How Technology is Transforming Students' Brains

[00:00:00.60] SPEAKER: Welcome to Corwin's Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast with hosts Peter Dewitt and Michael Nelson. This podcast is from education leaders for education leaders. Every week, Peter, Mike, and our guests get together to share ideas, put research into practice, and ensure that every student is learning, not by chance, but by design.

[00:00:26.32] PETER DEWITT: Hello, Michael.

[00:00:27.43] MICHAEL NELSON: Hello, Peter. How are you?

[00:00:31.15] PETER DEWITT: We're going to have to figure out a new way to just come on and talk to each other. I just feel like I see you and just jump into it, so.

[00:00:38.89] MICHAEL NELSON: Yeah. I think we could-- we could arrange that.

[00:00:42.40] PETER DEWITT: This is where I feel like you're going to correct me or you're just going to suddenly say, so let's talk about our guests this time.

[00:00:49.66] MICHAEL NELSON: David Sousa.

[00:00:51.43] PETER DEWITT: Wow. Not much for banter, are you there, Michael? Yeah. David Sousa. He's somebody I've gotten to know over the past few years. And beyond the best-selling author, he's just-- he's a brilliant man to talk to. I mean, I think we could say a lot, former teacher and superintendent.

[00:01:12.23] He's an international consultant and educational neuroscience and author of more than a dozen books that have suggested ways that educators and parents can translate current brain research into strategies for improving learning. He's made presentations to more than 200,000 educators across the states and Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. And I think that says it really well that, something you and I were talking about before we hit record, is that he really can translate current brain research into some very practical ways.

[00:01:47.61] And he has a new edition of his brain rewired book that first came out 10 years ago. And that's the basis of our conversation, what he has seen, where technology is concerned, and what it does to the brain, and what he has seen over the past 10 years.

[00:02:06.68] MICHAEL NELSON: What a treat for us and what a treat for him it must have been.

[00:02:10.57] MICHAEL NELSON: To be honest, Peter, I mean, Engaging The Rewired Brain came out 10 years ago and think of a piece of research that you might have done 10 years ago and then had a chance, an opportunity to relook at it and the impact of what you wrote. And he shares that there's a-- he was pleased with the research has held, but then-- and then there's additional pieces that he's added as technology has changed exponentially during those 10 years. Just incredible insights around that.

[00:02:44.35] But I just-- my heart warmed to think of this man who has thrown so much into his life's work, what he believes is his and is his life calling, and being able to write this beautiful piece 10 years ago and then to relook at it again. What a treat that must have been.

[00:03:04.38] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. And I think here's the call to action. We haven't done this for one of our podcasts at the beginning. Here's our call to action. He is going-- in this interview, he gives some really important information about what technology does to the brain of our youth. He's not saying technology is bad. He's not doing any of the doom and gloom stuff. What he's talking about is just the facts and what brain research is showing that technology does to the young brain.

[00:03:40.45] And I think as adults listening, we have to consider how are we-- what are we modeling to our students or to our youth in our own technology use? I know for one, after hearing him, I'm walking away just going, wow, I am definitely tied to my phone. I need to put some systems in place where I don't do that. So I guess for me, my call to action for people that are listening is how do they contribute to the impact that technology is having on students?

[00:04:15.94] Are they contributing greatly to the negative impact or are they trying to create more of a positive? Are they trying to actually help with the positive impact that we could have where technology is concerned too. I don't know if that makes sense.

[00:04:32.07] MICHAEL NELSON: Yeah. I don't disagree with what you just said at all, but my mind also thinks of, as you're listening to the podcast, what could be the communication of what he has to present? If I'm a building principal listening right now or if I'm a superintendent, or if I'm a teacher, how might I begin to communicate this research more broadly so it becomes, not just little soundbites, but really he lays out some scientific soundbites about how the brain works and operates from a very young age, even into the adults.

[00:05:11.55] PETER DEWITT: Wow. See, you have a much better way of saying what I was trying to say, so I'm just-- I should have just let you go first. But everyone, we really hope you enjoy this interview with David Sousa.

