Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
1–10 of 242 posts
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#2Having used a Palm Pilot to genuine benefit in highschool in the 90s, and having finally just gotten a smart watch in part specifically to reduce smartphone usage, I have mixed feelings about broad restrictions. Networked smart phones absolutely have major addictive and disruptive effects, and are hard to police in practice. But watches provide some pretty useful health and emergency benefits, while IME have lived up to my hopes of being high enough friction/miserable enough to use for browsing or the like that the effect is nothing like a phone. Putting it all in the same bucket feels overboard, though maybe is necessary in practice. But pendulums seem to often have a tendency to swing between extremes and I wish officials were willing to try more tailored measures before sledgehammers more often. Still I think the overall trend looks positive.
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#3Good. School is not the time or the place for that. I think there's something to be said for banning smartphones while allowing cellphones that can take calls like feature phones. Nevertheless, I hate to be that guy -- one of the Gen Xers now seen yelling at clouds on TikTok -- but we seemed to manage just fine when anything called a "phone" was connected to the wall, not constantly on our person; and if our parents wished to reach us at school they had to call the front office and ask for us.
Smartphones, those endless distraction generators, have about as much place in school as do Game Boys and Nintendo Switches. The ability to focus is a habit you can develop; school is a great place to learn that habit while you're still young.
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#4[flagged]
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#5I’m wondering what the distraction potential of a Fitbit is? Do they have more features now?
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#6[deleted]
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#7[flagged]
Do you have personal experience with this or something? Seems like a rather specific fear.
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#8[flagged]
Not to diminish your fear of dogs, but that hardly seems like the core point to discuss about such a hugely consequential policy.
Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#9Re: Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
#10I’m wondering what the distraction potential of a Fitbit is? Do they have more features now?
My guess is that they had prior experience with asking students not to use cellphones and they observed students start using wearables to skirt the ban, which led them to just ban all of them.
An interesting consequence about the wearable ban is that they also banned medical electronic devices (e.g., heart monitors or blood sugar monitors) and parents are required to meet with administration to approve their use [1].
[1]: https://greenwichfreepress.com/schools/greenwich-schools-ann...