Screen-bans and Screen Limits in Schools? Why Not? An Educator's Opportunity to Free Students for Screen Capture

We forget that, in spite of what Big Tech and Tech boosters tell us, we do not have to live lives serving technologies, whether they be AI, Internet, or text messages. We are forever in control, if only we take it.

“We are complicit in our own captivity. Texts, emails, and social media posts constantly interrupt us because we have allowed them to—and we cannot resist attending when they do so,” writes Nate Anderson in his book “In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World.”

We are “complicit” in our screen-captivity because we have allowed ourselves to be so. The moral question is perhaps, “Should we also be complicit in the screen-captivity of our students too?” This is done when we race to implement technologies in our classrooms without much thought regarding consequences. “The technology is so damn neat!” we tell ourselves, so we race to use it with students, but are we making ourselves complict in their “screen-capitivity?”

As a part of our so-called “digital literacy” why are we not empowering students to take control of their technologies? Why are we not teaching them strategies to counter attention capture?

We claim we are teaching how and when to use, but unfortunately, it seems, to the pleasure of tech companies, we are teaching them to always use tech. We are teaching them that tech alwayys has the answers, even though it does not.

The screen-bans for me are a powerful tool to break down the tendency of Ed Tech boosters and educators to teach students to become “complicit in their captivity to screens.”

While I am not sure of the complete ban, I do think classrooms that are device-free and not dependent on screens should exist, and it should exist at the discretion of the teacher. The notion that technology can’t stink is false too.

At the other side of these screenbans and screen-limits, perhaps there will be some sanity when it comes to whatever pours forth from Silicon Valley. Sanity, when the next “device craze” hits.

Perhaps those who stand to make bundles of money and their careers off the tech-latest will face a wall of criticism when they declare the next technology to arise as “transformtional” or “game-changing.” Maybe there will be voices that say, wait a minute…”

Right now we have the opportunity to stop being complicit in our own captivity to screens and devices, and we should take it. We can do it and we can teach students to not allow themselves to be controlled by screens.

When Ed Tech Says a Product Like AI Is Inevitable, Don't Buy It: It's All Marketing

It is imperative that AI companies have their LLMs and Generative AI products be accepted as legitimate. So they working overtime to force-feed this acceptance in education.

It seems they are following an old Big Tech playbook.

The initial thrust is to get your products accepted as inevitable by everyone, especially the field of education.

The inevitability tactic short-circuits any questioning about whether the technology has a place in the classroom. It forces educators and those with concerns to surrender without question.

That same “Forced Inevitability Acceptance Tactic” was used with social media, Chromebooks, and many other technologies and well as ed tech in general.

Now that there are thoughtful people who are questioning the central pedestal on which we have placed technology, the Tech companies are pulling out all the stops to win acceptance of the inevitability of their new AI products.

Thoughtful and critically minded educators should:

-Question every word of every promotion of AI and technology. Interrogate who wins the most with adoption and you can bet it’s not necessarily the students or teachers.

-Never accept research conducted and funded by tech companies and their consultants who stand to gain the most from the acceptance of these technologies. Big Tech is immensely skilled in engaging in this tactic and have the money to back it up.

The screen limits and bans were much more inevitable than the technologies themselves. When products actually cause harms or fail to live up to the promotional blather, thoughtful educators no longer allow these companies to blame the user. Sometimes the tech product does suck.

There is hope as long as educators remain skeptics and do not accept the inevitability argument ever.

Can You as an Educational Leader Trust the Evidence of Effectiveness Provided by the Product Developer? Probably Not

Can educators and educational leaders trust the research that companies provide about their products? Should they? Probably not. The tech industry that includes Ed Tech has a major credibility problem in the middle of the calls for screen bans and screen limits. For example, there is growing independent evidence that social media is harming our children. Why else would Facebook settle their massive lawsuit.

I just completed reading Max Fisher’s 2022 book “The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World” and it clearly describes why we can’t trust research provided by companies on their own products. The book reinforced why I quit Facebook and Twitter sometime ago. But one particular incident in the book illustrates clearly to me why companies just can’t be trusted to provide unbiased, reliable evidence of their own product’s effectiveness or lack thereof.