[00:05:27.66] SPEAKER: Say goodbye to slow-paced teaching methods and join an innovative new framework. With Teacher Clarity Professional Learning Workshops, teachers can learn how to double the speed of learning with clear goals and measurable outcomes. Get started today at corwin.com.

[00:05:45.21] PETER DEWITT: David Sousa, welcome to the Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast.

[00:05:49.23] DAVID A. SOUSA: Thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:05:51.09] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, it's good to see you again. You've been on before. You were on with Carol Ann Tomlinson a couple of years ago, I think.

[00:05:56.44] DAVID A. SOUSA: Yes, I remember it well.

[00:05:58.87] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, I actually think you yelled at me because I used-- yeah, I wanted to wait until we started recording to bring this up to him.

[00:06:07.56] MICHAEL NELSON: Yeah. And thank you. That doesn't make me nervous at all as a co-facilitator, Peter. So thank you for that.

[00:06:13.15] PETER DEWITT: I think I kept saying something like brain research and you said, we have to stop saying brain research because everything--

[00:06:18.70] DAVID A. SOUSA: No, no, no, no. You have to-- see, you forgot already. That's good. You have to stop saying brain-based learning.

[00:06:27.07] PETER DEWITT: That's what it is. Brain-based learning. See, I--

[00:06:29.70] DAVID A. SOUSA: It's a silly-- it's a silly term.

[00:06:32.37] PETER DEWITT: To say something and I still did it wrong. And here I am. I just like to start off getting yelled by you.

[00:06:38.67] DAVID A. SOUSA: Well, as credit to you, it probably means you erased it from your brain as a result of my insisting that you do. And that's why you had trouble recalling it.

[00:06:46.42] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, I've actually had people come up to me to say, I listened to the David Sousa and Caroline Tomlinson podcast. So I was like, oh, OK. So that was good. I love your work. We met a few years ago. It's actually more than a few years ago by now, but the whole-- your whole focus on the rewired brain, Engaging The Rewired Brain is so important. And the first book you said actually came out 10 years ago. What were you saying back then, 10 years ago, that you are still seen as an issue right now, if that question makes sense?

[00:07:29.49] DAVID A. SOUSA: Yeah, well, 10 years ago, the teenagers and pre-teens had already been using technology for a while. And so researchers were beginning to wonder, what effect does this technology have on learning? What effect does it have on their behavior? What effect does it have on what they do in schools and what they do at home? And a few studies came out that were a bit concerning to me because the amount of time that kids were spending on their technology went up exponentially in just a few years.

[00:08:08.22] And keeping in mind, I mean, one of the things I talk so much about is brain plasticity, how much the brain changes itself as a result of information from its environment. Remember years ago when we were talking about the nature/nurture combination, we gave a lot more credit to nature, saying so much of what happens is already being genetically ordained, preordained. Of course, now we know that's not true. We know that nurture plays a much greater role in shaping the brain, how it organizes itself, how it sees the world, how it perceives the world for its owner and how it learns.

[00:08:47.41] So I was concerned that the amount of time that these kids were spending connected to the outside world was so great that it had to have an impact on how their brain is organizing. And there was a little bit of indication of that back 10 years ago. So I wrote that first edition in an effort to try to alert educators, especially leaders, building principals and curriculum leaders, as well as classroom teachers, to the fact that if this continues this way and continues to grow exponentially, that brain that comes into your classroom is going to be very different from the one five years ago.

[00:09:32.56] So I kept monitoring the research, kept getting concerned about the four areas of the brain that the research seems to be telling us are being most affected by a lot of time on technology. And those four areas are memory, thinking skills, the attention, or focus, and social skills. And now we have such an accumulation of data and research on that that even the surgeon general of the United States, as you may know, a month or two ago, came out with a warning to parents and to teachers about too much time being spent on connection to their digital devices.

[00:10:25.75] And it's ongoing. And, of course, the pandemic only exacerbated that because most kids were required to use technology at home to sign into school. And so their dependence on it grew even more at a time when the brain is very sensitive to input from its environment.

