Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/middle-schoolers-academic-success-innovation-40e8456d

by pretext • 3 years ago

62 60 3 years ago

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

Oh cool, something that wasn't a problem in the past now has a solution that can be bought through a variety of products and services.

I don't know what's going to stop this machine. The machine craves GDP and profits. The machine needs problems like "boys struggling" in order to create products and services to reap those profits. The machine owns megaphones that broadcast its solutions: buy this product, buy that service.

We need to stop this machine.

Can you guys maybe turn down the volume on those megaphones and look inward? Instead of looking outward - coaches, counseling, this, that, maybe you need to seriously recalibrate your culture, because we're increasingly productizing solutions to problems that weren't problems in the past, and we're going broke, and our kids are suffering.

What are some familial-cultural things you think we could do differently that would help us help boys while not having to spend thousands per month just to give our sons the privilege of a normal life?

Remember, these issues simply were not issues in the past. Is there something from the past that we lost along the way that causes these issues? Can we bring that thing back? Similarly, what modern things did we introduce that could be causing these issues? If so, let's focus on removing that, the via negativa.

Perhaps what these people call disorganization and distraction is in fact a good thing, and boys are not meant to fit into the square pegs you're carved out? Let them go out into the desert and explore. They can't find and bring back treasure to enrich the tribe if they're stuck in a chair listening to you ramble for 8 hours straight. The problem could be you, not the boys.

hh3k02• 3 years ago

Oh cool, something that wasn't a problem in the past now has a solution that can be bought through a variety of products and services.

Plastic additives and softeners have been linked to ADHD – and plastic is virtually omnipresent nowadays. ADHD presents differently in boys and girls. I wonder if there could be a relation.

RobRivera• 3 years ago

This is one of those situations where I find it's best to take agency and ownership over one's life and if a parent, evaluate deeper about why children can't focus. It takes growth to admit maybe people arent doing things right, to a point where it is easier to just spend money on drugs. It shofts the perspective to 'its ok, its not your fault, it is a real problem, you can spend your money'

Obv. A complicated thing but hey.

cj• 3 years ago

Is there something from the past that we lost along the way that causes these issues?

Allowing kids to be bored.

It’s a very clear change between 20 years ago and today: 20 years ago kids simply didn’t have unlimited unrestricted access to screens and devices that produce instantaneous hits of dopamine on demand.

With TikTok, social media, endless TV streaming… it’s entirely possible for someone to exist for years while never learning to harness or channel boredom in productive ways.

scott_paul2• 3 years ago

20 years ago boredom wasn't a thing and we weren't addicted to screens? No, no. This dopamine-addiction screentime crap has been a thing for several generations. It's what fucked up the Boomers, I think, and it was definitely a thing for gen-X'ers like me.

This isn't some new thing that just happened to the kids these days, it's a longer term trend that everyone talking here grew up with, and we should examine it as such.

I_Am_Nous5• 3 years ago

I agree with you, and the issue seems to be people are being trained to get their sense of identity and worth from something external while also outsourcing their sense of well being to something else. People have always blamed media for societal ills, from traveling theater troupes performing questionable shows to radio dramas to television to TikTok. While those things are a tool which can cause issues, the underlying reason it happens is because people want to turn themselves off for a bit and be entertained to distract themselves from the pain of their lives. The pain never goes away, so the escapism becomes more and more common until people are barely functional without a hit of dopamine. Being bored is painful for my son because he's so used to constant focus on something entertaining. Mostly it's fear of missing out in his case, which is something good for him to learn to recognize and resist.

fatherzine• 3 years ago

100%

Very hard to turn down the volume as an individual actor. It's a social dilemma (sic). I remember a recent poll indicating students would pay for /others/ to use their devices less.

It is no random accident that the Church sees itself as the 'body of Christ'. That body, social fabric in modern parlance, is splintering at accelerating pace, thanks to digital comms -- thanks facebook. Uncharted rough waters for a social species like ourselves.

A good summary on X -- please ignore the tacky username. Similar sentiments in Gabor Mate's 'Hold on to your Kids'.

https://twitter.com/TheBrometheus/status/1725303595908628684

"Most people use therapy the way humans are meant to connect with our 5 safety net systems, which we retained even up to 100 years ago:

Immediate family

Extended family (kin)

Family friend network (kith)

Local community

Religious community

All 5 are now broken."

a1o• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/V5hHG

scott_paul2• 3 years ago

That's a feature not a bug.

