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The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

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Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#101

Post by AStonesThrow »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #46
andrei-akopian wrote: post #41

Some schools ban phones but allow laptops and tablets. It is the phones specifically that are the problem, not social media. (apparently) My phone usage dropped after I got a personal laptop and an eBook reader. So did pretty much every one else's. The phone is just really inconvenient for anything other than doomscrolling. In my opinion, the lack of alternative activities is overlooked. It is a ban and a prayer that…

> t is the phones specifically that are the problem, not social media. disagree; it's the social media that's the problem; the phone just makes it possible to access it at all times remove social media and you won't have kids on their phones all the time (or, if you're very lucky, they might use them for something productive)

Mobile operating systems are designed to engage and distract the owner. Lost your attention for a few minutes? Screen dims and threatens to darken! Oh no! Touch its face and keep it alive! Notifications from everything. Alarms that won't shut off until you do something about it. Pleading with us to recharge the battery. Insisting that radios be turned back on and sensor access be granted.

Every app, every website you visit is infested with dialogs and pop-ups that you're brushing out of the way, trying to get something accomplished.

It really tests your resolve and concentration, to see if you finished that one task you had in mind when you unlocked your phone, without going into 5 more on the side, or whether you can tame your phone sufficiently to be an assistant or productivity tool, rather than a firehose of marketing from dozens of companies to you, the consumer.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#102

Post by xuhu »

dopylitty wrote: post #34
seydor wrote: post #10

As essential as smoking ban. I won't be surprised to see this expanded to adult situations

It should've been expanded into driving a long time ago. There are laws against distracted driving but I still see people weaving around like they're drunk on the roads. When I look into the car they're usually holding a phone (on speakerphone) or holding it up to their ear. People suck at driving enough as it is without driving one handed and distracted.

In the daily downtown crawl at 5PM I count about one in four drivers on their phone. Is there a way to tell apart the adaptive cruise control cars from the ones without ? ACC is the only way I can explain why there isn't a crash every 5 minutes.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#103

Post by swiftcoder »

seydor wrote: post #10

As essential as smoking ban. I won't be surprised to see this expanded to adult situations

Weddings in particular seem to have evolved "check your phone at the door" policies. Though perhaps mostly to keep folks from ruining the professional photographers shots by constantly diving into the action with cameraphones/flashes blazing...

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#104

Post by jtbayly »

exe34 wrote: post #95
lifty wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the quick dopamine fix that you can get from scrolling TikTok or Twitter is way more corrosive than reading long form content in a library.

I simply don't use either. never have, never will. they do not serve my purpose, so they are irrelevant to my life.

Then it is important for you to recognize that you are a unicorn.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#105

Post by nixpulvis »

agrippanux wrote: post #23

I swapped my high school son’s iPhone for an Apple Watch w/cellular for school days and his grades and social life improved significantly.

I’ve been saying the Apple watch needs to be advertised as a solution for phones in schools more.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#106

Post by Der_Einzige »

swiftcoder wrote: post #103
seydor wrote: post #10

As essential as smoking ban. I won't be surprised to see this expanded to adult situations

Weddings in particular seem to have evolved "check your phone at the door" policies. Though perhaps mostly to keep folks from ruining the professional photographers shots by constantly diving into the action with cameraphones/flashes blazing...

Do people not have courtesy and decorum anymore??? I won’t give up my phone because I’m not stupid enough to take it out during a ceremony.

I’ve been to several wedding ceremonies of somewhat large size where no one took their phones out, and certainly not for photos.

Did trust in society hit a new low while I wasn’t looking?

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#107

Post by talldayo »

pkphilip wrote: post #8
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #6

Glad to see phone bans become more popular. Jonathan Haidt had it on his list of suggestions to parents, to avoid the anxiety generation continuing. He had a longer list but the four big ones were: No smartphones before high school No social media before 16 No phones in schools More free, independent play

All very sensible points. I would add no TV at home till 16

I don't get this. I have very little love for programmed television and news channels these days, but I mostly feel that way because I grew up around them. Reality TV sucks, the news is gruesome, Marvel movies are all the same, HBO just airs different flavors of sex and violence. If you're not exposed to this media and the inherently pulpy context it exists under, you're training your children to treat it as exotic and desirable. You owe it to your next-of-kin to show them the news and global politics in the same way too, lest they fetishize extremism in their late age because they weren't exposed to moderate opinions.