[00:10:49.45] PETER DEWITT: I would like to ask just one follow up question to that too because when you were talking about the surgeon general and the warnings that you were talking about in the book 10 years ago, when I'm looking sometimes just if I'm in an Uber or wherever and I'm traveling, you see a lot of parents that are on their phones at the same time that their children are. And I worry about how do you actually turn that around because are we sending children a message about not being on your phones as much when adults are equally as guilty about doing that?

[00:11:28.14] DAVID A. SOUSA: Yeah, I think the answer to that is yes. I mean, we're all being inundated with technology. And I don't have anything against technology like anything else. It has both good and bad uses. But I think when you're talking about a developing brain, you have to give much more attention to what that developing brain is being exposed to. Now, adult brains too are affected, but because they're older and pretty much well-established, the neural networks can certainly be altered, but at a much slower pace than the developing brain of a teenager or a pre-teen.

[00:12:04.95] But you're right. I mean, I'm sure, as you have, I've been in restaurants where everybody at the table is on their phone and there's no-- very little cross talk except to the waiter. And the message it sends there is that they've become slaves of their technology. And that's one of the main issues I have with the social skills part, is that what kids are learning is that relationships develop as person to device rather than person to person. And when it's person to device and it's that impersonal, then you can do things and say things you would never say to someone's face.

[00:12:47.39] PETER DEWITT: That's for sure.

[00:12:50.28] MICHAEL NELSON: Wow, that's pretty insightful. Here's where my mind goes. So you can-- you can evaluate how my brain's thinking right now with everything that's just been said. But my wife and I often chuckle that 35 years ago when we brought our first child home from the hospital, we didn't have to pass any classes, we didn't have to have any degree to become a parent. We just became a parent. And we chuckle because, OK, who said we had the right to bring this child home? Who gave us permission to bring this child home? We didn't even know how to put him in the car seat at that time.

[00:13:29.05] And thankfully, now there are systems in place that, our daughter-in-law is a nurse, that parents now have to show how they put their child into a car before they leave the hospital, which is something Britt and I didn't have. And it made me think of systems of how-- here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking lots of different ways. But systems, what might you recommend for just parents who are thinking to have children or have really young children?

[00:14:00.62] But also systems for, most of the people listening right now, David, are going to be administrators or obviously educators, but I would say the large majority of them are going to be administrators in education, from principals to superintendents. And I was a former principal and superintendent myself, and already--

[00:14:19.82] DAVID A. SOUSA: So was I.

[00:14:21.20] MICHAEL NELSON: What system--

[00:14:21.89] DAVID A. SOUSA: I was a superintendent. Yeah, I served my sentence for three years.

[00:14:27.11] MICHAEL NELSON: Well, I had a longer sentence than you. Must have been a lot worse. Anyway, the long story short, what systems might I be putting in place to begin to educate around this pieces, these kinds of pieces of data, whether it's from the parent level to the systems in a school district? What's your thinking there?

[00:14:51.79] DAVID A. SOUSA: Well, I think the first thing is the idea of brain plasticity. You have to tell parents and teachers, especially those who deal with younger kids, that the brain main purpose is to keep its owner alive, and it does so by constantly monitoring the environment for threats. So everything that comes to it, that can have an impact. Now, over time, the brain learns to filter out things that it has discovered no longer have any threat to my owner.

[00:15:24.68] And as a result of other information that it does respond to, the brain is, especially in the younger years, is constantly setting up new neural networks, making connections, getting rid of neurons that are not doing anything and forming the owner's view of the world and how-- and first of all, and secondly, how they see themselves in that world. So parents have to be-- and teachers of young children, have to be very aware that brain is constantly monitoring its environment and constantly being impacted by what's around it.

[00:16:02.54] Now, another thing I would mention is that over our development as a species, the brain has developed certain circuits that it found has kept us-- they are good to have because they keep us alive. There's, of course, the language circuits, Broca's area and Wernicke's area. They're pre-wired in the young brain to acquire spoken language as quickly as possible because we've learned over time that by speaking to one another and giving each other information and warnings, we're more likely to survive than by just being alone.

[00:16:37.23] Another thing was the social neurons. We learned as a species, we're more likely to stay alive if we combine with other humans in the family and the tribe and the community. So those social neurons, by the way, mature very quickly. Most people don't even know we have a social network in the brain, but we do. And that matures between the ages of 5 and 6.

