.
11 years old.
So they get their phone, we'll say at 11.
They download the apps their
friends are on, which There's
constantly new ones, by the way.
It's really hard to keep up as an adult
because as soon as the adults learn
about the new social app, they kinda quit
using it and go start using another one.
And the development of these
apps is just as quick as that.
The apps show them what the
algorithm decides to show them.
They scroll.
The algorithm learns what they interact
with, what they don't interact with.
It gets better at holding their attention.
The cycle continues completely
uninterrupted with no adult ever
sitting down and saying, "Hey, do you
know what this app is designed to do?
Do you know why you feel the way
that you feel when you put it down?
Do you know that there's a team of
people whose entire job Is to keep
your thumb moving and scrolling
and scrolling, endless scrolling.
Do you know that you have more power
here than the app wants you to think?
Do you know that they're likely selling
your data, and that's why the app is free?
The amount of kids that I have these
conversations with that are just appalled
and shocked because no adult has ever
talked to them in that way about the
technology that overtakes their life.
We either give them the phone and
walk away, or we take the phone and
say, "Not yet." Or maybe there's an
in-between there where we put, like,
a bark app and limit their access
to these social media platforms.
Really, none of those teach much.
And then we're surprised when they can't
self-regulate, when their attention
spans are shorter, when they reach for
the phone the second they're bored.
I do that all the time.
Totally guilty of that.
When they can't put it down, can't
put the phone down, the addiction
aspect that we're seeing in
schools, of course, they can't.
Nobody taught them how.
Nobody's had the conversations with
them about regulating their use.
Like I've said, the parents were never
taught, and the teachers couldn't teach
it 'cause they were told to look away.
At least I'm generalizing there.
I was.
I was told to look away, and now
we're three generations into this
pattern and wondering why nobody
knows how to use a smartphone well.
Maybe not.
That's not the right word.
Not use a smartphone well, , but
use it responsibly and in
a healthy, mindful manner.
This is a teaching problem, and teaching
problems have teaching solutions.
Now, some of these comments I read at
the top of the episode, the one saying
that the algorithms are too powerful,
that companies have billion-dollar
behavioral science teams designing
addiction, those aren't wrong.
That's real.
I'm not going to stand here and tell
you that a 45-minute lesson plan
is going to fully counteract the
engineering power of Meta and TikTok.
I think ByteDance is the owner of TikTok.
Meta and ByteDance.
But Knowledge is protection.
Education is protection.
Awareness is protection.
Teaching kids to recognize what's
happening to their brain, to understand
why the scroll feels the way it
feels, to name it when the algorithm
has taken the wheel and is in the
driver's seat, that changes things,
not perfectly, but meaningfully.
And I'll go one further.
We teach kids about tobacco, even though
tobacco companies also had billion-dollar
marketing teams designing addiction.
That was when I was a kid.
That's what tobacco companies were doing.
That has since been regulated a bit.
We teach kids about alcohol.
We teach about gambling.
We teach about unhealthy relationships.
We don't say, "The forces working
against you are too powerful, so we
won't bother equipping you or regulating
those forces." We teach and we regulate.
Honestly, I think both is
needed in this situation.
There was a commenter on my TikTok video
that compared teaching healthy tech use
to teaching kids to moderate drug use,
and my response was, "That is not the
same thing on any level, and here's why.
We're not asking students
to moderately engage with an
inherently harmful substance.
We're asking them to develop skills
and judgment around a tool that
has both powerful applications and
harmful applications." And they're
gonna use regardless of what we do.
We just established that.
You really can't operate in
society without a smartphone.
That's not drug use.
That's like driver's ed.
That's what it needs to be compared to.
It needs to be compared to
learning to drive, a necessary
part of being part of society.
Technology deserves that same commitment
that we've given to learning how to
drive, and that we give every other
hard thing we've decided matters
enough to teach it in our society.
