If you work in education or with children in any setting, you may be asking yourself: Is it me or is it them? Are students, especially those in their tweens and teens, becoming more apathetic or less motivated? Or am I just in a slump? Could there be something I’m missing that would help strengthen their self-regulation and decision-making?

While there are countless joys to celebrate in schools and child-focused environments, there are also realities we cannot ignore. Students today are learning in ways and interacting with a world that looks radically different from what many of their teachers experienced.

The Self-Regulation Struggle

Many learners today struggle with self-regulation. They are easily distracted, find it difficult to persevere, and often describe themselves as bored. The need for constant stimulation is unmistakable, and their search for dopamine seems to be at a fever pitch. While research continues to examine the impacts of media on self-regulation and emotional intelligence, there is also evidence of a correlation between young children and their interactions with their parents.

As noted by Nabi and Wolfers (2023) in Does Digital Media Use Harm Children’s Emotional Intelligence? A Parental Perspective:

“Parental behaviors, including their own digital media use, as well as how they engage during their children’s media use, should be taken into account when assessing child outcomes. The purpose of this study, then, is to explore how the media diet of children, as well as the media-related behaviors of parents around their children, relate to child EI level.”

What’s Driving This Shift?

It is hard to ignore the role of technology over the past fifteen years. Children have grown up with tablets and handheld devices from a very young age. This kind of stimulation is fundamentally different from sitting in front of a television in the 1980s, 90s, or early 2000s. Television programming, whether short or long form, was paced, narrative-driven, and structured. In contrast, much of today’s online content, especially platforms like YouTube Kids, is designed to be hyper stimulating with rapid pacing, intense color saturation, and constant audio cues. It is early MTV on steroids.

I remember summers spent watching Leave It to Beaver reruns. Today, a five-year-old might be watching a rapid-fire montage of images on a handheld screen just inches from their face. This rewires the brain in ways we often underestimate.

A Personal Wake-Up Call

Just today, a snow day, I was playing video games and indulging in nostalgia with my old Sega Master System favorites: 8-bit gems like Space Harrier, Wonder Boy, and OutRun. My twelve-year-old looked over and said the games were “so boring.” That moment stopped me. It made me realize how modern games and devices may be contributing to challenges with self-regulation. Keep in mind, this comment came while he as playing on an iPad and watching his current favorite show, The Rookie, in a window on the same screen. Roblox and TV, all in one.

I was a gamer as a child and teen. I played for hours, but there was a rhythm: play, lose, try again. Three lives were the standard. Games did not save your progress until the original Xbox in 2001 made saving the norm. Yes, The Legend of Zelda in 1987 allowed saving, but it required a special cartridge and was not common. To complete a game was an achievement built on failure, persistence, problem-solving, and patience. To beat a game, like in the movie The Wizard, was legendary.

There was something formative about learning to lose and keep going. That experience is very different from today’s endless loops of Fortnite or Roblox. This is not to criticize modern games outright but to acknowledge that something important has shifted. As parents and educators, we need to recognize how constant stimulation rewrites the brain, just like the multitasking my son does on his device.

The Research Is Clear

Research shows that constant notifications and fast-paced online content can decrease attention spans. The brain needs several uninterrupted seconds of focus to form a memory, something rapid scrolling rarely allows. Teaching young people how the brain works and how to care for it is no longer optional. It is essential.

In Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009), the authors found that individuals who frequently multitask with media perform worse on tasks requiring sustained attention and working memory. Heavy media multitaskers struggle more to filter distractions and retain information, highlighting the negative impact of multitasking on cognitive control. Imagine, this study is from over a decade ago and clearly needs to be revisited given the intensity of mediated products readily available to young people today.

This speaks directly to our kids. They are inundated with media at such a rapid pace that focusing, retaining information, and slowing down enough to self-regulate, to control emotions, pause, and reframe, has become incredibly difficult.

So, What’s the Fix?

I do not have all the answers, but limiting screen time or at least altering the “screen play” is certainly a start. The question is not whether the world has changed. It has. The question is whether we are willing to slow things down enough to help our children relearn how to focus, struggle productively, and grow. The future of learning may depend on how we answer that question.