[00:16:59.61] Fully mature, which is why toddlers, if you put toddlers in a room apart from each other, they'll start moving toward each other. They'll start crawling toward each other because they see another human being and the circuits in the brain are designed to say, hey, that person may help you survive. Now it's being done at a very elementary level, but that's what's driving that particular behavior.

[00:17:25.16] Also the emotional system develops secondly. Remember, the advanced part of the brain, which is the high problem solving, is the last to mature. So social first, then emotional. The emotional because we didn't live very long in the early years and so you had to find a mate to propagate the species. And that was usually through an emotional connection. And again, that's because it helped to make us survive. And that system matures between the ages of 10 and 12, usually a little earlier in girls than boys.

[00:18:00.47] So these systems are already wired there and they're very sensitive to what information is coming in to stimulate them. And so one thing I've told parents, especially parents of very young children, stop using the television or a digital device as a babysitting technique. Talk to them. Even if you're doing the ironing, put them on the floor next to you or in a small chair and talk to them. What do you think I'm doing here? Why am I doing this? This is called ironing. How will this be helpful to us? And make sure they respond for--

[00:18:36.09] You want them to develop-- you want their brain to develop the notion that communication with another human face to face is the way we survive. And that's very important. And unfortunately, I've been in some kindergartens and preschool where a great deal of time is being spent with technology, with digital devices, and not enough time with teacher interaction. To some degree, some teachers see this as a relief of their heavy schedule. Give them more technology time, and that's less time that I have to be on the stage.

[00:19:16.19] To some degree that can work, but it can't be the predominating method of instruction. And leaders, building principals, I feel so sorry for building principals these days because their main job. Remember where the term comes from. Principal is a shortened version of their title, which was principal teacher. And in the old days, way back in the early 1900s, when schools became more complicated and they needed someone to run the place, sometimes the faculty voted on who that person was and they voted on who they thought was most knowledgeable about teaching and learning. And that building-- that principal teacher then eventually that title became just principal.

[00:20:00.74] But today, principals who should be in classrooms on a regular basis monitoring the teaching learning process themselves, having an updated knowledge base. And educational neuroscience is giving us a lot of new information. But principals have become so tied down with paperwork with now the political aspect of it. Politics getting into the classroom with parents trying to make decisions about what textbooks we should have and that kind of thing. They're dealing with that now rather than learning about the educational neuroscience.

[00:20:39.54] I had a principal say to me not so long ago at a conference, I don't have time for this brain stuff. I've got to deal with angry parents. I've got to deal with budget. Then who is going to do that? Who's going to monitor that to make sure that the teachers recognize, as I tell them, the brain that's crossing your threshold today is very different from the brain of five years ago. And you have to recognize that-- recognize how technology is changing it and modify and adapt your teaching strategies accordingly. Does that make sense?

[00:21:10.14] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, it does. And it actually just brings out-- that's one of the reasons why I enjoy talking with you so much because it brings about so many questions. I feel like principals and superintendents, and teachers all get mixed messages too because over the past 10 years since the book came out, there was always this, if you're not using technology, then you're somehow a dinosaur and you're not living up to what kids need. And I think it's gone to the other end of the spectrum where it was just, as you said, I don't hate technology. I certainly enjoy technology. But I also understand there are times I've been addicted to it with my phone next to me and you can't walk anywhere without the phone.

[00:21:52.43] And I just wonder if these days you seem to see-- I forgot what the name of the pouches are, so I apologize for not being able-- not being able to remember the name, but schools are starting to have these pouches that students have to put their phones into and they can't use technology during the day. Is that one step closer toward what we should be doing? And I know there was a lot in there. I mean, I just think that sometimes educators get a mixed message. Use technology because if you don't, you're behind. Don't use technology. Here are these pouches. You have to-- and there seems to be this lack of a happy medium sometimes.

[00:22:32.73] DAVID A. SOUSA: Yes, there is. And I'm not sure if completely banning cell phones from schools is the best way to do it. I think what we should be focusing on is telling kids that your brain comes first and the technology should be helping your brain, not your brain helping the technology. And that's two of the areas that are of great concern to me, thinking skills and memory, because one of the things we-- and this may have been the driving force to banning the phones altogether.