So I've made the case for
why we need to teach this.
Now let me get practical.
That might have been a little bit
longer than I expected, so thank you
for sticking around for my, , , magnum
opus, my PhD, my Sunday sermon.
I needed to get that out.
Could you tell?
Let's get into some more practical stuff.
When I talk about explicitly teaching
healthy and responsible technology
use, I'm talking about a few
different things, and I want to make
sure I name those really clearly.
First, teaching tech literacy and
digital citizenship, but reframed.
Some of you, depending upon your age,
may have sat through some version
of a digital citizenship lesson.
If you haven't, usually these lessons
are compliance-based, like, "Don't
post this, don't share that, be
careful online," blah, blah, blah.
Rules-based,
what I'm talking about is different.
I'm talking about teaching students to
understand how technology works, not
just what the rules are, not just, "Do
this, don't do this," like a set of rules
that you see in a classroom or a school.
I wanna teach them what is an algorithm?
How does it work?
What data is being collected
about you, and why?
What does engagement
optimized content mean?
How does this affect what you see?
Why does the For You page on TikTok feel
different from the Following page or feed
? When students understand the mechanics,
when they can see the system they're
operating inside and that sucked them
in, they start making different choices.
Not always.
Not always.
There's always, there's always
the some, but the majority, they
start making different choices.
Um, maybe not perfectly, especially at
first, but knowledge slowly starts to
change behavior for a lot of people.
Not just, "Don't post this," but,
"Here's the actual why behind it."
Second Teaching the difference between
a doom scroll and a productive scroll.
So I did a whole webinar, well,
it wasn't the entire webinar.
Part of-- Well, it kinda was.
A chunk of a webinar for
ScreenPal a few weeks ago on this.
I will put the link in the show
notes if you wanna dive into that
more, where I talked about one of the
reasons that teachers should leverage
short-form video is to teach students
how to productive scroll, and there
is such thing as a productive scroll.
I know.
I can see and hear some of your eye rolls
right now and some of your faces being
like, "Lindy, no, there is no such thing
as a productive scroll." There-- I, I will
tell you there absolutely is, and I have
figured out how to do a productive scroll.
That doesn't mean that
I don't doom scroll.
Believe me, I do doom scroll, but I'm
very targeted and purposeful at when I
doom scroll and when I productive scroll.
A doom scroll is what happens
when the algorithm is driving.
The student is passive.
They're not choosing what they see.
The platform's choosing for them based on
what will kinda keep watching the longest.
That content is often emotionally
activating because emotional
activation keeps us scrolling.
Fear, outrage, envy,
comparing ourselves to others.
That's the engagement gold for the
algorithm, and that's what can be harmful.
Now, again, there are
times that I doom scroll.
There's times where I just want to
shut off my brain, and that's kinda
how I do it, but I only spend five,
10 minutes doom scrolling, and I'm an
adult with a fully functioned brain,
so I know how to regulate myself,
and I know that I'm doom scrolling,
productive scrolling is different.
It's intentional.
It's making an active choice to
follow people who teach me something,
to use the platform to learn, to
curate my feed towards content
that adds rather than subtracts.
A personal example of this, People
ask me all the time, like, every
AI workshop that I do, "How do
you keep up with all this stuff?
How do you learn this stuff?
Are there newsletters that I can sign
up for that will teach me these things
and bring it to my inbox?" And I always
tell them, "You're not gonna like the
answer." And the answer is TikTok.
That's how I keep up with all this stuff.
Not the only-- I would say
TikTok and podcasts are the two
ways that I keep up with this.
I don't do email newsletters super well.
They land in my inbox, and
half of them I never open.
Probably even more than half of
them, to be quite honest, never get
opened 'cause my email is a mess,
and my email is a source of work,
and I wanna spend as little time as
possible in my email Versus when I open
TikTok or play a podcast, I'm in the
mindset of, "I wanna learn something.
This is Lindy time.
