Our students aren't broken. In fact, if we look at what we as a society have trained them to do, they're performing extremely well. We handed them devices engineered by the most sophisticated attention architects in human history, we gave those devices to them younger and younger, and we stood by while algorithmic platforms spent twenty years perfecting the art of redirection. Dr. Gloria Mark at UC Irvine has the data: average focus on a digital device has dropped from two an
When Everyone Else is Scrolling: Why I'm Delaying Smartphones for My Daughters I've spent a decade teaching high school English, and I can tell you exactly when a student got their first unrestricted smartphone. Not because they tell me, but because I watch it happen in real time. The attention span fragments, the anxiety spikes, and the ability to sit with difficult thoughts disappears. I'm also a mother of two young daughters. And here's what ten years in the classroom has
Around the age of 25, I started counting the fine lines around my eyes like tally marks of distance. Each one marked a step further from the version of myself I recognized. Each birthday felt like a small theft, another year stolen from the currency I'd been taught mattered most: youth, beauty, that indefinable vibrancy that seemed to dim with each passing season. The thought that time might erode my value in ways beyond my control was unsettling. It was as though my worth co