A few thousand years ago we used to literally set them loose in the wilderness with some wolves for a few years, and it was fun & educational.

We understand reason and organization because we have explored the chaos, in our youth. It is necessary to explore the chaos, in order to fully grow into a fully functioning adult human man.

You don't get wise men from boring kids.

sgu999• 3 years ago

Nicely put. The problem though is our society requires children to behave in a certain way at a certain age, late bloomers will simply be left aside in most cases.

croes• 3 years ago

It is necessary to explore the chaos, in order to fully grow into a fully functioning adult human man.

Source?

watwut• 3 years ago

That is some alternative history

toofy• 3 years ago

i’m not sure a single thing you wrote in here is true. it feels like each sentence is further than the previous.

we set them loose with the wolves, and it was fun? i don’t think this is true.

We understand reason and organization because we have explored the chaos.

again, i don’t think this is true either. there are many ways we can learn reason, and if by chaos, youre implying from your previous paragraph, we can only understand reason if we’ve roamed in chaos with wild animals, this is absurd from front to back.

You don’t get wise men from boring kids.

Again, this is just more meaningless phrase, with no basis in reality.

I know plenty of wise people who had extraordinarily boring lives growing up.

I know plenty of “fully functional” adult humans who had entirely unremarkable and non-chaotic childhoods.

I would even venture that the literal opposite of everything you said is true, the most broken and screwed up people I know grew up in chaos while the most sane, rational (and yes, wise) people were “boring kids.”

kjkjadksj2• 3 years ago

Back when my family was in the old country it really was like this. Children were free range as soon as they could walk. They’d scarcely be able to speak and would be running all over the village and up and down the mountainsides. When the Germans came during world war II, the boys would hide in bushes with a stolen pistol and take shots at the troops.

I_Am_Nous5• 3 years ago

I believe the "boring kids" statement was intended to mean something like "You don't get wise men by boring (verb) boys in a classroom all day." Boring them because the teacher is boring, rather than a judgement about how interesting the boys are.

loup-vaillant2• 3 years ago

Here's the entire article for me:

Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction; parents are paying to keep their middle-schoolers from falling behind
Teresa Lubovich says nearly every student coming to her private tutoring center to learn personal organization skills is a boy.
Starting at $500 a month, her services don't come cheap, but she says parents are willing to

This is not the first time I see a paywall instead of an article. It happens pretty often actually. And yet they're upvoted. Does this mean many HN readers are subscribed? Or am I blocked more often than others? The article sure looks interesting, but I confess I'm not interested in a subscription.

lolinder2• 3 years ago

The customary pattern on HN for paywalls is that someone posts an archive link that bypasses them. Here's the one for this article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38583538

See dang's Tell HN from forever ago:

Tell HN: Paywalls with workarounds are OK; paywall complaints are off topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

loup-vaillant2• 3 years ago

Ah, that was in the FAQ. I see, thanks. For a moment I thought I was supposed to be aware of some random post from a distant past.

hn_throwaway_99• 3 years ago

I admit I haven't read the full article yet, but personally, could easily replace "Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction" with "Late middle-aged men struggle with disorganization and distraction."

I'm decently intelligent, and have done fairly well academically and in my career. One of my traits, for better or for worse, is being detail-oriented (for me meaning that I don't feel comfortable until all the details of the thing I'm working on are known and taken care of). That trait has always been a double-edged sword: it's helped me as an engineer, but I also have a tendency to be overwhelmed and easily distracted, and it can make it hard to prioritize.

Since the advent of smartphones and modern "notification channels", however, it's definitely skewed much more to the negative. I feel like my concentration and focus have been totally shot, and, saddest for me, my creativity has taken a huge dive. I've also spent thousands on coaches/therapy, but it's still a constant battle that feels analogous to I think what people with strong addictions feel.

senkora• 3 years ago

I also have a tendency to be overwhelmed and easily distracted, and it can make it hard to prioritize.