On the flip side, I lived in a rural area and my parents would frequently take me to play with kids that had no TV or internet access. Words cannot describe how thick these people can be. One of them was a pair of history buff brothers that weren't allowed to read anything their parents didn't vet - they didn't even know what the Civil War was when I mentioned it. There was a family that lived on a farm, where every time I visited their kids would ask me what weed looks like, what porn was and how alcohol tasted. There were the kids that asked me to recite Newgrounds videos verbatim, explain who "Iron Man" is and even ones that (tragically) didn't know the Mormonism their parents loved was a cult. Rejecting social media is a smart thing to teach anyone, but you have to be extremely careful to not use it as an excuse to shelter them.

Sometimes I worry that HN creates a "growth hack" mindset for parents that inhibits them from thinking rationally about how a child develops. It's not a new phenomenon but it seems fear overrides our willingness to empathize with the events of our own childhood. It all feels reminiscent of when people played Mozart for their baby because an unreviewed paper correlated it with higher IQ. Missing the forest for the trees, a bit.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#108

Post by itishappy »

jedberg wrote: post #94
dash2 wrote: post #55

Has anyone here tried the Haidt recommendation of "no smartphones till high school, no social media till 16" with their children? Is it better than just banning them in school?

The problem is if the school doesn't ban it, it's a lot harder for the parent to enforce. The child will either complain constantly about their friends having it, or just do it behind your back. If there is a school ban, then enforcement happens at school too, making it harder to do behind your back, and the bulk of their social circle isn't on social media, avoiding the FOMO issues.

Having personally not had a smartphone or laptop through most of college back when Facebook was still cool (smartphone by choice, laptop by crime), I can say that social media on a library computer is a very different beast. You get most of the social benefits (I'd argue all of the important ones, is instant chat really needed?) while avoiding most of the distractions.

So I get the complaint, but I feel like even if kids sneak around behind your back (been there too, lol, I rooted my iBook G4 when my parents added a password) the added friction makes a difference. In other words, kids will be kids, but that shouldn't stop us from setting healthy boundaries.

Edit: Bit of a tirade, but I'm trying to say I agree with you! Just trying to add interesting context.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#109

Post by BobaFloutist »

andrei-akopian wrote: post #81
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remove social media and you won't have kids on their phones all the time This is a testable hypothesis. We shouldn’t conclude either way without more evidence. As it stands, enforcing a phone ban has advantages over an app one.

FYI: Schools have firewalls that block social media, but kids learn to use VPNs.

Firewalls also do nothing if the kid has a decent data plan.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#110

Post by piva00 »

exe34 wrote: post #93
naming_the_user wrote: post #45

It really can't be underestimated either for children or adults how much we are dependent on ease of access. If you're stuck in a room and the only thing you can do is read a math textbook you are going to do it. If you are stuck in a room and you have a math textbook and a novel you now have a choice. A phone? A phone is everything else. You're putting "the thing we are supposed to be doing" and "everything else" in…

I use my phone to look up words/concepts/references all the time while reading - I couldn't do without it, flipping through a dictionary or walking up to a computer to read a quick Wikipedia intro to a concept/person/place/etc would just get me far more distracted.

Nonetheless I did it all the time as a kid and it was fine using a dictionary. Is it much easier on a phone? Absolutely, but then I also get caught up reading the etymology, looking up on Wikipedia the Greek roots of the word, ending up at some Greek wars' battle in 500BC and what's the current geopolitical situation of the region, how did they vote on the last Greek Parliamentary election, etc.

For my curiosity it's amazing, not so much for getting shit done.

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