[00:23:14.47] One of the things we discovered in some of our studies is that, well, when you and I went to school and maybe in middle school or high school, teachers said, OK, this is the way we've done it. Now I want you to get together with a couple of kids in each group, four or five kids in a group, and see if you can find another way to solve this problem or what would be another solution to this. And so we did. We got in a group and we started talking and we found that four heads were often better than one, and new ideas came up. And so we'd raise our hand and say, hey, how about this idea?

[00:23:46.00] And the teacher would evaluate it and say, yes, that could work or maybe not, or maybe you need some modification of it. Their brains were doing the teaching. Now, what's happening is that when the teacher says find another way to do it, boom, they go to Google, they go to their digital device. Let's see how someone else solve this problem. So the brain is the digital device, not their own.

[00:24:10.58] And the worry here is that in order to be good at using higher order thinking skills, you have to use higher order thinking skills. You have to practice with higher order thinking skills, which is what analysis and synthesis and evaluation are designed to do, to force you to think outside the box and other ways of doing things. But if instead you're going to your digital devices, that's how this guy solved it, then their brain shuts down because they've already found the solution which wasn't theirs but someone else's.

[00:24:46.69] And the other thing about memory, have you noticed sometimes today you ask someone for their phone number, they're just a minute. Gotta look it up, that they don't even remember their own phone number anymore? Because what's happened is a lot of us, either intentionally or subconsciously, including kids, have transferred things that they used to have in their memory to the memory device. And so remember that working memory has a limited capacity. And some of the studies that we've-- some of the studies that have been alarming to me over the last several years is that studies of memory-- working memory capacity seem to show that it's going down, that the capacity is going down.

[00:25:29.94] Now, no one knows exactly why that is the case. One, I think, logical potential explanation is that use it or lose it. If you're relying more on a device to store information than your own memory device and to process memory-- working memory processes information. If you're working-- if you're allowing your digital device or whatever other toy you're playing with to do the processing, then working memory isn't getting the exercise it needs. And so capacity may be going down. I mean, we don't know that for sure, but that's certainly a potential cause.

[00:26:12.45] Now, some guys, on the other hand, to be fair, on the other hand, some people, some psychologists will say, well, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe instead of getting working memory processing silly things in the classroom, it's now free to do more creative things. Well, it would only do more creative things if the classroom allows that to happen or, otherwise, the creative things will focus on something that's absolutely nothing to do with the lesson at hand, just what the kid wants to look at instead of focusing on doing higher order thinking with the learning objective at hand.

[00:26:50.05] MICHAEL NELSON: OK. Wow. A lot to unpack just in that little bit, but I'm going to shift this a bit. We have you on the screen and I know our listeners are going to want to know. Impact of AI.

[00:27:04.66] PETER DEWITT: I wrote that down, Michael. It's like we're on the same-- it's one of the things that I wrote down.

[00:27:10.96] MICHAEL NELSON: I would love to know your take on that and what you're thinking, what maybe you've already seen, but it's come to exponentially changed in-- I led professional learning for the state of Washington, for the association in the state of Washington. And I can tell you, the last 12 to 18 months, the trajectory has been almost full vertical in terms of that, in terms of artificial intelligence. So talk to us about that.

[00:27:43.54] DAVID A. SOUSA: Well, I've actually used ChatGPT just for the hell of it to see how it works and I gave it some challenges and was pretty impressed with some of it because-- there were some mistakes in what it sent me. I asked things about the brain and neuroscience. Like anything else like any technology, it has its positives and negatives. My concern is you may not be able to tell the difference between the two. And I worry about that.

[00:28:19.63] I saw-- last night, in fact, I was going through some sites on my computer and there was some AI generated photos that were just amazing to me. And they told you they were fake, but they looked so real. And what this particular one was was a famous actor or actress in their youth next to what they look like now. And they were interacting with one another. They put their head on their shoulder. They stroke their face. Well, that's not possible. So you know it's fake, but it looks so real.