This resonates strongly with me. I've had some success by building personal productivity systems/workflows and sticking to them, but it definitely feels like I'm developing coping mechanisms to compensate for something that others don't even need to think about.

notjoemama2• 3 years ago

Whenever I've felt impacted by those things I simply eliminate them. I had TikTok installed for a while. One weekend I realized I had been scrolling for 5 hours but to me it felt like maybe 90 minutes? That's when I uninstalled it. I felt like my ability to listen or pay acute attention for long length of time was diminished. Eliminating the app let me get back to the level of performance I had before. Self reflecting, there's maybe a certain kind of power in not-knowing, or knowing there is a lot of information I simply don't have to be aware of. Political news, well, news in general strikes me as a similar case. I know going into it "if it bleeds it leads". If I consume that, am I really getting a true picture of reality? Probably not. So is there really as much value in making sure I keep up with the latest points? I don't feel like it matters.

I_Am_Nous5• 3 years ago

I've been on a similar trajectory. I realized I was using Reddit 40 hours a week and quit. A little while later, I got on Twitter and used it too much as well. I'm working to not do the same on HN and took a long "no social media" break before even coming to the site. As a result I was able to clear out a lot of the noise in my head and that has helped me gain focus. I cut news out as well and only rarely check what's going on in the world. I also converted to Catholicism and that has helped me gain a lot of peace that I didn't have before. I really don't feel the need to stress about something I know is in God's hands anyway -- it isn't up to me to change the world if that's not my purpose.

wildrhythms2• 3 years ago

I remember in college playing Counter Strike religiously, until one time during a game I got a call from my furious theatre director asking where I was and why I wasn't at rehearsal. I had completely lost track of time, and was so ashamed that I uninstalled the game that night, and even now years later I haven't reinstalled it since. Obviously I never missed another rehearsal, and it helped my grades too.

y-c-o-m-b• 3 years ago

This doesn't work for me unfortunately. I am on my phone maybe an hour a day tops anymore. In fact I find tech and gadgets somewhat repulsive these days. I visibly cringe whenever someone wants to show me a video or something on their phone.

The problem is my job. I'm a software developer which means I'm flooded with disorganization and distractions for many hours a day, five days a week. There's no escape from that other than leaving the field entirely and that's no longer a practical option at this point in life.

moltar• 3 years ago

Not sure if you’ll find this helpful. But I feel like I have similar traits. And these can also be sometimes labelled as ADHD (hyper focusing).

What helped we was to clean my life aggressively of all the distractions. I don’t use social media. I don’t subscribe to newsletters. I turn off most alerts on apps and use focus mode with whitelisted set of apps most of the time.

I funnel all content to RSS as much as possible. For newsletters I use kill the newsletter forwarder.

Even HN I funnel thru RSS.

Then I read RSS feeds only once or twice a day, deliberately, like a book or a newspaper. And there’ll be a couple of days per week where I might not even read at all.

I found this sort of bounded consumption highly beneficial.

jampekka3• 3 years ago

Often the boys are doing the work and not turning it in, there’s no follow-through on assignments, their backpacks are a mess,”

In the 90s at least in Finland this was more or less the norm. And this generation were at the top of PISA.

Middle school has become high stakes.

Maybe having kids' futures set at middle school is not such a great idea? And the dog-eat-dog winner-takes-all underlying that.

I_Am_Nous5• 3 years ago

In certain rich neighborhoods there is intense competition to get your kids into the right preschool to ensure they are going to be able to compete. Maybe there's a connection between the rich breeding expensive dogs and horses for competition and them overdriving their children for the same reason - because it makes them look good.

georgeecollins• 3 years ago

As a parent who participates in these status games, this 100% aligns with my experience. We spend way way too much on school -- and I am talking pre-school middle school, high school, not college. And if you get your kid into a good college you feel you have achieved something. Objectively it doesn't make sense but if you opt out you feel like a bad parent.

jasfi• 3 years ago

Many of them haven't found what works for them yet. Productivity isn't taught in schools (that I know of). Self-help is still just that.

wildrhythms2• 3 years ago

I remember in public school having a spiral bound planner I had to bring to every class, and teachers would instruct us what to write in there to help us track homework due dates, quiz and exam dates and such. I have no idea what students do now; is it digitized? I feel like just the act of copying the assignment from the board to my planner by hand helped me stay accountable to it.

lolinder2• 3 years ago

There's always such a rush to try to find environmental reasons for this behavioral tendency: microplastics, lead, smartphones, social media, video games, something must be causing this perceived increase in ADHD symptoms in boys!

