The Benefits of a Varied (Media) Diet
We have outstanding food service at Browning, with talented and friendly staff, a commitment to healthy ingredients, and a range of options for boys whose appetites are as unique as the students themselves are. But what is offered is one thing; what is consumed, another. Over the course of two decades, I have learned that school lunch is a place where institutional intention invariably capitulates to student expression.
To be clear, we should never shame folks for what they do or do not eat; every eater has a story, and that story should remain as private as that eater wishes. But as I watch some boys lean into grilled BBQ portobello mushrooms while others stick with a more tried-and-true macaroni and cheese, it almost always summons for me the adage that “you are what you eat.” Both science and intuition strongly suggest that what we consume will affect how we can and will act in the world.
All of this leads me to a recent piece in The Atlantic. Written by the NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and provocatively titled, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” the essay meditates on how social media—which began with the promise of popular cooperation—has often undermined its own anticipated purpose, to the detriment of social trust and democratic institutions. I know that there’s nothing enchanting about a middle-aged person muttering about how social media ruins everything; more pointedly, I’ve crossed the line where I’m now closer to collecting social security than to my college graduation, so any comments about Twitter or TikTok risk falling into “Old Man Yells at Cloud” territory. I don’t want to fall into a generational abyss. But still: What we consume will affect how we can and will act in the world.
While there are many reasons for the hate crime that took the lives of 10 Black people in Buffalo last Saturday, one thing is certain, based on the account of the shooter himself — he was radicalized when boredom during the early pandemic lockdown led him to messages boards espousing white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideologies. In fact, counterterrorism experts now fear that because he livestreamed his rampage, others may find themselves drawn to emulate such heinous deeds.
Surely all social media is not a pox, and people spend more hours watching animal videos than consuming noxious content. Still, we should maintain awareness of how (over)use of this tool can influence our ways of being—particularly our students’ ways of being in school.
“We should maintain awareness of how (over)use of this tool can influence our ways of being—particularly our students’ ways of being in school.”
Haidt asserts that social media has fundamentally “trained users to spend more time performing and less time connecting.” He also proposes that the Internet is a place where confirmation bias thrives; that is, social media is by its very nature designed to give users more of the content that they engage with, and that is often content that validates their worldview. If true, these twin insights have profound consequences for a school with Browning’s mission and approach. In a real way, the very purpose of Browning is to foster connection—with ideas, with others, with the self—and this requires authenticity, resolve, and openness, none of which seem to be enhanced by the performativity, speed, and narrow epistemological frames rewarded by so much of social media. It can be decidedly hard work to give focus and genuine curiosity to a new environment, a lengthy text, or an unfamiliar outlook—but this is precisely what Browning demands, and must demand, in order to foster the growth of the kind of friends, citizens, and thinkers that our community wants to send into the world. So our curriculum will always promote deep, engaged reading; generous and patient conversation; open, varied, sustained encounters with new subjects and plural perspectives; and sufficient time for the deliberate expression of new ideas and the creation of artifacts that provide a foundation for future inquiry. If our students are merely responding to stimuli without reflection or discernment, if they are conditioned to perform for attention and approval rather than to connect for discovery and understanding, we are not just limiting their education—we are curtailing their ethical development, their humanity and the potential for meaning that resides within them.
We have choices about what we admit to our systems, and Browning has made the decision to nourish the capacity to sustain focus, respect informed but differing perspectives, enrich discussions, and draw responsible ethical and intellectual conclusions. Our students—and their families and teachers—can do likewise, too, in their own attention diets, by making sure smartphones and DMs are leavened with a different kind of social media, the kind that comes from reading, observing, and conversing with care and creativity. This is no small effort, and of no small importance, for after all: What we consume will affect how we can and will act in the world.