Kids can't escape screens: America’s schools are heavily promoting devices for classwork and homework

From Cupertino to San Francisco, a growing consensus has emerged that screen time is bad for kids: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high, as per the NYTimes.

“Doing no screen time is almost easier than doing a little,” said Kristin Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook engineer. “If my kids do get it at all, they just want it more.”

Here is the problem: America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether.

Athena Chavarria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook and is now at Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic arm, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, said: “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children.” Ms. Chavarria did not let her children have cellphones until high school.

Chris Anderson has has 5 children and 12 tech rules. They include: no phones until the summer before high school, no screens in bedrooms, network-level content blocking, no social media until age 13, no iPads at all and screen time schedules enforced by Google Wifi that he controls from his phone. Bad behavior? The child goes offline for 24 hours.

His children attended private elementary school, where he saw the administration introduce iPads and smart whiteboards, only to “descend into chaos and then pull back from it all.”

Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, said earlier this year that he would not let his nephew join social networks. Bill Gates banned cellphones until his children were teenagers, and Melinda Gates wrote that she wished they had waited even longer. Steve Jobs would not let his young children near iPads.

References:

A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley - NYTimes https://buff.ly/2SYOkhJ
Silicon Valley Nannies Are Phone Police for Kids https://buff.ly/2ENF3Gn
The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected https://buff.ly/2Srcdyi

App uses a network of smartphones to help research cancer: your phone crunches numbers while your sleep

The company DreamLab says will allow users to "donate" their smartphone's processing power while their owners are sleeping:

"Cancer affects so many of the people we love. But what if you could help by speeding up cancer research, simply by going to bed. Researchers are hindered by limited access to supercomputers. So that’s where you and the DreamLab app come in. It’s a free to purchase app* that uses the processing power of your idle phone to solve a piece of the cancer research puzzle. If just 1,000 people used the app, cancer puzzles would be solved 30 times faster."

http://www.vodafone.com.au/aboutvodafone/vodafoneaustraliafoundation/dreamlab



"When a phone is plugged in and fully charged, it is sent a tiny genetic sequencing task by Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research to solve. When it is completed, the data is sent back to the Garvan Institute, which can use it as part of their research.

Users can select what project they want to contribute to, whether it is breast cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer. According to Vodafone, 1,000 smartphones using the app can speed up research by 30 times.

While the service can use a significant amount of data, users can choose limits of 250MB, 500MB and 1GB to send, with the data free for Vodafone Australia customers, or available to send over WiFi."

References:

Vodafone app turns your smartphone into a powerful cancer research machine - Telegraph http://buff.ly/1iNFvnr
App creates 'smartphone supercomputer' to cure cancer http://buff.ly/1NZgbpD
DreamLab - Android Apps on Google Play http://buff.ly/1kkrhfm

How to avoid getting a 'Text Neck' - Cleveland Clinic video

The popularity of texting on cellphones and using mobile devices has triggered an increase in neck pain. Dr. Bang, DC, of Cleveland Clinic gives tips on the right way to hold your mobile device.

Put down your phone - "Disconnect to connect" (video)

Here is a widely shared commercial from Thailand that is a part of a series of related videos on YouTube http://buff.ly/T8EoO8:

Mayo Clinic uses smartphone images to evaluate stroke patients in remote locations through telemedicine

A new Mayo Clinic study confirms the use of smartphones medical images to evaluate stroke patients in remote locations through telemedicine. The study, the first to test the effectiveness of smartphone teleradiology applications in a real-world telestroke network, was recently published in Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Bart Demaerschalk, M.D., neurologist and medical director of Mayo Clinic Telestroke, shows us how the smartphone technology works:

Your smartphone use predicts your social life, travel, risk of disease - even political views

The Really Smart Phone: Researchers are harvesting a wealth of intimate detail from cellphone data, uncovering the hidden patterns of social lives, travels, risk of disease - even political views.

Read more from WSJ.

5 ways your cell phone can save your life

From CNN:

You can use apps and other tools to turn your cell phone into a safety tool:

1. Program your cell phone so people can find you
2. Put your "in case of emergency" contact into your cell phone
3. Put your medical information on your cell phone
4. Get an app that teaches you first aid and CPR
5. Find help nearby

References:

Five ways your cell phone can save you. CNN.

Distracted Walking Featured in the New Windows Phone Ads

Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text. But phones aren't just distracting drivers; they make pedestrians inattentive too.

Distracted walking combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car.

There are plenty of examples of the dangers of distracted walking in the two videos embedded in this page. These are also examples of "distracted life" in general:



References:
Forget Gum. Walking and Using Phone Is Risky. NYTimes.
Video: Stop texting while driving. Terrifying. All drivers should watch this.

A Physician with a Smartphone: Endless Possibilities for Patient Care Improvement

"In this video, Ivor Ković, a physician from Croatia, talks about how he uses the iPhone in his daily medical practice. He shows how even simple technology (starting with SMS) changes work behavior of physicians and patients. He goes on to showcase some of the apps he uses and introduces us to "Little Anne". But the most interesting part of the video is possibly where Ivor shows his own innovation on how the iPhone can be used to deliver quality CPR."

There are several health-related talks from Mobile Monday Amsterdam 2010 available on YouTube at http://bit.ly/c0bMF0