In the book, Max Fisher points out that Facebook completed an internal study of their technology’s effects when faced with growing suspicion that their site might be making the political divisions in the US worse. Their own research warned internally that the platform was doing exactly what their company’s leaders denied it was doing. 

Their own leaked research said “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” According to Fisher, this was in a 2018 presentation leaked to the Wall Street Journal. This presentation also said that Facebook’s systems were designed in a way that delivered users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.” 

Later, this research was hidden by Facebook executives and they rejected the recommendations for tweaking the algorithm that would have resulted in less time spent online. They, in other words, deliberately chose to keep users addicted to divisive content that their own machine served up to them.  

This is why companies’ research can’t ever be trusted. Neither can their executives. This is also why educators can’t trust research either done by or paid for by the companies whose products they are considering to purchase.

Companies simply aren’t going to provide educators and educational leaders with reliable, independent evidence that their products are effective. They are also going to hide studies that are less than supporting of their products. I would expect no different, after all that would prevent sales.

Facebook’s own research showed their product was harmful, yet they buried the evidence. They made the deliberate choice to keep their product addictive.

As an educator, I always ask for independent evidence of product effectiveness. Independent being evidence generating by studies not done or paid for in anyway connected to the company. Most often, none exists.

If such evidence does not exist, then   ask the company to allow you to run a study of their product on a trial basis. Use research methods to evaluate the product for what they claim. Once you have that, publish it and make it known. Share it with other individuals.

I can envision a whole network of school technologists who independently evaluate these products and share that evidence independently and not as a testimonial asked for by the company. 

Where the evidence comes from, who paid for it, who conducted the study that generated it, and why the evidence is being provided all matters.

This is what has been lacking in the massive technology acquisition and placement in schools. Now, our parents and common decency requires us to do things differently.

Is the US Department of Ed's Advice to Judge Screen Products by Evidence Helpful? Not Really

The latest advice provided by our US Department of Education advises educators to judge educational technologies by evidence of impact on learning, but there’s one problem, where do we get that so-called “evidence.” From the companies themselves? That’s a horrible idea

“…instructional technologies should be judged by their impact on learning, not simply whether they happen on a screen,” said Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Seconday Education Kirsten Baesler, in her attempt to salvage the status of educational technologies.

The problem is finding such evidence. Sure, you’ll get bombarded by “testimonials” from other districts about how effective a product is, but a pal of an owner of a ed tech company hardly counts as evidence. Besides, testimonials are not reliable and valid evidence. Too much room for corrupting influences in those.

What about any studies the ed tech company provide in their sales pitches? Well, I would not get too excited about that either. According to a 2019 Hechinger Report article, “The Dark Side of Education Research: Widespread Bias” by Jill Barshay, we need to scrutinize any research companies provide as evidence of their product’s effectiveness. Surprise, it is too often biased toward their own products.

Like Big Pharma, who has been guilty of generating their own faulty, self-promoting research for their products, Ed Tech companies and other educational resource companies have been operating from this playbook too.

This 2019 article examined a John Hopkins University study of 30 years of educational research by developers of educational interventions and products. These companies conducted their own research or paid someone to do the research, and most of the time, the results commonly showed greater benefits for students than when the research was independent. “On average, the developer research showed benefits—usually improvements in test scores—that were 70 percent greater than what independent studies found.”

In other words, studies done by or funded by the companies themselves were biased. They always made the product look better than independent studies did.

So, the US Department’s admonition that educators and education leaders “look to the evidence” before banning a screen product will not help at all. Most products, if there is any evidence, it is either testimony from another district, which is highly unreliable, or it is their own insider research which can’t be totally trusted.

Most companies, after all, would not want independent research because you can’t control the outcomes. Who wants to find out their product is garbage?

So what do we do with the US Department of Ed advice? Not much it seems, for independent, reliable research on these products is rare and mostly non-existent.

With school district technology employees taking free training from the likes of Google, Microsoft and others, can you really trust anything they say about the products either?

I might add as well, school technology conferences are also heavily underwritten by technology companies, so…well, not much help there either.

What do we do then as educators to determine whether a screen product is effective at what it does? Without independent research, I would conduct small-scale in-school studies myself before implementation to determine effectiveness. If enough educators did this and shared results, then there could be a pool of independent knowledge about these products. But it is going to require school technology educators become critically independent.

