Against WALL-E-fication - by Oren Cass - Commonplace

I was having dinner with a group of students at an elite university recently, when the conversation turned to social media.  - Understanding America-Oren Cass

• They felt it was terrible for them, but also that they could not resist it...

In short, they had surrendered their personal agency. 

The algorithm had not only hijacked their attention, it had worn down their ability to fight back...

The much-discussed report issued this week by Yale University on “Trust in Higher Education” (of which more is below) has a remarkable paragraph on the issue in its discussion of failures in the classroom:

...In our conversations with faculty and students, few concerns came up more consistently than the problem of sustained attention. Faculty described classrooms in which students are physically present but mentally elsewhere: scrolling, messaging, emailing. Students themselves largely acknowledged the problem. Few disputed that devices in the classroom undermine the learning experience, and many described feeling unable to resist the pull even when they wanted to...