I wanna learn about... I think
ChatGPT just released a new AI model.
I wanna learn about that." So I'm gonna
go to my following section of TikTok,
where I have specifically followed
people that are gonna tell me what's
new in the AI world, for example.
So when I-- Not every time.
There are times I open TikTok to
doomscroll, but most of the time
when I open TikTok, I'm learning.
I'm not just consuming.
I am learning information, and that's
a choice I make intentionally as an
adult with a fully functioned brain.
Fully functioned, fully developed brain.
Maybe fully functioned brain.
No, we're not gonna go as far to
say my brain is fully functioning.
A fully developed brain.
And it's a choice that you can teach.
Now, that doesn't mean, again, we're
gonna hand students TikTok with
no, like, unfettered TikTok access.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all.
They are kids.
They don't have fully developed brains.
They need regulation.
They need guidance.
But we can still start to model
different ways that when they get
old enough that they can have TikTok,
for example, that they're doing it
mindfully and not just doomscrolling.
, Some concrete things that I teach
around this idea of a productive
scroll versus a doomscroll.
I teach students to audit their feed.
When you open up whatever you're
using, TikTok, Instagram Reels.
Kids don't use Facebook.
YouTube Shorts.
I just had a teacher tell me the
other day that they are shutting
down YouTube access for students.
Teachers will still be able to
share YouTube videos in their LMS,
but students won't be able to go to
YouTube anymore because students were
doomscrolling YouTube Shorts over lunch.
Because guess what?
They don't have their phones anymore.
They have their school devices,
so they're opening up YouTube and
scrolling through YouTube Shorts.
That's a perfect example of a teachable
moment to teach them, what are you
seeing in your YouTube Shorts feed?
Are you seeing stuff that
the algorithm is feeding you?
Or are you seeing stuff from
people that you have purposely
subscribed to on YouTube?
Who are you following?
Are you following people that are gonna
feed you healthy, productive content?
Or are you following people that are
feeding you- content that's causing you
to have bad feelings about yourself.
Is that the feed you choose if
you were choosing intentionally?
What would you change about your feed?
So teach the difference between a, what
on TikTok is called the FYP or the For
You page, where it's the algorithm feeding
it to you and determining what you see,
versus the Following page or the Friends
page, where you're seeing curated content
that y- you have chosen, or should I
say from people that you have chosen.
For You is the algorithm's feed.
Following and Friends is
people that you choose.
Most people on TikTok live in the For
You page without ever thinking about it.
So teach them to choose.
Teach students to notice how
they feel after scrolling.
Before you open the app, check in.
After you close it, check in again.
I even have them write down on a piece
of paper, "How are you feeling right
now?" versus, "How are you feeling after?
What changed?
Was it time well spent?" This
starts building their self-awareness
that self-regulation requires.
I already talked about this a bit, but
I wanna just reinforce to teach them
how to follow people who teach them
something, and teach them something
productive, and not teach them
something that's super opinion-based.
When students start following
researchers and creators who are
actually making things and teaching
things, people doing work they want
to learn from, their relationship with
that social media platform changes.
Third, model.
And This is really where my ScreenPal
webinar was focused, is around, like, how
you as a teacher can model the healthy,
responsible use of short-form video, is
what I was talking about in particular,
and using it as part of your class.
I think this is a big
focus this year for me.
One of the most powerful things a
teacher can do right now is create
short-form video for their students,
And there are many reasons why.
Part of it is relationship building.
I talk about that in the
webinar if you wanna watch it.
But the other big part of it is that when
you as the teacher are using short-form
video, like what they see in TikTok and
Instagram Reels, for example, when that
comes in an education environment with
like a 60-second instructional video,
you're now modeling what it looks like to
use video intentionally and purposefully.
And going back to what I was saying
before, how to find people that are
gonna give you healthy educational
content on these social platforms.
