Why it matters that teens are reading less

SAT reading scores in 2016 were the lowest they’ve ever been. Aha-Soft/Shutterstock.com

Most of us spend much more time with digital media than we did a decade ago. But today’s teens have come of age with smartphones in their pockets. Compared to teens a couple of decades ago, the way they interact with traditional media like books and movies is fundamentally different.

My co-authors and I analyzed nationally representative surveys of over one million U.S. teens collected since 1976 and discovered an almost seismic shift in how teens are spending their free time.
Increasingly, books seem to be gathering dust.

It’s all about the screens

By 2016, the average 12th grader said they spent a staggering six hours a day texting, on social media, and online during their free time. And that’s just three activities; if other digital media activities were included, that estimate would surely rise.

Teens didn’t always spend that much time with digital media. Online time has doubled since 2006, and social media use moved from a periodic activity to a daily one. By 2016, nearly nine out of 10 12th-grade girls said they visited social media sites every day.

Meanwhile, time spent playing video games rose from under an hour a day to an hour and a half on average. One out of 10 8th graders in 2016 spent 40 hours a week or more gaming – the time commitment of a full-time job.

With only so much time in the day, doesn’t something have to give?

Maybe not. Many scholars have insisted that time online does not displace time spent engaging with traditional media. Some people are just more interested in media and entertainment, they point out, so more of one type of media doesn’t necessarily mean less of the other.

However, that doesn’t tell us much about what happens across a whole cohort of people when time spent on digital media grows and grows. This is what large surveys conducted over the course of many years can tell us.

Movies and books go by the wayside

While 70 percent of 8th and 10th graders once went to the movies once a month or more, now only about half do. Going to the movies was equally popular from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s, suggesting that Blockbuster video and VCRs didn’t kill going to the movies.

But after 2007 – when Netflix introduced its video streaming service – moviegoing began to lose its appeal. More and more, watching a movie became a solitary experience. This fits a larger pattern: In another analysis, we found that today’s teens go out with their friends considerably less than previous generations did.

But the trends in moviegoing pale in comparison to the largest change we found: An enormous decline in reading. In 1980, 60 percent of 12th graders said they read a book, newspaper or magazine every day that wasn’t assigned for school.

By 2016, only 16 percent did – a huge drop, even though the book, newspaper or magazine could be one read on a digital device (the survey question doesn’t specify format).

The number of 12th graders who said they had not read any books for pleasure in the last year nearly tripled, landing at one out of three by 2016. For iGen – the generation born since 1995 who has spent their entire adolescence with smartphones – books, newspapers and magazines have less and less of a presence in their daily lives.

Of course, teens are still reading. But they’re reading short texts and Instagram captions, not longform articles that explore deep themes and require critical thinking and reflection. Perhaps as a result, SAT reading scores in 2016 were the lowest they have ever been since record keeping began in 1972.

It doesn’t bode well for their transition to college, either. Imagine going from reading two-sentence captions to trying to read even five pages of an 800-page college textbook at one sitting. Reading and comprehending longer books and chapters takes practice, and teens aren’t getting that practice.

There was a study from the Pew Research Center a few years ago finding that young people actually read more books than older people. But that included books for school and didn’t control for age. When we look at pleasure reading across time, iGen is reading markedly less than previous generations.

The way forward

So should we wrest smartphones from iGen’s hands and replace them with paper books?
Probably not: smartphones are teens’ main form of social communication.

However, that doesn’t mean they need to be on them constantly. Data connecting excessive digital media time to mental health issues suggests a limit of two hours a day of free time spent with screens, a restriction that will also allow time for other activities – like going to the movies with friends or reading.

Of the trends we found, the pronounced decline in reading is likely to have the biggest negative impact. Reading books and longer articles is one of the best ways to learn how to think critically, understand complex issues and separate fact from fiction. It’s crucial for being an informed voter, an involved citizen, a successful college student and a productive employee.


If print starts to die, a lot will go with it.

Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

You are a child of the universe

~Desiderata~

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

~ Max Ehrmann, 1927

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata

The world of plastics, in numbers

Millions of tons of plastic are manufactured every year. Bert Kaufmann/Wikimedia, CC BY

From its early beginnings during and after World War II, the commercial industry for polymers – long chain synthetic molecules of which “plastics” are a common misnomer – has grown rapidly. In 2015, over 320 million tons of polymers, excluding fibers, were manufactured across the globe.

Until the last five years, polymer product designers have typically not considered what will happen after the end of their product’s initial lifetime. This is beginning to change, and this issue will require increasing focus in the years ahead.

The plastics industry

“Plastic” has become a somewhat misguided way to describe polymers. Typically derived from petroleum or natural gas, these are long chain molecules with hundreds to thousands of links in each chain. Long chains convey important physical properties, such as strength and toughness, that short molecules simply cannot match.

“Plastic” is actually a shortened form of “thermoplastic,” a term that describes polymeric materials that can be shaped and reshaped using heat.

The modern polymer industry was effectively created by Wallace Carothers at DuPont in the 1930s. His painstaking work on polyamides led to the commercialization of nylon, as a wartime shortage of silk forced women to look elsewhere for stockings.

When other materials became scarce during World War II, researchers looked to synthetic polymers to fill the gaps. For example, the supply of natural rubber for vehicle tires was cut off by the Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia, leading to a synthetic polymer equivalent.

Curiosity-driven breakthroughs in chemistry led to further development of synthetic polymers, including the now widely used polypropylene and high-density polyethylene. Some polymers, such as Teflon, were stumbled upon by accident.

Eventually, the combination of need, scientific advances and serendipity led to the full suite of polymers that you can now readily recognize as “plastics.” These polymers were rapidly commercialized, thanks to a desire to reduce products’ weight and to provide inexpensive alternatives to natural materials like cellulose or cotton.

Types of plastic

The production of synthetic polymers globally is dominated by the polyolefins – polyethylene and polypropylene.

Polyethylene comes in two types: “high density” and “low density.” On the molecular scale, high-density polyethylene looks like a comb with regularly spaced, short teeth. The low-density version, on the other hand, looks like a comb with irregularly spaced teeth of random length – somewhat like a river and its tributaries if seen from high above. Although they’re both polyethylene, the differences in shape make these materials behave differently when molded into films or other products.


Polyolefins are dominant for a few reasons. First, they can be produced using relatively inexpensive natural gas. Second, they’re the lightest synthetic polymers produced at large scale; their density is so low that they float. Third, polyolefins resist damage by water, air, grease, cleaning solvents – all things that these polymers could encounter when in use. Finally, they’re easy to shape into products, while robust enough that packaging made from them won’t deform in a delivery truck sitting in the sun all day.

However, these materials have serious downsides. They degrade painfully slowly, meaning that polyolefins will survive in the environment for decades to centuries. Meanwhile, wave and wind action mechanically abrades them, creating microparticles that can be ingested by fish and animals, making their way up the food chain toward us.

Recycling polyolefins is not as straightforward as one would like owing to collection and cleaning issues. Oxygen and heat cause chain damage during reprocessing, while food and other materials contaminate the polyolefin. Continuing advances in chemistry have created new grades of polyolefins with enhanced strength and durability, but these cannot always mix with other grades during recycling. What’s more, polyolefins are often combined with other materials in multi-layer packaging; while these multi-layer constructs work well, they are impossible to recycle.


Polymers are sometimes criticized for being produced from increasingly scarce petroleum and natural gas. However, the fraction of either natural gas or petroleum used to produce polymers is very low; less than 5 percent of either oil or natural gas produced each year is employed to generate plastics. Further, ethylene can be produced from sugarcane ethanol, as is done commercially by Braskem in Brazil.

How plastic is used

Depending upon the region, packaging consumes 35 to 45 percent of the synthetic polymer produced in total, where the polyolefins dominate. Polyethylene terephthalate, a polyester, dominates the market for beverage bottles and textile fibers.

