By Andrew McPeak   If you are lucky on Sunday afternoons on the steps of Central Library on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, NY, you can watch as one by one, the members of the Luddite Club assemble together. They never know exactly how many members are going to show up because most of them have chosen to give up their smartphones

By Tim Elmore   Sometimes when I reflect on a meeting I’ve had with a high school or college student, I recognize how inadequate my approach to our discussion was. While my words may have been accurate and honest, my tone was not hopeful. It wasn’t filled with belief, but suspicion that they might not be getting it. Reflect on the last

By Tim Elmore   I will never forget Halloween in 2015. Just prior to October 31, a group of deans at Yale University sent an email urging students to avoid insensitive costume choices. Three days later, Erika Christakis, the co-director of Silliman (one of Yale’s residential colleges) sent her own email to students. She acknowledged “genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation,”

By Tim Elmore   This is part two of a blog series that began last week by discussing the dopamine addiction felt by many students. To read the first blog in this series, click here.    Last week, I wrote about the fact that we live in a generation that’s addicted to dopamine. We live in a society that loves to “binge” on things

By Tim Elmore   Our kids today are growing up in a world where they can become addicted to happy chemicals. Let me explain. We live in a society that loves to “binge” on things we like. It may be addictions to drugs or alcohol, but it can also be simple pleasures like Netflix, TikTok, or even junk food.   Stanford University research psychiatrist

By Tim Elmore   You’d have to be an ostrich with its head in the sand to miss what’s happened to our country over the last decade. We are polarized on many issues, but chief among them is how to even view our nation: Is America junk or a jewel?   One side of this issue points out how pitifully we’ve handled civil rights,

By Tim Elmore   My friend, Don Yeager, recently attended the National Speakers Association convention. In one of the sessions, an author stood on stage reviewing the content and writing process of his latest book. Eyebrows went up as he revealed the book had actually been written by ChatGPT. He smiled as he shared his journey using artificial intelligence that imitated his

By Tim Elmore   Every year, both the media and social media reveal to us how our culture is evolving. From the shows people watch, to the awards programs people celebrate, to the broadcasts and podcasts people tune into, we have much to learn this year, just by observing the habits of American consumers. I have three observations below based on the

By: Tim Elmore     I see a problem today more often than I’ve seen it in the past. It is a collision between mindsets, both of which are essential. They‘re illustrated in the following story. Several faculty and staff members were asked to participate in a special project at their school. They were to plan a celebration of the decrease in COVID-19 infections on

You may remember the tragic story from last April. A sixth-grader found his dad's 9mm handgun, loaded it with a magazine of bullets, and walked onto his campus at Plymouth Middle School outside of Minneapolis. He positioned himself in a hallway, shot the gun toward the ceiling, and watched fellow students run and scream in terror. His goal was to

By: Tim Elmore The postponed Olympics Games held in Tokyo are now history. As always, there were highs and lows for competing athletes, but I’d like to focus on some insights we gain as we watched this year’s young athletes perform.  The major difference for me in these Olympic games was the topic of mental health.  Among the biggest stories from Tokyo was

By: Tim Elmore It’s been over a year since students all over the world were sent home from school and instantly had to learn how to learn from home. Teachers tried to maintain academic standards as students transformed their bedrooms, dens, and kitchens into classrooms to try to meet those standards.  Some call these middle school and high school students quaranteens.  They’re now

By: Tim Elmore The year started well, with our work and our money Our weather was warming, and our spring became sunny. Our life was quite normal, and resources were plenty. And it might have continued…if it weren’t 2020. As the spring unfolded, we got new direction, We were told to go home to avoid an infection. It was COVID-19 and it spread through the nations. No one

Do you identify with the scenario below? The first few weeks of quarantine, your family was energized. The whole idea was novel; not having to go to work or school was intriguing. You could do your daily routines in your sweats or pajamas. How cool was that? The next few weeks became monotonous. The novelty of doing life at home evaporated, and

We have coined a term: “The Pandemic Population.” It represents a portion of Generation Z, high school and college students who have no memories of the 20th century as the Millennials do. They’ve grown up in the 21st century when the world was different, and they’re now coming of age in the midst of a pandemic. While Millennials were marked

A few years ago, my extended family gathered for a reunion. My sisters and I reminisced about our childhoods, including vacations, past girlfriends and boyfriends, squabbles we had, you name it. What struck me that day was, while we all remembered significant occasions, we all recalled different details, smaller occasions and we even retained different stories. Behavioral scientists have gathered a

Our world today is in combat over language. Two sides of any issue vie for the best words that make any opposing view seem, well…wrong. Everywhere we look we see mantras, slogans, and mottos that draw readers in and make them want to side with their cause without even really understanding the deeper ramifications. Because we have short attention spans,