We know they're gonna use the
social platforms no matter what,
so let's teach them how to use
them to find good information.
That's how I use social media.
I do very little Facebook.
I'm big TikTok user.
I do a teeny bit of Instagram.
I do a lot of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn and TikTok are my two
social platforms because guess what?
I follow people that I learn a ton from.
Students notice what their teachers
do, and when a teacher is visible
in a way that they connect with, AKA
short-form video, that's so important.
That's a teacher modeling
the healthy, responsible use.
Again, if you wanna learn more about that,
go watch that ScreenPal webinar I did.
I'll put the link in the show notes.
It's also on my website in my
events section, lindyhawk.com.
Okay, number four: give students
opportunities to create, not just consume.
So yes, you need to model the
consumption of the videos.
Let students create short-form videos.
This gets back-- And not just short-form
videos, that's just one example of
like a create versus consume thing,
where we're actually doing both.
I talked about this a lot in the
last episode, episode 13, this idea
of putting students in the driver's
seat versus the passenger seat, that
not all screen time's created equal,
not all technology's created equal.
The most powerful thing we can
do for a student's relationship
with technology is to
change them from a consumer
that's doom scrolling to a creator
or a passenger to a driver.
When a student creates something,
when they're writing, recording,
illustrating, designing, they're
no longer on the receiving end of
someone else's content and ideas
They're building their own content.
They're building their own
ideas, their own opinions.
They're looking for evidence.
That shift changes how they see
the tools, how they interact
with the tools every day.
It changes how they see themselves.
It changes what they
think technology is for.
In the last episode, I talked
a lot about Book Creator and
Snorkel, some other tools.
Canva is awesome for creation.
Adobe Express is also
amazing for student creation.
I talked about ScreenPal,
that's a great one if you wanna
create videos in particular.
These are examples of tools, not the end.
Those are just a few, uh, that really
put students in the driver's seat.
And every time a student uses one
of these tools to make something,
to communicate an idea, to share
something they know, to reach an
actual audience, they're practicing a
fundamentally different relationship with
technology than the one that algorithm
is feeding them via doom scrolling.
That's healthy tech use, and that's just
a few ways that we can help explicitly
teach healthy and responsible tech use.
Now, I know some of you are thinking,
"But Lindy, it's not all about technology.
We've gotta do some things by hand.
We've gotta use paper.
We've gotta get skids-- uh, kids
off of screens." Absolutely.
100%. Absolutely, yes.
We, we want some of that.
We want, also want some of the technology.
There are real value in analog
experiences, handwriting, drawing, reading
a physical book, working through a math
problem with a pencil and paper, we should
build in tech-free time and options.
One of the things I talk about in my
book in terms of virtual learning in
particular, but it's the same with, with
in-person learning, is give students
choices, choices huge, and always have
at least one no-tech, one low-tech,
and one high-tech option for students
to show what they know about a topic.
Like I said in episode 13,
it's all about moderation.
It's all about intentionality.
It's all about use case, not existence
it's all about how the teacher
designs and uses the technology.
The same can be said for non-tech.
There's a lot of tech things
that a teacher could do that- I
think is not super purposeful.
There's also a lot of non-tech
things that teachers can do that
I don't think is super purposeful.
It's about intentionality with all of it.
There's a time and place for paper.
There's a time and place for technology.
The goal is never to maximize screen time.
The goal is never to maximize
paper and pencil time.
It's to let the teacher make the
instructional decision about what is
best for that particular learning goal.
You cannot teach healthy technology
use by avoiding technology entirely.
You can have a lot of
conversations with students.
You can put a lot up on the board or on
the projector or SMART Board, whatever
type of screen you have in your classroom.
You can put it up and have lots of
conversations with students where
they're not actually interacting with the
technology, but you're talking about it.
But at some point, there
has to be access there.
When I'm talking about AI literacy,
the definition I use has three
verbs: use, understand, and evaluate.
