Live data from Hacker News

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

york.ac.uk

271–280 of 706 posts

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

#271
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"

Why does a group of Year 8 pupils (age 12-13) have smartphones in the first place?

I don’t know what age I’m giving my son a smartphone but it’s sure as hell not as early as 12.

“But my friends all have one”? Then I judge his friends’ parents.

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

#272
post #108
post #57

I threw away my smartphone 4-ish months ago, and I have 50% more motivation, 50% more headspace to focus on things, and 50% better moods most days. The attention economy, especially in social media, is a plague. It wasn't always this way. I did digital detoxes every few years for about two decades. For most of that time, there were always subtle positive impacts of switching off. But nowadays, the positive effects ar…

I really want to do this but there are so many things I need to do that now require a phone- key apps to access doors, concert tickets, etc. are no longer offering a non smartphone alternative.

Well, I think it was mainly the social media, notifications, and content consumption – not so much the smartphone itself. Dumping the smartphone was simply a "cold turkey" solution.

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

#273
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which just shows that communicating through sarcasm brings more harm than benefit. I know, I'm guilty. Currently on "sarcasm rehab" for the sake of people around me and myself.

This was an interesting post. Thanks for making me question if sarcasm is actually a bad thing. I don’t agree off the bat but I’ve never seriously considered it.

it is a risky gamble IMHO. (some) needy/vain people use it to 'prove' to themselves 'I am so close to person X that we understand each other so well that when I say the opposite they still understand me'. IE it's a bit like yanking a chain to prove it still holds.

Problems with that.. people get tired of people continuing to yank chains for no good reason (cry wolf). And other people are busy with their own lines of thought and lives. So instead of the intended (wow we understand each other/so close!), 25% (* ) of the time instead the receiver thinks "hmm he's probably in a bad mood today?!" So, net effect is instead often to be viewed as grumpy moody.

Famously, kids don't parse sarcasm well, neither at them or others. My grandfather, who was, in retrospect, actually rather cool, was viewed as semihostile by us kids, because he often phrased his terms of endearment sarcastically. Net result was that we thought he didn't like us much, merely tolerated us. That is what macho sarcasm got him.

Now I am his age, with similarly bad habits. I guess my kids will end up sarcastic too.

( * *) A number I scientifically arrived at by pulling it directly from my posterior.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely you mean overestimate?

Yes, overestimate. Too late to edit.

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

#275
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.

Look, I am guilty of this. "Maybe people should eat less instead of popping Ozempic", etc. I have been on both ends of being an absolute rock and an addicted mess, so I can understand both sides.

That said - one has to go through the initial hurdle of buying junk food, or getting a prescription for a drug instead of taking a hard look at their life style first.

Phones are different. THEY ARE ALWAYS THERE, so resisting falling back into negative habit loops is never-ending, hard work.

I've struggled with this, and I came up with some mind hacks: https://renegadeotter.com/2023/08/24/getting-your-focus-back...

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

#276
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.

[deleted]

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

#277
post #6

I found a couple interesting papers/preprints on smartphone bans: - https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/14/8/906 - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4735240 But I wasn't able to find a detailed writeup of this particular experiment (It seems to be more of a TV show than a scientific study?)

Just drop them a line and ask whether they plan to publish their research in a more formal way.

In my experience scientists respond pretty well.

https://www.york.ac.uk/psychology/staff/academicstaff/lh/#pu...

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

#279
post #249

> Interestingly, the research didn’t show significant improvements in cognitive ability; the phone ban group showed a modest 3% boost in working memory, and there were no improvements in sustained attention. Researchers suggest that these results might mean that changes in cognitive ability could take longer than the study period of 21 days to materialise. Notice how they had decided beforehand what they were going t…

This typically good science. You have hypothesis and test it, rather than doing an intervention and reporting every random thing that happened. Although I agree in this case, the alternative hypothesis seems a bit lame, rather than adopting the null hypothesis. On the other hand I guess that more sleep could have some effect on cognitive development in the long run.

Yes but their conclusion is "well our hypothesis is probably still right, we just didn't look hard enough" rather than "maybe it doesn't have a significant effect".

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

#280
post #95

My kid's school got a lot of press for a smartphone ban. To be clear you could still have a phone, it was just taken if anyone saw it during school hours. If you got caught 3 times your parents had to come retrieve it ... that last part did wonders. I don't know how the sleep part plays into it, my oldest of course wants his phone with him at all times (he is required to put it away before bedtime). I wonder if the s…

Our school has similar restriction, but then shoved Chromebooks in front of every kid and they use chat instead of text, watch videos, and play games all through class instead. When I’ve tried to find alternatives for my more distractible kids, the school acts like we’re putting them out. What is the point of a cell phone ban when it’s just replaced with a more capable device?

If my child’s school had them playing games on Chromebooks all class, I would move them to a different school.
Post reply on HN