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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

#161

Post by Spooky23 »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #100
exe34 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s always a reason why we “need” our phone at all times, isn’t there? For the purposes of public policy (where schools are concerned), or even holding a meeting at work, what should be the best recourse?

Let the schools make rules, just like they do for a thousand other things.

If you make it a “public policy” issue, it will become another partisan football for the authoritarians among us to create drama about.

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

#162

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

DHPersonal wrote: post #71
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

Jonathan Haidt has also been critiqued by his peers [1] for looking at the data with a foregone conclusion instead of getting his conclusion from the data. He's another one of those moral panic peddlers and should not be trusted as a reliable source. [2] 1. https://www.youtube.com/live/Ewxe4pWOH-I 2. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1647639025879064579.html

Some things don’t need data for us to take action. This is one of them. You can ignore the problem if it isn’t a big thing for you, but to many adults the reality of the anxious generation is right in front of them. Waiting for drawn out debates is not acceptable to them, and these actions have almost no downsides.

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

#163

Post by Spooky23 »

oblio wrote: post #119
Mistletoe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the school by me every day is a line that stretches for blocks of parents picking up their kids at 3pm. All of these cars and human time was previously handled by a school bus and one driver.

Why does this craziness happen?

People are paranoid for a variety of reasons about their kids.

Also, culturally, parents don’t let kids walk home. When I was a kid in NYC only the kids bussed in from the hood had busses, the rest of us from the local neighborhood walked. State aid only reimburses for trips beyond a certain radius.

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

#164

Post by drdaeman »

lukeschlather wrote: post #150
drdaeman wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm not so sure if this is true. No clue about kids, but if I'm (personally) stuck at the office and I'm really not feeling like working, I can literally stare at a wall daydreaming rather than do something. And the contrary is also true - if I'm "stuck" at some fancy place with lots to do (like home, lol) but fe…

> I can literally stare at a wall daydreaming rather than do something. And the contrary is also true - if I'm "stuck" at some fancy place but feel like working (and have means to do so), there's no stopping me. I mean there's a very broad spectrum here, and a slight distraction can be the difference between spending 5 minutes staring at a wall followed by three hours in flow state vs. spending three hours in mindles…

I agree. An adult can ask themselves what they're doing and why and how it aligns with their interests so on (aka have that midlife crisis, haha), a kid probably doesn't yet have enough self-reflection capacity yet.

In my perception, distractions are ideally managed through interest management. Make the desired task actually truly desired - and you're guaranteed to not get distracted. And in an ideal environment, there should be an educator overseeing a kid and asking what went wrong if kid decides they wanna play with their phone instead of working.

When you don't have someone to help with "why am I doing this and not that?", I guess it's true that next best option is to eliminate potential of distraction. It's not great, but is probably better than not doing anything about it.

So, as always, there is an ideal approach (that doesn't work because it requires ideal environment), and a working approach that's very contrary to the ideal way of doing things.

Hm... Maybe teaching kids (and adults) about the modern attention/spam economy actually works can help to lower the distractions. After you see through attention-grabbing tricks, scrolling through online feed wastewaters (or watching junk on streaming platforms, or playing "games" whose entire raison d'être is to make money on players) becomes much less interesting or rewarding. Just a thought.

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

#165

Post by beowulfey »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #155
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…

> 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. I would literally doodle, stare out a window, zone out daydreaming, or anything else other than read a textbook I didn't want to read for one reason or another, or pay attention to a teacher for that matter. Yes, it is anecdotal, but I'm sure we've all been children before, and even if you didn't do it, people ar…

Yes, exactly right. And there are many students less likely than that to zone out, and many more likely to zone out.

But if you give them a tool to aid in being distracted, it will encourage all of them to not pay attention. It really is a question of likelihood

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

#166

Post by Spooky23 »

kelnos wrote: post #143

It has always felt absolutely bonkers to me that smartphone bans weren't put into place instantly across US schools as soon as they started becoming common. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. If I'd brought a handheld game console like a Gameboy or something into class, it would have been confiscated immediately. Sure, I get it, that's not the same thing; obviously phones have other uses. But there is absolutely zero reas…

There’s a lot of reasons where possessing a phone in school is legit. In cities, transit passes are commonly phone bases. Some apartments require smartphones for gate entry.

In class, different story of course.

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

#167

Post by erebearalte »

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…

Reminds me of my time in boarding school, my grades were awesome there and I read alot cause I can't play video games, unfortunately it didn't make me wiser so I struggled a lot with self discipline later on.

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

#168

Post by pipes »

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 tried leaving a stack of programming books beside my pc while I'm working and putting my phone in another room. It does work. But I keep forgetting to do it.

I was considering trying a month of no I internet browsing unless it is required for my job or learning.

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

#169

Post by wildzzz »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #39
dopylitty wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't it already illegal in most places? (sure peolpe do it anyway, but if you're caught there are heavy fines)

Montana is still legal apparently but I'm sure cops could write you a ticket for the infractions you commit while on your phone, just not for the phone itself.

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

#170

Post by pengaru »

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…

> It really can't be underestimated either for children or adults how much we are dependent on ease of access.

nit: If you mean to say these groups are so dependent on ease of access it's impossible to estimate correctly to what degree, you mean it can't be overestimated, not underestimated.

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