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School cell phone bans and student achievement

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Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#121

Post by somenameforme »

Aurornis wrote: post #106
somenameforme wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't always. In fact it took many centuries for this to happen. The history of cocaine in the US is quite interesting. It was being used everywhere and by everybody. Factory owners were giving it to their laborers to increase productivity, it was used in endless tonics, medicines, and drinks (most famously now Coca-Cola = cocaine + kola nut), and so on. You had everybody from Thomas Edison to popes to Ulysses…

> The history of cocaine in the US is quite interesting. It was being used everywhere and by everybody. Be careful with that comparison. The cocaine infused drinks of the past are not comparable to modern cocaine use for several reasons. The route of administration and dose matter a lot. Oral bioavailability is low and peak concentrations are much lower when drinking it in a liquid as opposed to someone insufflating…

Vin Mariani was 7+mg/oz with a relatively low alcohol content which would have been further mitigated by the stimulant effect of the cocaine in any case. And then of course other concotions (including Coca-Cola) had no alcohol at all - Vin Mariani is just a fun example because of the endless famous names attached to it.

Obviously you're right that the absorption is going to be different and a modern coke head with high tolerance likely wouldn't even notice it had anything in it. But give it to a normal person, and they're indeed going to be coked out - in very much the same way that small doses of adderall to non-users can have a very significant effect. The obvious example there being college kids buying pills around around finals.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#122

Post by emil-lp »

achikin wrote: post #118
testing22321 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies. What makes you think this is different?

Because it is proven that phone usage is not an addiction like drugs or alcohol. People put phones away easily if they have a reason to do so.

Citation needed

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#123

Post by emil-lp »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #88
RegW wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wastef…

> As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually… Fellow Scouter here. Lots of Scout units in the USA have cell phone bans. That’s such an obsolete policy. We need to help the Scouts model good choices, and that doesn’t happen when decision opportunities are removed. Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback…

> Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback on how much fun they are[n’t] having in your Scout unit.

You are misunderstanding the addiction part here. It's not about not having fun.

There are tech companies spending literally trillions of dollars on one goal: ensuring that kids keep looking at their phones.

Your framing this as a question of boredom is really naive.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#124

Post by lmm »

testing22321 wrote: post #80
RegW wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wastef…

> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies. What makes you think this is different?

> That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies.

Children raised in cultures where alcohol is soft- rather than hard-banned for young people, and gradually introduced to it with parents around (think European teenagers having a glass of wine with lunch), tend to have healthier relationships with alcohol in later life than those raised in hard-ban-until-18/21 cultures. I think exactly the same will prove true of phones.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#125

Post by silisili »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #109
i_c_b wrote: post #10

Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…

Part of the lesson is understanding how we got here. The answer is, of course, liberal hyperindividualism. By that I don't mean "liberal institutions" or respect for the individual person especially in the face of collectivism, but an ideology of antisocial atomization of the self that thrusts the self into subjective godhood. Paradoxically, this makes people more susceptible to control in practice. Now, ideological…

Leaving out the word liberal as I don't really understand its context here, individualism was at one time a boon for the nation/economy. People move out of their family homes early, start their own family, chart their own path. Good for capitalism. And good for lots of things, really, a lot of America's success can be traced back to it.

But man, social media and the internet age have really exploited it to an unhealthy and unproductive point.

I remember going to college for the first time in 2000, and having an absolute blast meeting the people I was by circumstance forced to be around. Went back in 2004 and it was completely different, everyone was on their phone, maintaining their personal bubble in what should have been an age of exploration. That made me rather sad.

Today it's even worse, but at the risk of being an old man yelling at clouds, I won't drone on. I mostly wish my own children could experience the upbringing I had, as I find this one rather dystopian and depressing.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#126

Post by lmm »

moduspol wrote: post #11
HPsquared wrote: post #7

I wonder if there's a hidden confounding selection bias here, i.e. "ability of the school to ban phones". This is probably easier in less chaotic schools where the students listen to the teachers, say.

If the teachers and schools cannot implement a phone ban because the students won't listen to them, it might be time to reassess what their purpose is.

Are you saying that from a perspective where the purpose of schools is to offer an education, or to keep kids locked up and be cheaper than daycare?

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#127

Post by melagonster »

wisty wrote: post #120
testing22321 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies. What makes you think this is different?

I don't have time to search for a credible source, but it is claimed addicts often seek treatment after hitting "rock bottom". There's obvious reasons why it's not encouraged to wait that long though.

Maybe we can make school harder so they will go there earlier.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#128

Post by lmm »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #110
est wrote: post #108

If phones were totally banned for kids, where would the kid get to know the world? TVs? Newspapers? Magazines? Well those are on-way, with limited feedbacks. What's the better alternative except phones?

For those of us who grew up before 2000, we somehow managed. I think younger people today will as well.

> For those of us who grew up before 2000, we somehow managed

You had TV, newspapers and magazines - and perhaps more importantly, public libraries. The current generation doesn't, not if you take away their phones.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#129

Post by kergonath »

wisty wrote: post #120
testing22321 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies. What makes you think this is different?

I don't have time to search for a credible source, but it is claimed addicts often seek treatment after hitting "rock bottom". There's obvious reasons why it's not encouraged to wait that long though.

> it is claimed addicts often seek treatment after hitting "rock bottom".

From my experience it is often too late at that point. And actually hitting rock bottom is difficult and destructive, and leaves scars. As they say, preventing is better than curing.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#130

Post by kelnos »

bigC5560 wrote: post #78
RegW wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wastef…

As someone who graduated from high school in 2025 I completely agree with this. I am glad I had to work it out on my own, and I don't think this is a place that a school should take control. If I had to figure this out along with the stress of college, I don't know if I would be able to handle it. I also think that it has helped with my overall time management skills and prioritizing my time. I know not everyone will…

I think the problem is that most students, (as this study shows) are not figuring it out on their own, at least not in high school. It feels like you're one of the outliers, not the common case.

Having rules about what you can and can't bring into school is nothing new. I went to high school in the 90s, and there were plenty of things we weren't allowed to bring with us into class; back then, the closest analogue to smartphones would have been pagers, probably.

It seems entirely reasonable to ban smartphones (and dumb phones, even) from schools. Frankly, I think it's absolutely insane that they were ever allowed.

And sure, maybe these students who go to high schools where smartphones are banned will get to university and go nuts, sitting in lecture halls with their phones out all the time. They'll learn very quickly that their grades will suffer, and will clean up their acts or fail out of school. But this is like everything else: the first year of university is the big year of independence, of being away from parents for the first time, and college students do plenty of dumb things in the name of that independence. That's always been the case; I'm no stranger to that phenomenon myself. They either work it out on their own, or they fail out.

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