As expected, the US Department of Education’s advice about technology is about useful as a study provided on the safety of cigarettes by tobacco companies.

US Department of Ed's Ed Tech Guidance Proves Screen Bans and Screen Limits Just Might Be the Best Tool Parents and Educators Have

There’s a lot of hype by Ed Tech about the new “guidance” offered by the US Department of Ed about technology. Too bad it’s mostly nonsense, and more helpful to ed tech companies than parents, teachers and the students.

One thing missing from the US Department of Ed's new Ed Tech guidelines is an admonishment of tech companies who purposely engineer their products for "screen time" maximization, or what is otherwise known as "engineered addiction."

This is one reason alone for continuing to insist that "screen time limits" may actually be the only tool parents and educators have to counter this problem. 

The US Department of Ed, which I am not sure I would expect much from a department headed by a former WWE professional wrestling executive, fails to point out that tech companies should not have as a goal screen time maximization.

The problem is that tech is purposefully addictive. Cells phones are designed to be the center of attention with their beeping, buzzing, instant notifications. Social media apps are designed to distract users and keep them distracted.

Technology companies need to remove engineered addiction from their designs.

I've been stepping back to 2022 and reading Max Fisher's book "The Chaos Machine" and Fisher points out that Silicon Valley's playbook, whether its Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, is to "track and manage users' screen time.

That is the problem with tech in general and Ed Tech specifically. It’s machines of manipulation.

The only tool parents and educators have against this playbook are "screen bans" and "screen limits." Breaking the allure is the one tool that works.

Our goals as educators should not be to preserve screen time for tech companies; it should be to engage students in such a way that the answer to everything does not involve reaching for a device.

Screen Bans Should Be Embraced as an Opportunity to Think Outside the "Technology-Always-Has-The-Answer Box"

Screenbans in schools is an opportunity for Ed Tech and educators, not a threat.

Why? Because it is an opportunity to disrupt the tech-solutionism that has obsessed educators since the PC entered the classroom.

Tech-solutionist see technology as the "always-answer" to every problem.

This thinking places educators in a "Technology-Always-Has-The Answer" box where every problem has a tech solution. That turns into technology-obessiveness.

Despite what the Ed Tech marketers have promoted, they have not been promoting "thinking-out-of-box"; they have been promoting only thinking in their box. 

Screenban discussions and talk moves the thinking outside "technology-always-has-the-answer box” to a universe and world of options out there. Not every problem has a tech solution. 

Screenbans are disruptive of the Ed Tech status quo with its tech-solutionist answers. That’s the reason for their concerns.

Educators should take advantage of this time and de-center technology and place it among the other tools in the toolbox and reach for it when it solves a problem, not spend all their time looking for problems to solve with tech!

Why Is There Techlash and Screenbans? Perhaps Its Because It's a Problem!

I spoke to a parent of a middle schooler today. Somehow in the discussion technology came up in our conversation.

She said she honestly believed technology has ruined her son. He uses it for play and distraction instead of learning. He is consumed by it. 

Which makes sense, because our handheld tech is engineered for distraction.

She brought up here school's Chromebooks program and how she saw it a detrimental to her son's education. He simply could not handle the "freedom to be distracted."

Before you start blaming the parent, perhaps there needs to be more thought.

This illustrates what we've got wrong with Tech; we assumed it was the answer for all students. We standardized the technology and how it was used. No wonder there's what Ed Tech calls "Techlash"!

Instead of arming ourselves with arguments for Tech, perhaps we should focus on the students. The technology, if it is simply a tool, it does not have to be the tool used in learning. 

Maybe personalizing learning means having students who learn more effectively without tech engaged in screenless activities. Just maybe we can go a day or two, a week or two, or even a course or two without Tech.

The screen ban trend is not a marketing problem; perhaps sometimes the Tech IS the problem.

There Is Some Acceptable Logic with Screen Bans That Needs to Be Considered

Devices that have become common in our classrooms have a design problem that Ed Tech does not acknowledge. 

These screen devices and their apps have been in some instances engineered to be habit-forming. In other words, addictive characteristics have been designed into these applications and devices.

Technology companies have become experts at designing and engineering for habit-forming and addiction in their products. Big Tech companies like Meta and Tic Tok, just to start with a few, are experts in “hooking” users on their products.