And I always say there's this really
great-- It's from Digital Promise.
They have a really great graphic
that shows that those three verbs
have to go together, and if one
of those verbs is missing, then
you're not fully AI literate.
If you understand AI but you're not
using it, you're not gonna be able
to fully evaluate it, the same goes
for all tech use, in my opinion.
And of course, that varies by age level,
developmental appropriateness, et cetera.
But you can't teach someone to swim
by never letting them near the water.
You can't teach someone to drive
by never letting them near a car.
You can't teach someone healthy
technology use by never giving
them access to technology.
At some point, kids have to be in the
water, and our job is to be in there
with them, teaching strokes, teaching
what to do when a current pulls them,
teaching how to read the conditions
of the water, not standing on the
shore saying, "Water is dangerous.
Stay here on the shore." They're
gonna get in the water anyway.
They're gonna drive anyway.
They're gonna use the technology anyway.
So, adults have to jump in the
pool and learn right alongside
them, teach right alongside them.
Students are already in the water.
They're getting smartphones
on average age of 11.
So, even if you take away the
phone completely during the school
day, they're on it after school.
They're on it early.
They're on it at midnight because
they didn't have access to it all day.
The technology is already in their lives.
The question is whether anyone
has taught them how To navigate
it and use it responsibly.
Going fully analog in classrooms
doesn't change the reality that
students walk out of the school
building and pull their phone out.
It just means we've opted out of
being part of the conversation.
One of the comments on my TikTok video
said something about to the effect
of teaching them how to properly use
their phone is proving to them that
they don't need them all of the time.
Yeah.
I 100% agree, but proving that they don't
need it all the time doesn't have to mean
completely banning it from the building.
Tech-free time is part of
healthy tech education.
The goal is not more, it's better
judgment about when screens
serve us and when they don't.
And I truly believe that judgment is
teachable, but it has to be taught
explicitly, not just assumed to develop
on its own when we remove the device.
So yes, build in tech-free time.
Absolutely.
Use paper when paper is the better tool.
Let kids write by hand.
Grab the Post-it notes.
I love Post-it notes.
If you've ever been to my workshops, I
always have Post-it notes on the table.
I also use index cards a lot.
Highlighters, grab 'em all.
All of that's good and appropriate and
part of healthy instructional design.
And also, when technology is
available, use it when appropriate.
And don't just use it, teach it.
Teach what the tool is doing.
Teach students to be in the driver's
seat rather than the passenger seat.
Teach them to notice, to choose,
to create rather than just consume.
All of these things can
be true at the same time.
We don't have to pick one or the other.
We don't have to say, "Oh, no, tech is
bad. We're gonna get rid of all of it."
Just like when schools started going
more one-to-one and get more tech
access, they didn't say, "Oh, we're
only going to use technology." Well,
some people that were doing paperless
classrooms did do that, but I told
you in the last episode, that was . If
you didn't catch that, if you're not
watching, that was me doing a thumbs down
No paperless classrooms.
That's not the goal
So coming back to those comments I read
at the beginning of the episode, I'm
not dismissing those comments at all.
The people who left those comments,
they're not wrong to be concerned.
They're not wrong that the
forces at work are powerful.
They're not wrong that this is hard, and
that we are asking teachers to do more.
What I want to push back
on is the conclusion.
The conclusion that because
it's hard, we shouldn't try.
That because the algorithms
are powerful, that teaching
responsible use is pointless.
That because kids struggle to
self-regulate, we shouldn't just take
the device away and call it a day.
Because here's what that
conclusion means in practice.
We send kids out into a world full of
algorithmically optimized, engagement
maximizing, attention hijacking
technology, and the only preparation
we gave them was a restriction that
expired when they turned 18, or better
yet, when they graduated high school.
That's not protection.
That's a delay with really serious
consequences, and we've already
seen what that delay costs.
My Facebook story is not ancient
history, even though it was 20 years ago.
