Technology

Fucking pagers were going to end teen life, shortly after Beavis and Butthead were going to ruin America's youth. Then actual horrific data from teen phone use shows up and nothing happens because the Christian right is too busy focusing on people's junk and banning books to raise hell about phones

Right? I remember if you got caught messing with it or it even making noise during class, the teacher took it and you picked it up from the office at the end of the day.

Overly concerned parents want their kid to always carry a phone/tracking device.

I'm sure Life360 parents played a not-so-small part in that decision.

Also school shootings might play a factor.

I'm just guessing that stories of kids trapped in classrooms during school shootings had something to do with it.

But that is purely a guess.

You haven't really spent any time near a school system have you? I don't even refer to them as parental units anymore, they are just banshees. These awful horrible screaming demons that want you to raise their kid but also never discipline them.

I got in trouble for trying to use a payphone to call my mother to pick me up on a day when they cancelled school after it started due to worsening ice conditions. I didn't have permission to use the phone and my teacher got on my ass.

Not the smartphones themselves are addictive, but all these annoying social apps, advertisements and notifications are.

There are ways around this. Kids should learn how to use their phones for managing their lives. And actually, they do at some point - to a degree.

Got two teenagers. I’d outlaw smart phones for anyone under 18 if it was up to me. Bring the flame!

I have mixed feelings. "Because I said so" can get compliance in high school, but that's mostly it. It's not going to be that effective. At the same time, a lot of this overly permissive parenting seems like a reaction by people who are upset about being told no as kids and that will lead to problems, especially once they get into places that don't care about constantly trying to have a debate back and fourth.

The smartphone is a different beast. Hardware and software companies spent millions of dollars of R&D to create the most psychologically addicting and attention demanding device as possible.

May I gently ask if you have children in the phone age range?

I have never seen anything with such a hold over teenagers.

Some drugs are just stronger than the others.

I'm not advocating for allowing phones in schools during lectures or anything, but it's pretty clear to me that an outright ban is an outdated solution that will only hide the issues instead of solving them.

While I don't disagree, social media is the problem and what are schools going to do about that, except for banning phones? You also can't compare getting distracted by a pen or piece of paper, to a phone with bright colours and notifications, specifically designed to be as addicting as possible

Outright bans are because government bodies are scared of nuance. You can also see this in "zero-tolerance" policies that do things like punish the victim because they were "involved" in a fight, or punish a kid who nibbles a chicken nugget into the shape of a gun.

To be fair to schools, nuance is hard. Suppose that the rule is "phones may not interrupt class." Now, what counts as an interruption may vary between classes, between teachers, and based on what's happening in class. A student may use it during a quiet period in the class when they've already completed their work, and that's acceptable. A different student will then use their phone ten minutes later, when they're supposed to be doing something. The second student will get in trouble, but then complain that the first student didn't get in trouble. The parent will hear, "Brayden was using his phone and he didn't get in trouble but the second I used mine, I got in trouble. The teacher has it out for me."

If you've talked to any teachers in the past few decades, a common theme is parents siding with their kids against all logic, reason, and evidence. They'll assume that teachers are petty goblins, just looking for an excuse to pick on their kid. And parents can be outright hostile and unreasonable. When my wife was a teacher, she received more than one actual death threat from parents because she enforced rules that did NOT have any nuance or discretion. Imagine if enforcing the rule was up to the teacher's discretion versus an outright ban.

tl;dr I agree that a ban is silly, but I totally get why schools are doing it.

I'm sorry, but there's a wildly huge difference between bubble gum/collectibles/comic books and internet connected cell phones.

I was terrible at paying attention in class, but I always made it through by hearing just enough to get by... until I was in my final year of college when some of the classes got internet connected desktops at every desk. In normal classes I'd be fine, but in the classes with a computer where I could IM with friends I failed miserably (literally went from straight A's to C's and a couple F's in college classes because of internet connected computers being in front of me all the time). And that was a desktop with only a couple friends I knew who also had IM on at the time. I can't imagine how poorly I would have done at school if every one of my friends had messaging on every minute of every day, not to mention mobile gaming and social media.

I think there is a difference.

Yeah, the tamagotchi are games, but they are a game in the singular sense.

All the things you mention as distractions except the food items are contained in one phone multiple times over. Heck, you could probably even find a bubblegum chewing app.

That’s the distraction potential contained in one phone.

The article is about how smartphones have made people lazy. So incredibly lazy that some people aren't even reading short articles from reputable sources, but are instead using smartphones to write comments on the internet begging strangers to summarize things for them.

Seems to be a combination of students too distracted playing on their phones and difficulty policing behavior on social media bleeding into school time. They give an example of students filming a student being bullied on school grounds and the video being uploaded and shared on social media. I'm not sure banning smart phones during school hours is the right solution, but it's certainly a tricky problem to deal with.