I am currently re-reading Nir Eyal’s book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. This book is a textbook for addiction engineers. It describes how tech companies have pulled off engineered addiction with their screen-based products.

In fact, Eyal’s book, Hooked, is a how to book on how to make products addictive.

Once engineers have users “hooked” like drug pushers, they have customers who have been mind-manipulated to being endless users. Like drug users, they find it difficult to put down the drug. They will fight to protect both the product and the habit.

Eyal promotes what he calls “the Hooked Model” to addict users to products. 

This involves using four steps to achieve addiction:

1) Triggering initial user behavior;

2) Engaging user in an action;

3) Dispensing a variable reward to keep users coming back;

4) Getting the user to invest time, data, effort, social capital and money.

According to Eyal, subjecting potential customers to this “Hooked” strategy works. You have users addicted to your product. While this model might be simplified, it does capture  features in screen products we encounter on our devices.

He also calls his method of engineering addiction “a Superpower.”

I call it malicious manipulation of humanity for profit. Is there no consideration that such tactics at mind-manipulation are unethical?

Tech companies and others engage relentlessly in engineered addiction because it works. But there is something extremely immoral about the whole thing. The idea that you can design a habit-forming, engineered addictive product and celebrate it as a superpower is problematic. 

Teaching students and all educators how to recognize when such tactics are employed is vital. This is clearly a subject for any digital literacy efforts.

Is it any wonder why tech companies and Ed Tech are so upset about screen bans?

Screen bans nuke this engineered addiction model before it gets its talons into users’ minds.

If users regain control over when and how a device is used, then the game is up.

When a School Leader and Teacher Is Guilty of Delivering Student Eyeballs to Ed Tech Companies, That Is a Problem

As an educational leader who eagerly supported bring-your-own-device policies, one-to-one programs, and cell phones in the classroom, I am experiencing guilt.

Why? Because I am afraid that I was part of the Ed Tech trend that mistook the qualities of “engineered addiction” in these devices for “engagement.”

Like many educators, I witnessed the eagerness with which students took up these devices and appeared to use them in the classroom. In fact, they did do some amazing things. I remember many student-created videos that were phenomenal.

Yet, after 2010, I was not aware that one of the big reasons for that eagerness was due to Big Tech purposefully engineering these devices and their apps to capture attention.

In the mid 1990s, when I was the first teacher in my school building to use the internet in instruction, things were quite different. Those were pre-Big Tech days, before the Great Transformation of the web into the commercial garbage dump it is today.

In those days, the internet was not yet a place where the race to capture eyeballs was the goal. No engineered addiction, no commerce-driven sites, and no social media division existed. It was truly a place where information was shared. Connections could be made.

There seemed to be true promise with this internet. My students could use it to connect with the world outside the small town where their school was located. The technology at that time was unmediated by tech companies whose purpose was capture attention for profit.

That web was truly a tool for connection to information and the wider world.

Over time, you know the story. Things changed. But, into the 2000s I still believed in the promise of technology and that the more we got it into the hands of students, the more they could learn and accomplish. With our educational guidance, they could do wonders.

I started to be wrong, because gradually, tech companies began engineering addiction into their platforms. Their goals to provide information and connect became secondary to making money, so attention capture was most important. The products they designed were at odds with how we wanted students to use these technologies.

More and more of my students were starting to show symptoms of “screen-glaze” and it became more and more of a battle to pry their eyeballs loose from the devices.

I thought for a while that kids were kids and it was a simple matter of redirecting students as teachers often had to do with baseball cards, books, and toys. 

But this started to be different when I began to notice an increased hostility and anger when trying to redirect a student from their devices. They fought, and some even accepted suspension for a day or two instead of giving up their device. It was like asking an addict to give up a drug.

Today, Big Tech and Ed Tech has only improved their eyeball capture and addictive technologies. Their goals and incentives are engaging students in USING THEIR PRODUCT first and foremost. That is at the heart of the issue with ed tech in the classroom. That is one reason why there is starting to be demands for screen-time limits.

This is nostalgic and impossible, but if the internet were somehow back in the business of information provider and connector, it would be a better place. The early internet was limited and did not have all the bells and whistles of today, but the problem just might be the bells and whistles in the first place.