[00:28:59.98] And my concern is that if we don't know the difference between what's real and what's fake, then we can really be in big trouble, not just in education, but in politics and government and other economy in other ways that are really alarming. So if I were to say, where do I stand on this, I would say concern is heavier than welcoming, unless there are some kinds of-- and I don't know how you do this, but some kind of control, some kind of designation required, I worry.

[00:29:40.64] And remember, the main reason I worry is with kids because their brain is so impressionable that that plasticity makes that brain so sensitive to outside environment input that if the input looks very much like what the brain thinks is already real, as accepted as real, it won't be able to tell the difference. And so the owner of that brain is going to react differently to situations because they're actually working on partly misinformation. So I worry about it a lot. And I hope that something can be done to help us control, especially when it's a has to do with kids.

[00:30:24.42] But kids these days, parents are less likely to interfere with their kids' technology. And one of the things, one of the studies that was done not too long ago was an extension-rich study done originally 10 years ago, was how much-- what happens when the kid goes to his room and the parent says, all right, time for bed, get to your room. And the kid brings the technology with him.

[00:30:51.23] And then they're under the covers with their technology staying up till 12:00, 1 o'clock in the morning, working on looking up things on the internet with no parental control, no parental supervision, and as a side effect, losing sleep because we've discovered that the average high school kid now gets 5 and 1/2 hours of sleep when it should be getting 7 to 8. And remember, why is that a problem? Because remember, that it's during sleep that we put things we have in working memory and encode them into long-term memory through the REM cycles.

[00:31:29.97] And in eight hours, you have five REM cycles for most people, sometimes four. Only maybe five. If you cut off two hours of sleep, you cut off two of those cycles, which means your brain doesn't have as much time to store information to encode what you told you want-- you told it want it to encode when you went to sleep. So there are all kinds of ramifications here.

[00:31:56.18] PETER DEWITT: When I hear you talk about AI, it's something Michael and I have had to get used to over the past few months. We've studied a lot. And it sounds like it's all about the use. How are you using it? And for us, it's--

[00:32:09.80] DAVID A. SOUSA: How you're using it.

[00:32:10.86] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. For us, it was about human inquiry use AI and lead to human empowerment. And we know that there are people that use it to write letters for them and all that stuff. And we-- when we're using it to generate ideas and go into that high order thinking skill part, we are very transparent about how we're using it. But when you came back to, but when we have kids, we're talking about how their brains are not fully developed.

[00:32:40.41] And I guess what I'd like to end the conversation, because you've certainly given us a lot to talk about just in the time that we've spent together, which I knew you would, so you have the new edition of Engaging The Rewired Brain. What is in this new edition? How is this different from the first one that came out 10 years ago? Is it because of things like AI? Are there other pieces that you're bringing into this new book from what you've learned over the past 10 years?

[00:33:11.25] DAVID A. SOUSA: I think what I learned over the last 10 years was greater confidence that the original studies were being reaffirmed by new studies. In fact, more and more alarmingly so in some cases. And also, it gave me time to generate how do you deal with it. How do you engage memory more? How do you engage thinking skills? How do you engage attention and focus? How do you engage social skills in the classroom?

[00:33:46.11] And so this book has a lot more suggestions to classroom teachers on how to deal with this new brain crossing the threshold, including finding ways to assess just how much addiction these students have to their devices. I don't know if you've seen those studies about taking the phone away. And there's one very fascinating study done about five or six years ago with high school seniors and college freshmen about-- I think they had about 100, roughly 100 students involved, roughly 50/50.

[00:34:26.77] And they said to them, give us your digital device for a week. And if you can last a week without it, you'll get $100. So they said, OK. They agreed. They signed a statement saying they would give it up and they collected the phones about 100 students. At the end of day one, 18 had showed up already, so they can't do it. Just day one. And every day, it kept growing. They said, you can keep your $100. I need my phone.

[00:35:03.58] Some of them had even forgotten that we have things called landlines they could have used to call-- to make a call. I mean, it was just amazingly revealing how captured the technology has for the brain. At the end of the week, how many do you think made it?

[00:35:29.71] PETER DEWITT: 10.

[00:35:32.06] DAVID A. SOUSA: Mike. Come on, give me a number.