Building and construction consumes another 20 percent of the total polymers produced, where PVC pipe and its chemical cousins dominate. PVC pipes are lightweight, can be glued rather than soldered or welded, and greatly resist the damaging effects of chlorine in water. Unfortunately, the chlorine atoms that confer PVC this advantage make it very difficult to recycle – most is discarded at the end of life.

Polyurethanes, an entire family of related polymers, are widely used in foam insulation for homes and appliances, as well as in architectural coatings.



The automotive sector uses increasing amounts of thermoplastics, primarily to reduce weight and hence achieve greater fuel efficiency standards. The European Union estimates that 16 percent of the weight of an average automobile is plastic components, most notably for interior parts and components.

Over 70 million tons of thermoplastics per year are used in textiles, mostly clothing and carpeting. More than 90 percent of synthetic fibers, largely polyethylene terephthalate, are produced in Asia. The growth in synthetic fiber use in clothing has come at the expense of natural fibers like cotton and wool, which require significant amounts of farmland to be produced. The synthetic fiber industry has seen dramatic growth for clothing and carpeting, thanks to interest in special properties like stretch, moisture-wicking and breathability.

As in the case of packaging, textiles are not commonly recycled. The average U.S. citizen generates over 90 pounds of textile waste each year. According to Greenpeace, the average person in 2016 bought 60 percent more items of clothing every year than the average person did 15 years earlier, and keeps the clothes for a shorter period of time.

Eric Beckman, Professor of Chem/Petroleum Engineering, University of Pittsburgh
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Spending time alone in nature is good for your mental and emotional health

Hiking the Savage River Loop in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Lian Law/NPS

Today Americans live in a world that thrives on being busy, productive and overscheduled. Further, they have developed the technological means to be constantly connected to others and to vast options for information and entertainment through social media. For many, smartphones demand their attention day and night with constant notifications.

As a result, naturally occurring periods of solitude and silence that were once commonplace have been squeezed out of their lives. Music, reality TV shows, YouTube, video games, tweeting and texting are displacing quiet and solitary spaces. Silence and solitude are increasingly viewed as “dead” or “unproductive” time, and being alone makes many Americans uncomfortable and anxious.
But while some equate solitude with loneliness, there is a big difference between being lonely and being alone. The latter is essential for mental health and effective leadership.

We study and teach outdoor education and related fields at several colleges and organizations in North Carolina, through and with other scholars at 2nd Nature TREC, LLC, a training, research, education and consulting firm. We became interested in the broader implications of alone time after studying intentionally designed solitude experiences during wilderness programs, such as those run by Outward Bound. Our findings reveal that time alone in nature is beneficial for many participants in a variety of ways, and is something they wish they had more of in their daily life.

On an average day in 2015, individuals aged 15 and over spent more than half of their leisure time watching TV. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans Time Use Survey

 

Reflection and challenge

We have conducted research for almost two decades on Outward Bound and undergraduate wilderness programs at Montreat College in North Carolina and Wheaton College in Illinois. For each program, we studied participants’ experiences using multiple methods, including written surveys, focus group interviews, one-on-one interviews and field notes. In some cases, we asked subjects years later to look back and reflect on how the programs had affected them. Among other questions, our research looked at participant perceptions of the value of solo time outdoors.

Our studies showed that people who took part in these programs benefited both from the outdoor settings and from the experience of being alone. These findings build on previous research that has clearly demonstrated the value of spending time in nature.

Scholars in fields including wilderness therapy and environmental psychology have shown that time outdoors benefits our lives in many ways. It has a therapeutic effect, relieves stress and restores attention. Alone time in nature can have a calming effect on the mind because it occurs in beautiful, natural and inspirational settings.