What rarely comes up in the media coverage is that maybe the change isn't in the boys, maybe it's in the social expectations that we have for boys. 400 years ago the average adolescent boy spent most of their days out in the fields farming or learning a hands-on trade or training in the military. What they were not doing was sitting in a classroom for 6-8 hours a day listening to someone talk and then going home and sitting indoors for the rest of the day because the world is too dangerous for their parents to let them roam free.

The free range kids movement is the answer, not coaching and therapy.

jampekka3• 3 years ago

This. It's quite obvious that if over 10% of kids suddenly have a "neurological disorder", it's not the neurology that has changed.

notjoemama2• 3 years ago

There's been good research in the education field around this problem. There are ways educators can augment their lessons to cater to boys. Unfortunately, not all educators do this and it remains an experience heavily weighted towards the behavior and temperament of girls. Graduation and college attendance rates are the opposite now of when a push to promote girls in schools occurred. Now might be the time to do the same for boys.

hotpotamus2• 3 years ago

Are you going to let your kids fall behind the others who are diligently studying in preparation to get into the best school they can?

My cousin invited me to his daughter’s 3rd birthday. His request? No gifts, please contribute to her college fund.

I long ago decided the only winning move in this game is not to play, but I can’t begrudge the parents who are caught in the game.

kjkjadksj2• 3 years ago

All the kids who had the parents holding their nose to the grindstone didn’t end up faring any better than the kids ditching free period to smoke weed in the woods, at least among my generation of peers. Those kids were certainly more stressed though. No point in paying for expensive colleges either, in state at your flagship will educate you as well as any ivy for undergrad.

hh3k02• 3 years ago

What they were not doing was sitting in a classroom for 6-8 hours a day listening to someone talk and then going home and sitting indoors for the rest of the day […]

That is not a new occurrence, though. It has largely been like this for a 100 years now.

galdosdi• 3 years ago

A lot has changed in school in 100 years. Less recess, less shop classes, and the average kid 100 years ago finished school after 6th or 8th grade, not after 12th or even "16th" (college) as today. They also probably got more other physical activity from doing chores that are now more automated, from possibly helping with a family farm or small urban household business, and from walking to and from school and other errands instead of being driven in an automobile.

A modern kid basically has to be put into sports or else they'll get about as little physical activity as an invalid in traction in the hospital nowadays.

GuB-42• 3 years ago

I am pretty sure teen boys were just as stupid in the field, army, or trades as they are now in class.

Maybe the "letting them roam free" part is different here, but working in the fields wasn't free roaming. And I am pretty sure teen boys have defied social expectations since teen boys and social expectations have existed. From a social standpoint, it is pretty much the definition of adolescence, breaking the rules and all that. And I am sure they had their own form of therapy back in the days, maybe with more corporal punishment, but similar ideas in that teen boys have to be "fixed".

satellite22• 3 years ago

It's a very interesting article. While the family that was interviewed was resourceful (and not only in money, the mother took on her to call all the teachers of her son and keep track of all the homework to make sure he was not falling behind) and managed to resolve the situation it's not given to everyone.

The article also list many reasons for this worrying trend.

The roots of boys’ problems are complex. Things that once benefited boys in school, including male teachers, recess and vocational classes, have dwindled in recent years.
Parents, tutors and education experts say boys need extra encouragement to understand the payoff of working hard in school. Basically, they need a bigger reason than letter grades.

ponector• 3 years ago

In real life not always there is a payoff of working hard. Either at school or at work.

Child can work hard, get education, get degree and end as broke person with low paying job. Like being a teacher at school.

Are the smartest, the most hard working children the most successful in adult life? Not really

satellite22• 3 years ago

No, you are right you can do everything right and still end up unlucky. That's the hard (awful?) part of life.

But that's an individual path. In aggregate there are statistics that can help us choose and recommend which path to follow. And the statistics show that people with an education are dramatically and earn way more successful than people without.

Are the smartest, the most hard working children the most successful in adult life? In average yes.

teucris• 3 years ago

While I agree (mostly) with the sentiment of commenters, it’s easy for a conversation like this to veer into blaming parents for structural issues.

