Media Literacy: Mind Versus Mindful: Peter Komendowski at TEDxDesMoines

[Applause] um I grew up in a generation that really believed they were going to change the world and embraced all the technologies that we have today with an open heart for a lot of reasons because it came with the caveat the promise that it would help us Build a Better World solve world hunger stop Wars and all sorts of things like that but lost in that message was the idea that even a monkey wrench when used to hit somebody over the head loses its sense of benevolence some outcomes of great ideas only become obvious after

they've been indoctrinated into our lives I'm fried from looking at the internet all day I O Deed on Facebook I'm hung over from video games these reactions are a response to stress and to some degree a barometer of dissatisfaction um but most frighteningly they utilize the rhetoric of ADD something that we do know quite a lot about we know that children are influenced by their environment and we know that learning is influenced by their environment and those stimuli and we know that technology today has a large influence on how they're growing up uh children grades

five excuse me grades 7 through 11 spend an average of 55 hours a week today on the internet playing video games watching television in social media that's a big number especially when you consider the fact that it's competing with the attention of teachers and parents we've also seen a change in the way people experience the real world it might be hard to see but the Primitive forms are so far from our real daily life that they're not even visible anymore they're just dissipating and and and something unique is happening as we look at the way

Society is evolved and and we've gone from the early civilization models to a network civilization if you just if the visual part of you can come out in this comprehension and you can sort of see that that's sort of a stiff Arrangement it's sort of tight that tightness allows for a lot of efficiencies but is it the most Humane I mean you could almost grab one of these and if you shook it it would move I mean it sort of just visually gives you a sense that human interaction is is more comfortable and even like

in the swapping thing it's possible we might be Reinventing that we're civilization to try and get more involved in in daily life of people in a personal context to generate ideas like happiness instead of consuming now the question that really begs us when we look at things like this is do we understand the difference between real and virtual especially so with children all of us have seen a movie and then maybe had that magic moment where the picture pixelates or the signal gets broken and all of a sudden you realize wow it's not real and

that does diminish your satisfaction research suggests that the brain understands the difference between real and virtual especially on a subconscious level um when it becomes obvious that a nature scene on a video screen does not have the same effects on your brain and brain physiology and brain activity as going outside and looking at nature so whether you're conscious of it or not your brain makes a distinction between those two now the emotional brain is the one most easily influenced by the media and often trumps the rational brain especially with children exposed to traditional media designed

specifically to Target their emotional responses emotional brain development for very good reasons of survival happens early in life while the rational brain is not finished developing until the age of 25 this is a window of opportunity easy to exploit especially when you can get a child's attention away from their teachers and parents for 55 hours a week we'll take a really brief it doesn't take much you can throw a logo up on any benign ad makes you feel good but then you throw a logo and you can sell anything I can transpose the logos from

picture to picture works just as effectively now let's take a quick cruise through neural network development one it is use dependent it Peaks at age seven and it is just as important to your attitudes and morals as it is to the learning of any traditional knowledge sectors like math science and so forth if we look at you know there's an interesting parallel here when we looked at how we cultural Communications evolved to a network civilization same thing happens at youth you develop all this information and knowledge as this big mess of stuff and as you

get older you're basically pruning information so there's a lot of similarities when we look at those image and your network development that's another thing now we also know that we don't really have a lot of Gatekeepers for technology and media do we in the Iowa media literacy project we worked with over 2,000 students in five different school systems in Iowa grades 6 through eight uh the original quotes came from focus groups with those students a portion of our work centered on a large group presentation preceded and followed by a survey that tested various data points

including measurement of the third person effect where people believe the media affects other people more than it does them especially as it relates the influence of advert in in the presentation called the professor and the adman we talked about the differential and brain development little known secrets of the media utilized to take advantage of the difference and ideas for managing a rational approach to Media interactions essentially understanding the difference between the emotional and the rational brain and keep in mind this is to an audience of sixth to eth graders interestingly enough they get it results

consistently support the idea that children can grasp the concept found founded an engaging platform for continued dialogue and generally shared an increase in healthy skepticism of advertising so essentially they can learn in advance of brain development how to bridge the gap to cover that distance between the emotional and the rational brain because one thing when you notice about the rhetoric of of addiction is that you don't find an addict saying I'm an addict but you're finding children saying I'm suffering from addictive behavior so there's a realm of Consciousness there that's a little bit higher than

what we would refer to a drug addtion so you could ask why we care about this stuff well we care about it because we've realized that in the 30 or 40 Years of Technology being prevalent certain indicators have not increased one of them is happiness people are not generally happy there's no correlation between television ownership cell phone ownership not even a strong correlation with beer consumption and happiness but there is a very powerful correlation between happiness and the amount of time that you spent with family and friends physical time with people in short and in

conclusion technology if it connects people works media if it contributes to ideas that can be shared has potential to do good things or anything and if the end result of an experience with media is a need for more media we have a risk of addictive behavior the media literacy project and one of the things that we work on in schools is to develop these strengths in children so that they can reduce the effects and and the potential of addictive behavior with the media and use it for the good intended uses that can help them work

like some of us over the years to Build a Better World for themselves I'm fried from looking at the internet all day I ow Deed on Facebook I'm hung over from video games thank you