Spending time in city parks like Audubon Park in New Orleans provides some of the same benefits as time in wilderness areas, including reduced stress levels and increased energy levels. InSapphoWeTrust, CC BY-SA

Nature also provides challenges that spur individuals to creative problem-solving and increased self-confidence. For example, some find that being alone in the outdoors, particularly at night, is a challenging situation. Mental, physical and emotional challenges in moderation encourage personal growth that is manifested in an increased comfort with one’s self in the absence of others.

Being alone also can have great value. It can allow issues to surface that people spend energy holding at bay, and offer an opportunity to clarify thoughts, hopes, dreams and desires. It provides time and space for people to step back, evaluate their lives and learn from their experiences. Spending time this way prepares them to re-engage with their community relationships and full work schedules.

Putting it together: The outdoor solo

Participants in programmed wilderness expeditions often experience a component known as “Solo,” a time of intentional solitude lasting approximately 24-72 hours. Extensive research has been conducted on solitude in the outdoors because many wilderness education programs have embraced the educational value of solitude and silence.

Solo often emerges as one of the most significant parts of wilderness programs, for a variety of reasons. Alone time creates a contrasting experience to normal living that enriches people mentally, physically and emotionally. As they examine themselves in relation to nature, others, and in some cases, God, people become more attuned to the important matters in their lives and in the world of which they are part.

Solo, an integral part of Outward Bound wilderness trips, can last from a few hours to 72 hours. The experience is designed to give participants an opportunity to reflect on their own thoughts and critically analyze their actions and decisions.

Solitary reflection enhances recognition and appreciation of key personal relationships, encourages reorganization of life priorities, and increases appreciation for alone time, silence, and reflection. People learn lessons they want to transfer to their daily living, because they have had the opportunity to clarify, evaluate and redirect themselves by setting goals for the future.

For some participants, time alone outdoors provides opportunity to consider the spiritual and/or religious dimension of life. Reflective time, especially in nature, often enhances spiritual awareness and makes people feel closer to God. Further, it encourages their increased faith and trust in God. This often occurs through providing ample opportunities for prayer, meditation, fasting, Scripture-reading, journaling and reflection time.

Retreating to lead

As Thomas Carlyle has written, “In (solitary) silence, great things fashion themselves together.” Whether these escapes are called alone time, solitude or Solo, it seems clear that humans experience many benefits when they retreat from the “rat race” to a place apart and gather their thoughts in quietness.

In order to live and lead effectively, it is important to be intentional about taking the time for solitary reflection. Otherwise, gaps in schedules will always fill up, and even people with the best intentions may never fully realize the life-giving value of being alone.

Brad Daniel, Professor of Outdoor Education, Montreat College; Andrew Bobilya, Associate Professor and Program Director of Parks and Recreation Management, Western Carolina University, and Ken Kalisch, Associate Professor of Outdoor Education, Montreat College
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What makes a good friend?

How should you choose your friends? Liderina/ Shutterstock.com

Good friendships seem worth celebrating. But for many of us, tensions can appear from time to time between being a good friend and doing “the right thing.” When faced with, for example, a situation where it’s tempting to lie to cover for a friend, it can seem as though friendship and morality are on a collision course.

I am an ethicist who works on issues involving friendship, so this tension is of great interest to me.
It can be tempting to say that bad people are likely to treat their friends badly: For example, they could lie, cheat or steal from their friends. But it seems logically possible for a person to be bad to some people but good to others.

So are there other, more fundamental reasons to think being a good person is necessary for a good friendship?

Problems for friendship and morality

Let’s begin by looking at cases where morality and the demands of friendship are in conflict.

What are the demands on a friendship? Alessandro Pautasso, CC BY-NC-ND

Friendship seems to require that we be open to our friends’ ways of seeing things, even when they differ from our own. It also seems to require that we be concerned for our friends’ well-being. It’s not just that we desire good things for them. We also want to be involved ourselves in providing at least some of those goods.

This is one thing that distinguishes the care of friends from that of mere well-wishers.
But we also need to remain open to our friends’ beliefs about what is good for them: Blithely acting on what we think is best for our friends, when the friend disagrees, seems paternalistic. In some circumstances, like hiding a friend’s keys when he’s been drinking, a little paternalism might be permitted. But it seems a poor general feature of friendship.

