Feed Your Children a Balanced “Diet” of Technology
The operative word in raising healthy children in this often-times unhealthy digital world they are growing up in is balance. A nutritional analogy works well here. A balanced nutritional diet doesn’t mean 50 percent healthy food and 50 percent junk food. Rather, a balanced diet involves ensuring that your children get adequate nutrition from all […]
Read MoreThe Bad, the Ugly, and the Good of Children’s Use of Social Media
Whether we like it or not, the Internet, social media, and all of the related technology are here to stay. As evidenced every day in so many ways, this new technological landscape brings many wonderful benefits to our family’s lives and relationships. At the same time, as with any new innovations, this impact has a […]
Read MoreCognitive Biases are Bad for Business
The conventional wisdom in classical economics is that we humans are “rational actors” who, by our nature, make decisions and behave in ways that maximize advantage and utility and minimize risk and costs. This theory has driven economic policy for generations despite daily anecdotal evidence that we are anything but rational, for example, how we invest and what we buy. Economists who embrace this assumption seem to live by the maxim, “If the facts don’t fit the theory, throw out the facts,” attributed, ironically enough, to Albert Einstein. But any notion that we are, in fact, rational actors, was blown out of the water by Dr. Daniel Kahneman, the winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for economics, and his late colleague Amos Tversky. Their groundbreaking, if not rather intuitive, findings on cognitive biases, have demonstrated quite unequivocally that humans make decisions and act in ways that are anything but rational.
Read MoreHelp When it Helps, Don’t When it Doesn’t
There was a wonderful article in the NY Times last week that described when it is helpful to help your children (and others) and when it actually hurts their development.
Read MoreThreat vs. Challenge in Sports
I have found that a simple distinction appears to lie at the heart of whether athletes are able to rise to the occasion and perform their best when it really counts or crumble under the weight of expectations and tough conditions on the day of a competition: Do they view the competition as a threat or a challenge. What happens when you are threatened by something (think mountain lion). First, what direction do you want to go? Of course, you want to run away from the threat as fast as you can. Physiologically, your muscles tighten up, you hold your breath, your balance goes back, and your center of gravity rises. Psychologically, your motivation is to flee from the threat. Your confidence plummets because you don’t feel capable of confronting the situation (that’s one reason it’s a threat to you). You are focused only on protecting yourself from the threat. And, naturally, you feel fear, helplessness, and despair (because the mountain lion will eat you!). In sum, everything both physically and mentally goes against you, making it virtually impossible for you to overcome the threat and success in your sport. Where does threat come from?
Read MoreWhat Do Young People Say About Their Relationship with Technology?
To give you a sense of the scope of the effect of technology on the psychological and emotional health of young people, I want to describe the results of an international study involving more than 1000 students from ten countries across five continents that asked students to disconnect from technology for 24 hours. The results and insights, […]
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