Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

School cell phone bans and student achievement

nber.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 221 posts

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#211

Post by AngryData »

inglor_cz wrote: post #136
lmm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

There may be a massive confounding factor in the type of alcohol consumed. The more permissive cultures tend to be beer- or wine-centric. I have never been deeply interested in addictology, but the few (older) works on alcoholism I have read mentioned that beer and wine drinkers tend to develop a different sort of relationship with alcohol than hard drink consuments, in the sense that they have a hard time abstaining…

In my midwest area it seems like you can tell who are the alcoholics right away because they buy and drink cheap beers 90% of the time. Maybe to make themselves feel less like an alcoholic because they aren't drinking hard liquor, and it seems someone is more likely to say something if they see someone down a half+ bottle of vodka themselves, but nobody ever says anything seeing someone down 10+ beers.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#212

Post by pcchristie »

uniqueuid wrote: post #22

You have to admit that it's quite clever how they approximate phone use: > Our identification strategy relies upon our ability to calculate school-specific measures of smartphone activity that we can attribute to students, rather than adults in the building. To do so, we use detailed smartphone activity data from Advan between January 2023 and December 2024 that we link to LUSD schools using point-of-interest coordin…

Nice spot. Very clever!

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#213

Post by achikin »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #170
achikin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of reasons for distraction while driving, but we don’t call all of them addiction on that premise. If a driver was not looking at his phone - maybe he’d be looking at something else. The phone is not the reason - it’s just a very suitable object.

this is thoroughly debunked with hard data from distracted driving laws that focus on phone use while driving. We have the luxury of both before and after data and across different jurisidictions.

I agree, but something being distraction does not automatically mean it’s addictive. Gear shifting is a distraction, but we don’t consider it addictive.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#214

Post by AuthorizedCust »

emil-lp wrote: post #123
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I speak from experience. They aren’t on their phones when they are doing adventures.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#215

Post by emil-lp »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #214
emil-lp wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I speak from experience. They aren’t on their phones when they are doing adventures.

Of course, but they can't be on adventures 24/7, that's the point.

Kids aren't supposed to have fun 24/7. It's impossible.

The problem is what happens the moment the "fun" stops. If everybody reaches for their phones, then that's an issue that cannot be fixed by your "just have more fun" mindset.

These kids are set up to fail.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#216

Post by broken-kebab »

lmm wrote: post #124
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?

> 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 t…

These things are not comparable. Alcohol is so old a thing we not only built plenty of stable cultural norms around it but we even developed genetic adaptations.

And speaking of culture, as an Eastern European I would argue our rules regarding alcohol are not soft. Yes, we drink, even expected to drink on some ritualized occasions. But contrary to Hollywood depictions, it's not cool to be a non-functional alco in our lands. When society decides you can't manage yourself, it builds harsh zone of exclusion around you. Imagine you have an uncle Jim who is constantly doomscrolling and for that he has no chances with a good reliable woman, his job opportunities are limited to something non-prestigious, people talk about him like he's a dimwit, even kids look down at him. He's recognized as a failure of a man and parents don't miss a chance to remind about the bad example to their kids. That would be "not-hard" rules EE style.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#217

Post by mghackerlady »

inglor_cz wrote: post #209
mghackerlady wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. You see less depictions of beer or wine addicts despite them (at least from my experience) making up the majority of high-functioning alcoholics. I don't know for sure why they're depicted less, but my running theory is a combination of not being tragic enough for drama focused on alcoholism and being played for jokes with things like the "wine mom" stereotype. They also tend to be a lot better at hiding…

"high-functioning alcoholics" That's the crux of the situation, though; on hard liquor, the slippery road to becoming a non-functional alcoholic is much steeper. There also might be a gender difference. In my experience, men who drink wine, mostly drink with friends and self-limit. The sort of men who are prone to alcoholism won't be satisfied by mere wine and will proceed to hard drinks quick. On the other hand, wom…

I might also be biased. My dad was a "high-functioning alcoholic" who primarily drank beer. I also suppose that my definition of high-functioning might be a bit different as I think it's just as dangerous as non-functional alcoholism because it's easy to hide. My dad hid his problem well, it was only when he almost killed himself by driving off a cliff into a lake while he was shitfaced drunk that he decided to sober up. If he wasn't as good as hiding it he might've been pressured into stopping before he did as much damage to himself and those around him

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#218

Post by [deleted] »

japhyr wrote: post #61
aschla wrote: post #3

I'm not particularly old yet, in my mid-thirties, but I reacted like someone much older when I learned kids are allowed to carry around their phones all day at school. Back in my day (when we walked to school uphill both ways), we weren't allowed to carry around basic flip phones. They had to be in our locker and only used before or after school. When and why did it become acceptable for much more distracting and sti…

I was a classroom teacher from 1994-2019, so I watched the transition through the advent of phones until just before Covid. It's not as simple as it seems, for a few reasons. One, there's the very real pressure from parents to be able to contact their kids when they need to. In the US, regular school shootings have made this a complicated issue to navigate. Also, it requires much more consistency from school staff th…

[deleted]

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#219

Post by makeitdouble »

kelnos wrote: post #142
makeitdouble wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel too few people apply the same logic to themselves. For instance would you put your phone in a locker for the time you're on the clock for work ? Some professions require that, it's not an unreasonable proposition in itself. But how many actually can/would do it ? Some people see it as a guilt thing and just assume they're succumbing to some tentation. Another way to look at it is the generic message being just…

I don't think those situations are comparable. Adults in the workplace are expected to get their work done, meet deadlines, act professionally, etc. If an employee doesn't do that, there are consequences, and we judge that adults can decide for themselves if they want to bear those consequences. We put extra rules in place for kids because their brains aren't fully developed and they very often incorrectly assess whe…

I think people put way too much weight in the distinction between kids and adults. Sure pre-schoolers will be in a very limited place bilologically, but if we're talking 9~10yo and later, the core difference will be social experience and overall knowledge.

To put it in perspective, some people will still live their all life in an institution dictating their life rhythm, potentially setting how they dress and where they live, what they eat. That's how working in a factory line and getting a place in a company dormitory will be like. We basically modeled school according to that model, not by first looking at kids and thinking long and hard at their biological needs and how to best match their needs. School uniforms looking like adult cosplay version is in line with this as well.

> Adults in the workplace are expected to get their work done, meet deadlines, act professionally, etc.

We expect kids to get their work down, pass the scheduled tests, act according to the ~company~school rules.

I'd argue generic schools have always tried to just mold kids into what society wants as adults, and only a few places genuinely focus on sheer education. But even under the "mold the kids" premise, expecting kids to deal with smartphones, digital communication and SNS all at once at 18 is just a recipe for disaster. Understanding how to do what they're expected to, while having access and properly using all of those is probably the most basic life skill they absolutely need in this day and age.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#220

Post by Muromec »

master-lincoln wrote: post #176
Muromec wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That approach works more often than it doesn’t — outside of certain spiraling situations most people don’t became alcoholics and drug addicts. Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree.

> Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree. Following your argument shouldn't anything that can induce addiction be controlled? Seems that is not the case e.g. looking at sugar.

>Following your argument shouldn't anything that can induce addiction be controlled?

Depending on a risk profile -- totally. There are talks of taxing sugar drinks and not selling "energy drinks", which are coffeine + sugar, to kids for this very reason.

I also mean controlled in the broad definition, not as in the "controlled substance". The culture of consumption prescribed by society is a way of regulation too, more effective than laws even.

Post reply on HN