Some theorists argue that it is this openness to friends’ perspectives that introduces moral danger. For example, friendship with a person who has different values can gradually change your own, including for the worse. This is especially true when the relationship makes you inclined to take their point of view seriously.

Other scholars argue that it is the combination of the desire to help friends with this openness to their point of view that poses the biggest problem. In making this argument, scholars Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett quote a line from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” In this line, the protagonist Elizabeth Bennett tells the cold and inflexible Mr. Darcy that “A regard for the requester would often make one yield readily to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason one into it.”
In other words, if your friend asks you to tell the boss she’s sick, not hung over, you should do it, just because she asked.

Aristotle on virtue in friendship

In order to respond to these concerns, it is helpful to review what Aristotle says about friendship and being a good person.

Statue of Aristotle in front of a university building in Freiburg, Germany. Martin aka Maha, CC BY-SA

For Aristotle, there are three main kinds of friendships. One, friendships of utility: as, for example, between friendly co-workers. Two, friendships of pleasure: for example, between members of a trivia team. And, three, friendships among those who find each other good and valuable for their own sakes. This last one he calls friendships of virtue, the best and fullest form of friendship.

It seems reasonably clear then why valuing someone for their virtues is characteristic of good friendship. Unlike the other forms of friendship, it involves valuing friends for themselves, not just for what they can do for you. Furthermore, it involves thinking their character and values have worth.
Some might worry that this sets the standard too high: Requiring that good friends be perfectly good would make good friendship impossibly rare. But Aristotelian scholar John Cooper argues that we can just take this to mean that the quality of a friendship varies with the quality of the friends’ characters.

Mediocre people will tend to have mediocre friendships, while better people will have better friendships, all else being equal.

What is virtue?

This might all seem hopelessly subjective, if we leave “good person” undefined, or think it is relative to a person’s individual values. But Aristotle also offers an objective account of what it takes to be a good person.

A good person, he says, is someone who possesses the virtues. Virtues, like courage, justice and moderation, are individual qualities of character that help us live good human lives, alone and together.

Aristotle argues that just as sharpness is a quality that helps a good knife perform its function well, we function better as human beings when we can protect what we value, work well with others and enjoy pleasures in moderation.

He defines bad qualities, or vices, as those qualities that make it harder to live a good life. For example, cowards have trouble protecting what matters, gluttons don’t know when to stop consuming and unjust people exhibit what he calls “graspingness,” grabbing for more than their share. So, they have trouble working well with others, which can be a major impediment for a social species.

Lastly, and crucially, he says that we build up these qualities, both good and bad, through repeated practice: We become good by repeatedly doing good, and bad by the reverse.

Connecting virtue and friendship

How then can this help us understand the relationship between being a good person and being a good friend?

I have already said that friendship involves both openness to friends’ perspectives and helping them out. Assuming Aristotle is right about the relationship between good character and ability to live well, it is not good to enable a friend who acts badly, because doing so will make it harder for that friend to live a good life.

But friendship is also not served by riding roughshod over the friend’s own beliefs about what he or she needs, even if those beliefs are mistaken. So the only people we can consistently do well by as friends are those who have reasonably good character.

We can, of course, change our own values and reactions to better match our friends. Much of this can happen unconsciously, and some such change might even be healthy. But when this change is for the worse (for example, becoming cowardly or unjust), we seem to be harmed by the association.

Does time spent with friends makes you a better person? marco monetti, CC BY-ND

If time spent with my lazy friend tends to make me less motivated when it comes to my own life, I arguably am worse off. This can make such friends bad to us, even if unintentionally.

Really good friendship, it turns out, isn’t even possible unless both friends are reasonably good.
The apparent tension between friendship and morality turns out to be just an illusion that results from failing to think carefully and clearly about the relationship between openness to our friends’ perspectives and our interest in helping our friends.