[00:35:36.95] PETER DEWITT: He's trying to decide how much more-- he wants to be more right.

[00:35:39.99] MICHAEL NELSON: I want to be more right.

[00:35:44.33] DAVID A. SOUSA: So the answer is 17.

[00:35:47.28] MICHAEL NELSON: Peter, have to have more faith.

[00:35:50.36] DAVID A. SOUSA: 17 out of 100 made it to the end. So it was just-- that's just one study, but it revealed the degree to which we've become so dependent on these devices.

[00:36:04.85] MICHAEL NELSON: Yeah.

[00:36:06.32] PETER DEWITT: Yes. And I'm worried that it's not going to get any better, but--

[00:36:11.81] DAVID A. SOUSA: Me too.

[00:36:12.43] PETER DEWITT: I think it's-- what I-- as we wrap up, what I enjoy about your research, David, is you're not somebody coming in saying, we need to ban technology because technology is bad and-- you're actually you're relating it to what it does to the brain. And that is important, very important evidence of impact. And when we talk about evidence of impact, it can be positive impacts or it can be negative impacts. And really what you're doing is giving us the research and the data to make informed decisions about how we move forward. And your work is incredibly important all the way around. So thank you for being--

[00:36:57.66] DAVID A. SOUSA: And one other thing I'd like to add is, especially with older kids, it's very helpful for the teachers, first of all, to understand the changes that are taking place and to tell their students about it. I mean, students love to know how their brain works and we don't do enough of that instruction. We've had it done as low as kindergarten, having teachers tell kindergarten kids how they memorize things and so on. And the kids love it. They just love knowing about it.

[00:37:27.54] So I think it's helpful because I think a lot of students use these things, don't realize what it's doing to their brain. And I think it empowers teachers, first of all, to know themselves what's going on and then to share that with the students because that helps explain why I'm asking you not to use your phone when we do this particular project. I don't want you to use anything, just you working with two or three partners come up with your own thing. Just-- and explain that's the reason I'm doing it, is because you want your brain to do the thinking, not the device. Because if you don't have the device, who's going to do the thinking?

[00:38:08.52] PETER DEWITT: Exactly.

[00:38:10.86] DAVID A. SOUSA: And also social skills. God, that's such another very, very serious area.

[00:38:17.64] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, it is for sure. All we need to do is walk outside sometimes to see that. But I feel like I'm an old man saying those kind of things. So I'm going to stop-- I'm going to stop there before I sound too old. But David Sousa, thank you for being on the Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast.

[00:38:35.79] DAVID A. SOUSA: My pleasure.

[00:38:39.96] PETER DEWITT: All right. So, Michael, I want to just point out that I don't say anything before the recording. And then as soon as we start the recording, I have to call David out for yelling at me. And you just stood to the side. You're like, I don't know where he's going with this, but I don't want to be a part of it.

[00:38:58.89] MICHAEL NELSON: Well, I noticed that you brought it up after the recording started and before I asked my first question, thinking, oh my goodness, he's going to yell at me for this question, which he didn't. He didn't-- he did yell at you again.

[00:39:11.88] PETER DEWITT: He did because I got it wrong again.

[00:39:14.04] MICHAEL NELSON: You did get it wrong.

[00:39:16.68] PETER DEWITT: I really enjoy talking with him. He is extremely personal, but also brilliant at the same time. And I just think he offered some-- in some parts. I feel like it was a cautionary tale because that's what he was trying to do 10 years ago. But in another way, he's also just offering us real sound evidence of why we have to get our technology use under control, especially where our students are concerned because the rewiring of the brain at a young age can do irreparable damage in the future, at least that's what I kept looking at and kept thinking about when he was talking.

[00:40:02.41] MICHAEL NELSON: Yeah. We need to have that information because the neural pathways are being created. So if neural pathways are being created based on whatever you do. So if your neural pathways are being created by use or overuse of technology, we need to be ready for that as educators, of who we're receiving as five-year-olds into our system. Or if the neural pathways are engaged in--

[00:40:29.78] He gave the example of ironing and a mom or a dad is ironing and they have a little toddler and they're saying, well, what are you doing? I'm ironing the clothes. And why are you doing the clothes? Well, I need to have them pressed because I'm going to wear them to work. And when I go to work and I have my dress clothes for work, I need to look sharp because I have an important meeting with my boss. I need to be-- and just having those kinds of conversation, the neural pathways are built much differently than a child just on a device versus having that conversation. And he was very explicit in that example.