When the race to add features and eyeglaze to tech products becomes the goal instead of the original purpose, the tech companies are part of the problem.

Students Form Luddite Clubs in Opposition to "Screen-Centered Lives": Signs of Students Critical Thinking

Interesting. According to the podcast below, students form "Luddite Clubs" in opposition to "screen-centered" lives. I like it.

Time will tell whether this is something that catches on, but there is some important truths to think about.

We have allowed "screens" central places in our lives. We have placed them as indispensable and at the center of our educational institutions. We have even come to allow them now to act as companions, partners, and advice-givers in the age of AI. 

It's actions like the forming of these Clubs that should make all of us question the central place we have granted these technologies in our lives, and I would add our undying and misplaced faith in what they can do for us.

The question all this makes us ask: "Are we being used by our tools or are we actually using our tools?" The answer is fairly clear without being said.

As educators do we dare support these kinds of clubs? I think we must, for this shows the promise that students are capable of critically thinking for themselves.

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/archive/twsu-022526/

Screen Time Bans and Limits Are Really A Search for a Healthy Relationship to Technology

Those who are asking for screen-time limits are people who seek to relieve children from what writer Paul Kingsnorth calls "the eye-glaze of screen burn."

It is a quest for a healthy relationship to technology instead of the almost worshipful stance currently held by so many in Ed Tech.

A healthy relationship to technology is one where all the world, digital to analog, is in the toolbox.

A healthy relationship to technology is not an endless quest to elevate it to the "go-to solution."

A health relationship to technology is the recognition and acknowledgment that even though technology might be used, sometimes it does not have to be nor should it.

A healthy relationship to technology is valuing the human over the Machine always.

Finally, a healthy relationship to technology is one where devices are not a constant intrusion and distraction; they are simply a toaster sitting in the background and used when needed  and not a device constantly beeping like a little child, demanding our attention.

Screen time limits and bans have arisen because of the excesses of a Ed Tech discipline and industry agenda that so desperately wants devices on every desk, in every hand and used during every lesson.

It is time to remove the glitter, gleam and dazzle from devices and treat them as we have microwaves, clocks, watches and power saws: as simply tools.

New Must-Have Component Needed in Digital Literacy Approaches: Instruction in Screen Addiction Engineering

There should be a new component in all digital literacy efforts:

Students should be educated on the engineered addiction aspects of these devices and technologies and what they can do take away Tech's entrapment power.

They should receive training, for example, on how features such as the "Like" button were utilized to lure them to these applications and keep them there. By recognizing the manipulating factors of this feature, they can de-elevate its importance and free themselves from its tyranny.

They should be receive specific instruction about how these devices can be exploit them and manipulate them.

They should also receive instruction in how to counter this built-in addiction feature and free themselves from the lure of screens. For example, they could receive instruction on "the notification" and how it is a siren's call to return to the screen. They could learn to limit or turn off all notifications at all times or during specific periods of the day. This would eliminate one major, addictive aspect of the screen and give them control over the device.

Ed Tech should transform digital literacy from being an effort to sanitize Silicon Valley devices and transform students into "good little consumers" of these, into being empowered and critical human beings who decide for themselves when and how these intersect their lives.

This would transform the field of Ed Tech from being a cheerleader for Big Tech, into actually giving children and their parents power of these devices. 

Sadly, Ed Tech still sees its primary role as delivering new consumers to these companies.

Ed Tech Defends Devices Not Students: There Is an Attention Problem and It's Not the Screentime That's the Problem: It's the Products or Screens

Many in Ed Tech are striking back against those wanting to control screen time with bans and restrictions. They rely on the old “utilitarian argument” used by gun advocates. “Devices don’t distract students; students distract themselves” they say.

How ludicrous does that sound when the devices are PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED AND ENGINEERED by Big Tech to “distract” and “capture attention?”

Sure, it’s not the time spent behind the screen that is the problem. Its the products that Ed Tech uncritically subject students to.

It’s devices and apps that are purposefully engineered for addiction. The product is the problem. It’s how it’s made and that is of concern.

These companies aren’t going to change their money-making products, and their goal is more and more addictive and distracting designs with each new feature.