As Aristotle put it,

“The friendship of bad men turns out an evil thing (for because of their instability they unite in bad pursuits, and besides they become evil by becoming like each other), while the friendship of good men is good, being augmented by their companionship; and they are thought to become better too by their activities and by improving each other; for from each other they take the mould of the characteristics they approve.”

Alexis Elder, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Children should spend more time barefoot to encourage a healthier foot structure

berez_ka/Shutterstock.com

Humans have gone unshod for millions of years; it is only in the last few centuries that people have started wearing shoes. However, a recent survey shows that shoe wearing among young boys isn’t universal. German children and teenagers spend most of their day in shoes, while about 90% of their South African counterparts go barefoot.

Aside from the obvious climate differences, it is tempting to think that South Africa’s lower economic ranking, compared with Germany’s, is the main reason for the absence of footwear. But this reasoning has been challenged by results from our recent survey.

We gathered information on the footwear habits of 714 boys attending a secondary school in a wealthy part of Auckland, New Zealand. Almost half of the students (45%) spent most of their time barefoot. Many of the students in this study were even willing to run distances of 100 to 3,000 metres on a hard track surface without shoes.

Foot structure

Differences in foot structure between those who have never worn shoes and those who are usually in shoes have been described for over a century. In one seminal 1905 study, Phil Hoffman, warned how putting the fashionable desires of customers over the health of their feet had led to shoe design “that more or less crowds the front of the foot”.

The main developmental result of growing up in shoes appears to be a narrower foot and a lower arch. The result of this is more concentrated pressure at the heel and the ball of the foot during movement.

By contrast, those who grow up barefoot have wider feet and have a more even distribution of pressure towards the outside edge of the foot and across the toes.

Sakurra/Shutterstock.com

Running as nature intended

We don’t know what effect growing up in shoes has on the development of movement skills, or the risk of injury in sport, but logic suggests that growing up barefoot is a good thing.

The heel of the foot is highly sensitive to pain, meaning that when people run barefoot they tend to avoid landing on their heel and instead defer the pressure to the mid and forefoot. This allows a broader surface area to absorb force.

In order to avoid a heel strike, the foot must never be too far in front of the body. As a result, barefoot runners tend to have a shorter stride. A shorter stride needs less leg extension, which is why barefoot runners have greater bend at the knee and a more pointed foot toward the floor. These joint positions allow muscles around the knee to help control landing and allow the ankle to behave in a more spring-like fashion.

The problem with shoes

Covering the heel of the foot reduces the sensation it experiences when coming into contact with the ground. The running shoe, containing a cushioned heel, allows the runner to land on the heel of the foot with an extended leg. This is perhaps why about 75% of runners nowadays are heel strikers.

Running using an extended limb (overstriding) results in force being absorbed through the heel, bony structures and joints, with less assistance from muscle. This may be one of the reasons most running injuries are to structures that are not designed to absorb force (shins, feet and knees). Interestingly, when people remove their shoes, most revert to middle and forefoot striking.

Children and teenagers who grow up mostly barefoot appear strong enough to run quickly and for long distances without shoes. The prevalence of leg pain in the New Zealand students we studied was at the lower end of that reported globally in students of a similar age. This finding, combined with an absence of evidence for the role of shoes in the prevention of injury, makes it seem reasonable to suggest that children should spend as much time as possible barefoot.

Social acceptability is a barrier to barefoot activities in many Western countries, as a result, adults who did not grow up mostly barefoot may not have the same foot structure and leg strength to transition to barefoot activities quickly.

Gradually building time spent walking and running in bare feet is key for people who are new to barefoot activities. The increasing availability of shoes that mimic the structure of the foot (minimalist shoes) and have little cushioning other than to cover the foot, may help people transition to being barefoot. The improving design of these shoes may also help to tackle the issue of social acceptability.

Peter Francis, Director of the Musculoskeletal Science Research Group, Leeds Beckett University
This article was originally published on The Conversation.