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School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

york.ac.uk

161–170 of 706 posts

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#161
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps this could be replicated just by putting phones away at night. Sort of like how people addicted to gambling would probably save a lot of money if they had just a little more will power.

I think the implication is that there are parental authorities who can enforce this. Doesn't take much willpower when you've got people who will help you against your will!

We underestimate how much the average parent recognizes the problem. My peers had children and put a tablet in their children's hands almost immediately. Despite many working in tech, who I assumed knew about the growing concerns.

We are at the "doctor smokes a cigarette while giving you your lung cancer diagnosis" point in history.

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#162
post #158

I bought something called brick which lets me lock some apps with a Bluetooth app. I have to walk to a different room and touch my phone to the little cube magneted to my fridge in order to unlock them. Just this extra friction has halved my screen time. No phone in bed no phone while I’m working and no phone on weekends while I’m bored. Instant improvement in mental clarity and quality of life.

What keeps you from just leaving your phone unlocked? Does the unlock expire after a certain amount of time?

Nothing but the desire to sleep well

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#163
post #98
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are saying that just based off of the linked article, I don’t think that is clear.

Seems clear enough to me: "challenged a group of Year 8 pupils to give up their smartphones completely for 21 days." I'm not sure how you can read "completely" as "only during school time"

I found it unclear because the title of the article and the title of the TV show imply it's only during school, but it's only the second paragraph that it mentions "completely". It seems to contradict the opening sentences.

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#164
post #128

> challenged a group of Year 8 pupils to give up their smartphones completely for 21 days. It was not a ban during school. It was complete phone abstinence. The result was that the kids got an entire additional hour of sleep! Perhaps this could be replicated just by putting phones away at night.

I did a project once where I put my phone away before bed (switched off and in another room) and kept it off for the first few hours of the day, along with my wifi router. I usually got so much done during that time that I'd prefer to keep them off for a few more hours, even after I was "allowed" to turn them back on.

Yeah so the smartphones and socials can be difficult addictions to shake, but this is the flip side of it: when you do put them aside for an extended period of time you often see your productivity absolutely go through the roof.

I started sticking my phone in my bag or in another room during my afternoon work session and my productivity with that time doubled, in terms of actual output - tasks completed, lines of code written etc. and probably better ideas generated.

I started turning it off after dinner as well as running a simple script that blocks FB, Reddit etc. on my desktop - my "productivity" with my evening time also basically doubled, whether it was books read, games played, extra work done, time spent with people who matter, keeping my place cleaner, etc. just more life happening basically.

The more hooked you are, the more massive the benefit of quitting cold turkey. Once you see it a couple times the dynamic inverts and it gets harder to go back.

From personal experience, yeah of course if you rip the phones out of the kids' hands they're going to experience a variety of improvements... that's what happened when I ripped it out of my own hands.

I do find it interesting that this study saw little in cognitive improvements - it was only a 21 day study. I thin they are there but they're a long burn, reading books for instance is a skill that has returned to me but it's been very slow and gradual, I should probably lean even harder into turning off my phone and any short-form socials trash.

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#165

> challenged a group of Year 8 pupils to give up their smartphones completely for 21 days. It was not a ban during school. It was complete phone abstinence. The result was that the kids got an entire additional hour of sleep! Perhaps this could be replicated just by putting phones away at night.

n of 8 is essentially meaningless tho

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#166
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning something that you ban for adults as well is defensible. Insisting kids follow a standard of "healthy" that you won't apply to yourself smacks of hypocrisy and bullying.

you cannot possibly be serious, right? no “learn from my mistakes eh?” if I am a heavy smoker, heavy drinker etc I have to make sure my 11-year old lights up with me and cracks open a bottle after a long day in school…? still hoping you are joking though…

They're not making the argument you think they are.

They are saying leaving by example is a good tool. They are not saying that every single rule must be symmetric

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#167
post #76

> challenged a group of Year 8 pupils to give up their smartphones completely for 21 days. It was not a ban during school. It was complete phone abstinence. The result was that the kids got an entire additional hour of sleep! Perhaps this could be replicated just by putting phones away at night.

> Perhaps this could be replicated just by putting phones away at night. Sort of like how people addicted to gambling would probably save a lot of money if they had just a little more will power.

I too have had this sense of superiority about the negative outcomes of other people's addictive behavior. It's easy to blame people for not having willpower. But (and I say this as a former casino owner, former bartender, and someone who worked on early Facebook games trying to maximize engagement), even intelligent people with better than average self control are no match for the sophistication of systems that have been designed, studied, and iterated upon for the sole purpose of breaking down human self control. Looking at myself not being a degenerate gambler, drinker or social media user, I suspect it's only because I have first hand experience being on the other side of the table in all those cases. When people do congratulate themselves for their own willpower, they tend to have other issues and addictions which they hide from public view, and/or they are recovering.

No one goes without being deceived in their lives. And teenagers with little experience are the easiest to deceive and to hook into addictive behaviors.

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#168

My kids are phone drones. I failed to prevent it. I’ll never forgive myself.

That's heavy. If you're willing to share, I'm curious to hear more. Like when did you have kids, when did they get their hands on phones, how did it progress?

My own kids are still too young for this to be an issue, and I'm encouraged to see more and more collective action to delay or restrict smartphones and social media, so I feel like we have a chance. I've said before that people who had kids 5-10 years before me (say, 2005-2010) seem to have suffered the worst of it, totally caught off guard by the smartphone and social media boom.

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#169
post #25

We need to remove technology out of the school entirely (outside of computer science classes). No iPads instead of books, only manual note-taking, regular blackboards/whiteboards instead of projectors, no calculators, and so on.

Non of that paper stuff! Stone tablets only.

No. Paper and handwriting is great.

Re: School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study

#170
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abaci would actually probably be good for making mental math come naturally. As a general rule, i am on team - if you need a calculator in math class then you aren't learning math.

Because if you're studying real math, a calculator wouldn't help?

Pretty much. You either do every calculation symbolically, or you need a full-blown computer for numeric methods.
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