In the classrooms, teachers are fighting “mech-dealers” (the tech-equivalent of meth dealers), who sell these addictive products and who only want students attention and data so they can make more money.

That is the problem with screens.

Instead of working with these Ed Tech companies and serving students and their attention on a silver platter,  why not join with those who want to address these issues. 

No, like Ed Tech does when their devices flop, it’s the teachers’ fault; it’s the school’s fault.

It’s an implementation problem, they say. Just maybe, the product is the problem.

Come on Ed Tech, advocate for students, not the Tech and those peddling it.

Why Abandoing E-Books Restores an Old Experience of Reading

Why do I still buy physical books? Call it reverse digital conversion.

When the Kindle appeared, I was in awe and I have purchased multiple versions over the years, and always used the app across devices. It gave me instant access to book purchases (though under Amazon terms I did not actually own the books but simply pay them for access). It also allowed me to carry a library around with me at all times (though I discovered you still can only read one book at a time.)

That awe e-books invoked has long-since cooled and I buy more physical books than I do e-books. Why?

The experience of reading a physical book for me is different and more suitable to the way I want to experience reading. 

First of all, reading from a device can bring the multitude of distractions that gadgets bring. I can read a physical book on MY TERMS, and truly block out the world. Devices are designed for distraction, so a physical book has none of that.

Secondly, I like to physically underline as I read, make notes in the margins, and I have an old-fashioned journal and pen I can pick up and record quotes and thoughts. I have never been able to get that feature in the Kindle app to work the way I want to work. 

Despite what the Tech evangelists tell us, devices LIMIT sometimes, and the e-book limits my reading experience.

Finally, I honestly like to own my books, and not pay for access. I return again and again to my books and right there in them are my notes and thoughts. I don't have to make sure my device battery is charged or whether there's a wifi connection. Just open it and you're there. That's pretty darn efficient.

I still purchase a e-book every now and then, but it is usually one I read for relaxation or interest. It's the books I usually give away. It is never one that I will re-read or return to. Though, there are times when I purchase an e-book first, but find that I want a physical copy instead. 

There are obvious issues with physical books but one adapts. For example, the photo below is my solution for that stack of books I kept by my chair on the end table. The book tree works well. I can see my titles and pull and replace easily. Of course a single Kindle on a table would replace, would it not? God forbid! Then it brings its distractions, charging issues, etc.

This really is an illustration of "reverse digital conversion." We all need to think outside the silicon box that technology has placed us. Perhaps then, we will rediscover old experiences and invent new ones. The world is not yet encased in chips, and if it is, I don't envy living in such a place.

"There's an app for that...but should there be?" Teaching Students Answers Sometimes Lie Outside Devices

“There’s an app for that…but should there be?”

That’s the question we should be asking instead of always searching for an app to solve our problems.

To automatically look to technology alone for answers, is “tech solutionism.” That’s narrow-minded and dogmatic thinking.

But that’s the mindset Ed Tech has adopted.

But to always turn to tech for answers narrows the possibility for available solutions. 

It’s not thinking outside the box; it’s boxing up the mind into a silicon container.

To teach students to always search for answers in technology is making students dependent upon devices, which is what Big Tech desires.

Big Tech wants addicted users.

To counter that, educators need to be sure to expand their students’ toolboxes beyond the screen.

Our goal, either intentional or unintentionally, should never be to teach students to be “good little consumers of Big Tech’s latest.”

It should be to teach students to be critical and free users of tech WHEN IT IS THE BEST SOLUTION AND WHEN THEY WANT TO USE IT.

To do that, teach them that the answers sometimes lie outside the world of silicon and microchips.

Ed Tech’s problem has always been its inability to see anything but the gleam of gadgets and devices. It always searches for its answers there.

In this always-search-for-answers-in-devices it actually “imprisons” children in a world where the only real answers are found in screens. That’s not reality.

That’s dogmatic, narrow-minded approaches that will forever have students looking for answers from Silicon Valley and Tech. Sounds like device dependency to me!

That’s not growing critical, adaptable, and creative learners.

If there is an app for it, sometimes we need to ask, “Should there be one in the first place?” And “Should I use an app to do this?”

Teach students that and they will be free human beings and not mindless customers for Big Tech and those peddling devices.