Parents are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Society expects their children to succeed in specific, somewhat arbitrary systems to succeed in life, but each child is their own being with talents, shortcomings, etc.

It’s impossible for a parent to serve both. Parents are making constant trade offs, and if paying to keep their kids on track at school seems to be the best option, then I support that.

dvfjsdhgfv• 3 years ago

I fully share your sentiment. Also, if we are exploring the blaming avenue, I would veer into algorithms that maximize KPIs such as MAU which lead to all kinds of pathological issues such as recommending content that negatively influences mental health (of everyone, but kids, adolescents and the elderly are particularly vulnerable).

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

We built a human factory farm and are disappointed in the cattle. You get what you optimize for.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

Adapt and overcome. Life doesn't serve you on a silver platter. Catering to every single neuro-whatever when the real world doesn't is helping nobody. Semper gumby

I_Am_Nous5• 3 years ago

This attitude is OK at a personal level, but telling a schizophrenic homeless person they just need to adapt and overcome wouldn't be acceptable. There's a lot of mental disorder out there and abandoning the "neuro-whatevers" to figure it out themselves when society is entirely designed for neurotypical thought patterns is an injustice. You don't blame someone with dyslexia for not being able to read, you try to help them learn a skill society assumes they will have.

There has to be a middle ground.

flir• 3 years ago

This comment is explaining why wheelchair ramps should be banned.

UncleOxidant• 3 years ago

I'm a 60 yo who male struggles with disorganization and distraction. Is this anything new? Sure, there are more distractions now (internet, social media, etc.)

highfrequency• 3 years ago

Having to bring his Chromebook to every class was distracting. “I would have 14 different tabs open and be mindlessly going through them,” Henry says.

Requiring kids to have laptops out during school seems like a bad idea…

1905• 3 years ago

Meanwhile the same aged boy is working on a family farm, eating non processed foods, limited screen time, physical active throughout the day and can almost single handedly run the family farm on a daily basis

RajT88• 3 years ago

So - people say 'yes this is a thing for older boys/men as well', but my experience has been that it is worse among adolescents.

So - I used to play a lot of Destiny. Really loved running raids, some of the best fun I have had playing videogames. A raid requires a group of 6, all working together, sticking to their assigned role and being focused enough to improvise if a teammate falters.

To get a group of 6, you either need to know a bunch of folks, or you have to find random people on the LFG sites. There was a very common phrase in the LFG posts: "No Squeakers".

While politically incorrect I know exactly what they mean. Pubescent boys could not focus, and would not shut up. They understand their roles, but just cannot stick to it and often quickly devolve into screwing around. The kids 15-16 seemed a lot better. Young girls (what few there were) were fine too.

Even us older habitually distracted men who have trouble focusing were a lot better. There seemed to be something unique to boys of that age.

gumby• 3 years ago

This phenomenon has been know forever — back in the 60s my paediatrician mother said 12 year old boys are smarter than 13- and 14 yo ones but then the curve bends up, and my son’s school even discussed how they took that into account.

What’s fascinating about the article is the focus on KPIs: the parents saw the performance lagging (esp in comparison to daughters) and decided intervention was required.

The carpenter knows the wood has its own grain and structure; Michelangelo said that “the sculpture is inside the marble and must be let out” (fissures and seams must be taken into account), but somehow the modern middle class mentality is that the child must be bent in some procrustean fashion to fit the model.

This affliction is well known to us programmers who see management setting unrealistic metrics to complex projects.

watters• 3 years ago

We humans are a bizarre lot.

We build complex systems and environments that alienate and marginalize massive groups of people and then, rather than recognizing that as a failure of the system, we frame the problem as one of individual responsibility to adjust.

But, the system probably feels like it is still working working well enough for the folks running the WSJ to continue their support of it, so we get articles like this.

pizzafeelsright• 3 years ago

Boys struggle without a strong father figure.

glimshe• 3 years ago

Since around 5000 B.C.

em-bee2• 3 years ago

how is it possible to forget to turn in homework? in my school teachers would ask for the homework to be turned in at the beginning of a class. you could forget to bring your homework, or worse forget to actually do it, but it was practically impossible to miss turning it in.

Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction

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