NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again • Hacker News Board

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#171

Post by hunter-gatherer » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 1:54 AM UTC

Dusseldorf wrote: post #163

iknowstuff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT "caught on fire" faster than iPhones.

It absolutely did not. ChatGPT is free to use and most people I know have barely engaged with it beyond a few queries once or twice to try it. When the iPhone came out, nearly everyone I knew dumped hundreds of dollars to get one (or a droid) within 2 years.

Agree. The conversation behind "adoption" was totally different as well. I was a young Army private when the first iPhone was announced. Before that I remember the iPod touch and other MP3 players beingthe rage in the gym and what not. I distinctly remember in the gym we were talking about the iPhone, my friend had an iPod touch and we took turns holding it up to our faces like a phone, and sort of saying "weird, but yeah, this would work".

Point being, when smart phones came out it there was anticipation of what it might be, sort of like a game console. ChatGPT et al was sort of sudden, and the use case is pretty one dimensional, and for average people, less exciting. It is basically a work-slop emitter, and _most people I know_ seem to agree with that.

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#172

Post by therein » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 1:55 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #169

hamdingers wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it rolled in so rapidly that it was universal before we had the chance to push back. This can't be it. I was in high school when smartphones were coming out and there was zero tolerance for them or any other electronic devices (dumbphones, ipods, palm pilots, etc) in the classroom. I don't know when or why it happened but allowing smartphones in school was a conscious choice and a policy change.

Agreed. There existed a period of time where handheld communication devices existed and were banned. Sometime later, someone somewhere made a conscious choice to change policy. It didn’t just happen.

> someone somewhere

Must have been a powerful person.

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#173

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 2:04 AM UTC

fn-mote wrote: post #164

dghlsakjg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports gambling is astoundingly popular for teen boys. Already the prevalence of zero sum games like crypto and day trading was getting to be too trendy for teenagers, and this shit just supercharges it.

> prevalence of zero sum games like crypto and day trading Calling day trading “zero sum” seems like a huge stretch. To get the sum to be zero you need to include everyone involved in the market: institutional investors, hedge funds, etc. Somewhere between 87 and 95 percent of day traders lose money.

[deleted]

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#174

Post by fyrn_ » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 2:17 AM UTC

badc0ffee wrote: post #158

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think I learned half my basic social skills from lunch rooms in school What a lot of people learn from lunch rooms is not a happy social lesson. It’s who is allowed to sit where, and who is outcast from a table. It’s the shit teenagers lower on the social hierarchy have to take daily from teenagers who are higher, even if they are allowed to sit at the same table. High school is widely remembered as a brutal rite…

I always hear this from Americans. My experience in Canada is that the bullying and shaming was limited to junior high (grade 7-9 in my province). Maybe my high school was just too large for any of that nonsense? Or maybe the culture is different - I couldn't have told you who was on the football team, and there was no prom. All my friends were nerds, but at the same time I didn't feel like there was some brutal soci…

I think age cohortand school makes a difference. Personally I had a perfectly fine time in highschool, most people just got along. Same problems as other posters though, it's just anecdote, and a heavily biased sampling (pretty decent chunk of CS people with poor social skills)

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#175

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 2:47 AM UTC

ls612 wrote: post #160

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2020, school systems in the United States began to close down in March because of the spread of COVID-19 I definitely know who was president in March of 2020. Before they lost their election 8 months later. Somehow it seems a lot of people don't.

It isn’t who was president it is who supported keeping schools closed.

[deleted]

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#176

Post by r2_pilot » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:01 AM UTC

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #98

QuercusMax wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that reading comprehension is an outdated technology?

Surely reading comprehension is still required for, well, reading AI-generated text. Perhaps it's not their intention but I read an implication that using humans to source facts is outdated, which is... well, I'll just assume that I'm misunderstanding their perspective.

> Surely reading comprehension is still required for, well, reading AI-generated text.

Found the optimist. (no, it unfortunately not required. Imagine, if you will, the world's worst version of the Telephone game...)

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#177

Post by dingnuts » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:02 AM UTC

fn-mote wrote: post #165

bogwog wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long until they do the same to AI in schools?

How in the world would you keep AI out of schools? Ok, turn off the internet. And ban the cell phones. I suppose a district could block the known AI providers, so kids could only use AI at home. I’m very skeptical this would eliminate the negatives. On the contrary, every administrator I know of is gung-ho about the coming improvements in education driven by AI. (There certainly are SOME, but it comes with minuses.)

most instruction can and should be done without computers. and ban cell phones.

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#178

Post by lukan » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:14 AM UTC

Dusseldorf wrote: post #163

iknowstuff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT "caught on fire" faster than iPhones.

It absolutely did not. ChatGPT is free to use and most people I know have barely engaged with it beyond a few queries once or twice to try it. When the iPhone came out, nearly everyone I knew dumped hundreds of dollars to get one (or a droid) within 2 years.

"and most people I know have barely engaged with it beyond a few queries once or twice to try it."

Have you recently spoken with the younger generation still in school?

I doubt you find many there who just "have barely engaged with it". It is just too useful for all the generic school stuff, homework, assignments, etc.

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#179

Post by thelock85 » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:22 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #152

hamdingers wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it rolled in so rapidly that it was universal before we had the chance to push back. This can't be it. I was in high school when smartphones were coming out and there was zero tolerance for them or any other electronic devices (dumbphones, ipods, palm pilots, etc) in the classroom. I don't know when or why it happened but allowing smartphones in school was a conscious choice and a policy change.

Upper-middle class parents addicted to constant communication with their children started complaining about their kid's not being allowed to carry their phones, nearly at the level of implying it was a human rights violation. They combined this with worries about school shootings (that cellphones haven't ever helped with to my knowledge, unless having live recordings of children being murdered is help.) After they go…

This.

Schools are not employers that can implement take it or leave it policies. You need coordination and agreement between school leadership, district leadership, staff, and most critically parents to put your foot down on anything while also working to ensure basic safety and decent academic outcomes.

Now that the ills of social media and screen time are mainstream knowledge, it’s easier to make a common sense argument without much pushback.

Re: NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

#180

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:23 AM UTC

r2_pilot wrote: post #176

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely reading comprehension is still required for, well, reading AI-generated text. Perhaps it's not their intention but I read an implication that using humans to source facts is outdated, which is... well, I'll just assume that I'm misunderstanding their perspective.

> Surely reading comprehension is still required for, well, reading AI-generated text. Found the optimist. (no, it unfortunately not required. Imagine, if you will, the world's worst version of the Telephone game...)

Sure, but the same failure mode exists for readers of human writing.