🎆More Than Robots #23 / November 2019

Hello,
This month there will be fireworks, a bonfire of promises and a change in the weather

The poet Thomas Hood found November to be a challenging time - but here are some things to remember that even he would be thankful for...

📖 Research

Media Use by US Tweens and Teens / Common Sense Media
69% of 12-year-olds have a smartphone. Watching online videos has more than doubled since 2015. Tweens from higher-income homes use less screen media per day than those from lower-income households

Related reading: The Digital-Wellbeing of Canadian Families / A child-centred study of teens’ digital lifeworlds from a Nigerian perspective
Creativity in Learning / Gallup
77% of parents agree that teaching approaches that inspire creativity in the learning process have a bigger payoff for students. Yet, students spend most of their time on traditional lessons that do little to encourage creativity / Further reading: Durham Commission on Creativity and Education

Gaming the system / Children's Commissioner for England
“I can chat to all my friends when they’re not actually with me… or if they just want to tell me stuff in private” Anna, 10 (Roblox player) / Bonus read: Children’s Insights: Issue 1

Making the grade: How education shapes young people’s mental health / Children and Young People's Mental Health Coalition
'Leaders should create a culture that promotes positive mental health for both pupils and staff. Parents, carers and the wider community should be engaged as part of this'

📎 Resources

Data patterns catalogue / IF
Design ideas to 'help teams make decisions about how, when and why to collect and use data about people'

Newsguard
A browser extension that signals if a website is 'trying to get it right, has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods'

Working With Young Cultural Leaders / ROH Bridge
Handbook to help schools and organisations set up programmes that 'enable young people to have an active role in shaping cultural learning in their community'

Cove
'Improve your mental health by making music'

💬 Inspiration and opinion

Screen time - myths, misconceptions and making sense of it all
'We can’t necessarily draw conclusions simply from counting the hours...the wider context of how we live in our modern societies might actually provide greater clues as to our online – and offline – wellbeing'

Can you make AI fairer than a judge?
“Whenever you turn philosophical notions of fairness into mathematical expressions, they lose their nuance, their flexibility, their malleability,”

Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking
'Two mechanisms contribute to humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids: a person-specific tendency to notice the limitations of others where one excels and a memory bias projecting one’s current qualities onto the youth of the past'

Self-assessment: A liberating element of digital health
'How often in health settings are we free to roam and explore? There is usually barely the time for a decision to be reached and curiosity and choice are often rare luxuries for both clinician and service user'

Entering the City – Embodied Perception and the Digital World
'We should stop thinking of ‘the self as made up of separate perceptions, memories and feelings and accept that our self is a continuous flux of interconnected processes''



...and finally
It's been a busy couple of months for rats. First, they got to play and now they get to chill out in driverless cars. At this rate, it won't be long before they are working in content moderation centres...



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Jamie Larson
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