The patterns that I failed to interrupt
by not having the conversations with my
students at that time are showing up in
their kids' lives, amplified, accelerated,
and way more sophisticated technology
than we were dealing with back then.
If you remember right, there was a
comment that basically said, "It's too
late, and we should have done this 20
years ago, and so now the only option
is just to take the devices away."
No.
I refuse to accept that it's too late
because that reasoning is exactly the
thinking that will ensure we miss the next
generation, too, and the one after that.
It's never too late.
It's never too late for
education and knowledge.
But the window is short,
and we have to start now.
So start naming it in your classroom,
not with fear, not with a list of
rules, with curiosity and honesty.
Have the conversations.
Talk to your students
about how algorithms work.
Ask them what they're seeing in
their feeds Ask them how they
feel before and after they scroll.
Create a space for the conversation.
You might be surprised how
much they already sense.
They just don't have the language
for it yet, so give them the
language to talk about it.
Model it.
Use technology purposefully in your own
professional life and the way that you're
teaching them, and let students see that.
Create short-form videos.
Show them what it looks like
when an adult uses these tools
with intention and purpose.
Be a counterexample to the bad
content that your students are
seeing in their algorithm feeds.
Give them something to make and create.
Create the conditions for your
students to be in the driver's
seat, not the passenger seat.
Use tech to create, to communicate,
to share with an authentic audience.
That is the most powerful shift I think
we can do right now, enabling creation.
And be an advocate, not just
for banning the bad stuff, but
for teaching the good stuff.
Be a centrist.
Leverage all the powerful parts of the
technology while mitigating all of the
bad parts of the technology, just like
we do with other things in our life.
It's all about moderation.
Push for both, name both.
Don't let the conversation stay
stuck on access when the real
work is teaching and instruction.
And for those who said we can't
keep adding to teachers' plates,
I wanna close the loop on that.
You're right that teacher capacity is
real, and the ask has to be sustainable,
but I gently push back on that framing
this as one more thing added to the pile.
Teaching students to use technology
well is not separate from teaching.
It is teaching.
Our society is so interwoven by
technology, and more and more
every day, especially now that AI
is getting more and more advanced,
it's starting to get super fuzzy.
Like, we can't separate technology
from how we operate as humans.
To summarize, those comments I got
on TikTok about how we can't teach
kids to use technology, about how
it's too late, how banning's the only
answer, I wanna say this directly.
I disagree, respectfully and strongly
disagree, not because your concern isn't
valid, it is a valid concern, but because
I have watched teachers do this work.
I have been in classrooms where students
were learning to understand algorithms,
to curate their feeds intentionally,
to create rather than just consume I
have seen what happens when you give
a student a tool and a purpose and a
real audience and say, "Make something.
Create something." And give them the
time and space and access to do that.
The relationship with technology
changes and the way that kids see
technology changes when we do that.
And I know what it looks like
when we don't do this work.
I lived it, again, as a
student and a teacher who acted
like Facebook didn't exist.
I was the teacher who missed those
conversations, and those students now
raising kids of their own deserve better,
and the kids of today deserve better.
We can't look away from AI the way
we looked away from social media.
The timeline is too compressed.
The stakes are too high.
The window is too short.
So we have to teach them now with
the tools we have in the classrooms
we're in with the students in front
of us, and we can't do that if the
technology access is being taken
away or moved into a computer lab.
All screen time is not created equal.
We're not talking about
the same technology.
It's not about the technology, it's
about the decisions we make around it.
And one of the most important
decisions we can make is to teach
students how to make good decisions.
Speaker 3: Thanks for
joining MakeEdTech100.
I know educator time is valuable, and I'm
honored you choose to spend yours with me.
For more ed tech strategies you can use
tomorrow and ways to bring me to your
school or event, head to lindyhawk.com.
If this episode resonated, hit Subscribe
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I'm LindyHoc.
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