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Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

theguardian.com

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Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#111

Post by DavidPeiffer »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #46
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had coworkers who wanted to stick with a dumb phone. It sounds great to give junior a dumb phone until they're "old enough", but not much communication happens via sms. It's all done in other apps. Your kids will be excluded from a lot of conversations and events. They will feel ostricized socially and will inevitably be frustrated at you because of it. Having no phone versus a dumb phone would make the resent…

Honestly that’s not something I had really ever thought about, how smartphones are mandatory for children in 2023. I got my first phone in 2014 when I was in 8th grade, a used iPhone 4S without a data plan, and because maybe about 50-75% of kids had a phone or smartphone of some sort and the school had WiFi I don’t ever remember it being necessary for anything, although teachers did say “you can look X up on your pho…

I'm a couple years older than you, and got my first smartphone as a junior in 2009. The school had wifi, but students weren't allowed on it. The phone was handy for looking up things, but I was certainly in the minority with a smartphone. In that era, it didn't really make a big difference socially. Group texts were the main mode of communication.

A family member dated a school resource officer for a few years, and it was really jarring to hear stories about stuff he had to deal with from high school students which weren't big issues 5 years prior. Tons of cyber bullying, revenge porn, fake calculator apps that were fronts for encrypted storage, students with multiple phones, etc.

Phones were also way less powerful back then. By the time I went to college, companies were making apps multiple times bigger than at the beginning (like 1-5 MB commonly going to 20-50 MB). I could only have ~5 big apps on my phone before I was out of memory, and the phone died for good on the 2 hour drive to college.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#112

Post by fnord77 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #50

Going against HN's usual anti-smartphone thing, I think this is incredibly dumb. Luckily no one really cares much about what UNESCO calls for. Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time, "kids will only play games on computers" and other related superstitions that were in vogue back in the early 2000s. All they did was make parents feel validated (without having to pu…

The evidence is piling in that internet crack is very harmful for developing minds.

Do you think it is dumb to have a global ban on cocaine in schools?

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#113

Post by bamfly »

Beldur wrote: post #8

Not sure about you guys, but I plan to not give my kids a phone until they reach at least the age of 14 (7 and 3 atm) Is this realistic? Any experiences?

Mine can have one when they can pay for the phone and the plan.

I reckon if they can maintain enough income to cover that, they're ready for one.

Still can't have it late at night, though. And if they do anything too dumb with it, it's gone, and they can buy another when they graduate.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#114

Post by prmoustache »

Beldur wrote: post #8

Not sure about you guys, but I plan to not give my kids a phone until they reach at least the age of 14 (7 and 3 atm) Is this realistic? Any experiences?

I was ok with my kids not having phone until they get to secondary school but divorced and their mother decided they would be pariah if my eldest daughter didn't have one at 11.

She is not yet addicted though because appart from instant messaging she doesn't have access to social media apps and I limit strongly the amount of hours of use and outside of her small quota the phone cannot stay in her room. So she is still using it to discuss with friends asynchronously.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#116

Post by clsec »

verve_rat wrote: post #64
bgribble wrote: post #42

My kid just graduated from a NYC high school that had a complete ban on phones in school. The kids checked in their phones at the front desk on the way in and got them back when leaving. It was by no means watertight -- many (most?) kids had a "burner" phone that was dead or broken or whatever that they turned in (because nobody would believe a highschooler who said they didn't have their phone with them lol) and the…

Did 12 year olds take the subway to school 20, 30 years ago? (Genuinely asking, never lived in a place with a subway, but took the bus all the time at that age.)

I took SF MUNI to & from school in second grade. I took GG Transit to the city from 9-14 y/o and then MUNI when I got there. I also took the ferries and BART fairly regularly as well. All by myself.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#117

Post by avgcorrection »

m0llusk wrote: post #107

There is an ugly trend here. We want to protect children from exploitation, so we make artificial learning environments where kids interact with each other instead of adults and perform often silly exercises instead of actually participating in the creation of value. Now we want to protect kids by removing their capacity to communicate and organize socially. Protecting children is a noble goal, but it may be possible…

Adults have been fine with the Lord of the Flies tendencies of adolescent education. But now smartphones are ruining everything?

I don’t have children let alone teenage ones so maybe I shouldn’t have an opinion on this, but it seems that we adults complain way too much about teenagers and almost never consider that maybe we have structured their lives in a way that isn’t great for them.

Singling out smartphones or binge drinking won’t fix anything at the root.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#118

Post by bamfly »

rationalist wrote: post #22
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had coworkers who wanted to stick with a dumb phone. It sounds great to give junior a dumb phone until they're "old enough", but not much communication happens via sms. It's all done in other apps. Your kids will be excluded from a lot of conversations and events. They will feel ostricized socially and will inevitably be frustrated at you because of it. Having no phone versus a dumb phone would make the resent…

I think the next logical step would be to find a community of like-minded parents and set those kids up to be friends.

You'll need to move to a very few, probably-expensive places, or scout private schools. Probably not the cheap kind.

:-(

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#119

Post by mongol »

In the workplace you have BYOD, bring your own device. But in order to access the services needed at your workplace, you need to install MS Intune and similar, which basically give your workplace limited admin access, they can remotely wipe your device, set stronger pin requirements etc. Perhaps something similar should be made available for schools. So the school can limit use of the phone without putting the phone in a drawer

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#120

Post by washadjeffmad »

Beldur wrote: post #8

Not sure about you guys, but I plan to not give my kids a phone until they reach at least the age of 14 (7 and 3 atm) Is this realistic? Any experiences?

It's completely feasible. I've been told by a lot of younger people that their parents gave them a "practice phone" (iPod Touch was a popular choice) as a kid, and if they took care of it and hadn't done anything with it they shouldn't have by certain age, they were allowed a smartphone.

I'm not sure what the modern equivalent is, and there are certainly plenty of other ways to gauge responsibility and honesty, but there are phones that can't be used for much except calling and texting specific people.

In general, if someone is old enough to seek something out, banning them from it isn't going to work, anyway. I don't support the iPad/YouTube model of parenting, but I also don't think kids who grow up with things are as/more susceptible to them because of when they were introduced.

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