[00:41:03.67] PETER DEWITT: It all-- it reminds me of-- that story actually reminded me of my mom because she, not only babysat all of my nephews and nieces and then my great nephews and niece. And I remember we used to-- when she was alive, we would talk every day. And I remember just asking her, how did it go with the kids? And she would tell me. I'm like, but are you talking to them? Are you asking them questions? She used to get really mad at me. She was like, yes, I'm talking to them. I'm asking them questions.

[00:41:34.17] And then she finally said, I did raise you, right? I'm like, oh, that's true. I should probably stop giving my mom advice on that. But the old fashioned just conversation and engaging in questions, that's what we're asking people to do. And yeah, so that was a really important story and a very practical advice to be able to offer.

[00:42:00.63] MICHAEL NELSON: He made me want to read more about neurosciences, and I think we should in education, I think we all have sound bites of overuse of technology is not good. We all have sound bites of, we know a little bit about nature/nurture. He was very strong in a calm way of saying what we know is nurture is much stronger than we ever thought was a sound bite and was like, oh, it is. I don't know that I've heard that as strong as what he said. It was like, now I need to go research that, Peter, because that's impactful on migraines. I've got four little grandchildren. It's like, OK, that may be-- there's something there that I need to study a little bit more.

[00:42:43.42] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. And I think that's-- for me, also the sense of responsibility from we have been talking a lot about AI and we've been transparent about how we use it and we try to do it in a way where it's a conversation and we're engaging with it and stuff. And most of the times, we're reacting to things we already know when it offers suggestions. And I think it has offered us the opportunity to some deeper level conversations because of it. We talk about that, but we haven't necessarily talked about, and I haven't talked about, I should say, where we have to be careful when it comes to our students and not being fully developed to be able to have these conversations. And what does it mean for them?

[00:43:26.39] And once again, it always comes down to, David, we're not talking about banning. We're not talking about we hate technology. We're talking about how do you use it in the most proper way? And it brings out conversations around things like media literacy and all of that stuff as well. So definitely just a lot is going around in my head from the conversation.

[00:43:50.68] MICHAEL NELSON: I just-- when you talk about AI, it's like, OK, if you're using AI, like Google, you're just asking it, not really taxing the brain. It's just you're just getting information. But you've read articles on using AI as an auto sapient, which it's like another human. You're bantering back and forth and almost like the irony. I don't know what David would say on that one, but that's a whole other question. We can have a whole other podcast.

[00:44:16.19] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, no, that's why he will probably-- he will probably make another return only next time. I am not calling him out and I know you're not going to support me if I did anyway, so.

[00:44:26.48] MICHAEL NELSON: Not saying brain-based research, Peter. Just saying just don't say it.

[00:44:30.98] PETER DEWITT: Well, I will stop saying that. Well, everyone. It's important for you to know that we do not do this alone. We have our editor, Pam, and Morgan, who does marketing and behind the scenes with all things when it comes to the podcast. And Melissa, the five of us get together and share ideas and look at who we're going to interview and those kind of things. So just so you know, Michael and I may be the ones that you hear from or see if you're checking this out on YouTube, but we definitely don't do this alone.

[00:45:01.56] So we thank them very much for their partnership on this. And we hope that you enjoyed this conversation with David Sousa. I know that we certainly have, and we're always looking for your feedback. So thank you to those of you who actually come and talk to us or send us emails. And Michael, I love the banter back and forth. I know you-- I know you like to shut me down every once in a while so I don't go on and on. But I will say, I really enjoy our banter and being able to do this podcast with you. So thank you. It's always good to see you.

[00:45:33.38] MICHAEL NELSON: It's great to see you. Enjoy it as well. And I hope our listeners do.

[00:45:38.99] PETER DEWITT: Until next time, thank you, everyone.