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The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

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Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#241

Post by Dylan16807 »

ruthmarx wrote: post #238
Dylan16807 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not for the people who might want to use one A lot of the people that might want to use one would in fact have a better experience if there was zero or minimal phone use at their table.

Nah. What's true for you isn't true for everyone. If I go on a date in a high end restaurant and hit it off with my date, I might want to show her something briefly or look up something, and we would both be on bored with it and having a good time. In that case, the phone is enhancing the experience, not taking away from it.

> What's true for you isn't true for everyone.

That is why I said "a lot", not everyone.

Your "Nah." is not true, by your own argument.

> briefly

There is a reason I said "or minimal". That's minimal.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#242

Post by luyu_wu »

GuB-42 wrote: post #239

I am a bit surprised that there is no mention of academic performance, which would be the most obvious indication for a successful policy. Instead, what the article basically says is that banning phones results in kids spending less time on the phone, which is an improvement if your idea of an improvement is having kids do things that don't involve spending time on the phone. There is some circular reasoning here. No…

There've been a lot of studies and meta studies on correlation between cellphone usage and academic performance. IIRC the Pearson correlation coefficient for that has always been hilariously low. Something like -0.1 to -0.2.

The argument these days is more about "distraction" caused by cellphone usage instead of something quantitative.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#243

Post by vertalexgraph »

wkat4242 wrote: post #197
vertalexgraph wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I guess I'm an outlier like most people on this site that promotes learning new things though text-heavy presentation. Bold to assume this is what most people on this site are like! I'd hypothesize you're still an outlier in that group in these regards. And that's great! But lots of the data points to people like HN's general demographic still being pulled away from long form text content and towards synthesize…

> Bold to assume this is what most people on this site are like! Really, look at the front page of this site. If you're not interested in dense textual content you would have closed the tab within 1 second. I really love this site but most people won't even see the story titles, their brain just registers "a confusing jumble of text" and doesn't even try to engage. > But lots of the data points to people like HN's ge…

> If you're not interested in dense textual content you would have closed the tab within 1 second.

And your theory is that all commenters have read those posts in their entirety? I'd suspect far far more readers jump to discussion rather than fixating on the post, as is evidenced by the amount of people that comment on and respond to topics irrelevant to the posts in question.

> And what data is that?

The slow death of academic and long form text medium in general? And the boom in mixed media aggregation happening? Or just the last 20 years of long form text as a whole?

But also, the work that's gone into building my company and its product.

> I don't think I'm elitist or sexy.

That's good. But I again think that your perception of this topic does not match society. Which isn't bad! But I think it's important to note our own biases and perceptions.

> I don't tend to consume textual content in a start to end sequential manner. But I jump around. Because some stuff I already know, some i really want to deeper dive on, some I need to refer back to later. This is much harder with video.

Yes, one might suggest that mixed media suffers from a lack of tooling for these types of challenges (aforementioned company)

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#244

Post by thiel_is_hitler »

kelnos wrote: post #143

It has always felt absolutely bonkers to me that smartphone bans weren't put into place instantly across US schools as soon as they started becoming common. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. If I'd brought a handheld game console like a Gameboy or something into class, it would have been confiscated immediately. Sure, I get it, that's not the same thing; obviously phones have other uses. But there is absolutely zero reas…

[dead]

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#245

Post by exe34 »

stephenlindauer wrote: post #112
exe34 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my phone to look up words/concepts/references all the time while reading - I couldn't do without it, flipping through a dictionary or walking up to a computer to read a quick Wikipedia intro to a concept/person/place/etc would just get me far more distracted.

Yet somehow we all survived before smartphones. If you have a question and raise your hand to ask, everyone else benefits from getting the answer as well.

we also survived before books. plenty of books are useless or downright dangerous. would you support banning books in the classroom?

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#246

Post by drdaeman »

_w1tm wrote: post #223
drdaeman wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. An adult can ask themselves what they're doing and why and how it aligns with their interests so on (aka have that midlife crisis, haha), a kid probably doesn't yet have enough self-reflection capacity yet. In my perception, distractions are ideally managed through interest management. Make the desired task actually truly desired - and you're guaranteed to not get distracted. And in an ideal environment, the…

> And in an ideal environment, there should be an educator overseeing a kid and asking what went wrong if kid decides they wanna play with their phone instead of working. The reason primary education is mandatory is because the average kid doesn’t want to sit there learning things. Even some parents barely care. We have collectively decided to force these children to sit through school because we want the population…

I don't argue against compulsory education and minimum standards. I strongly agree that they are an absolute necessity.

I was an outlier. Used to study well while it was interesting - just because I had access to the books and I loved reading. But around 9th grade I lost track of some courses, things stopped making sense, everything started to fall apart - and at some point I just optimized away, starting to solve for working around the compulsion rather than necessity to learn. I still learned things I cared about, but subjects where I had a gap in understanding went sideways.

The compulsion haven't made me learn anything much, but the means to game the system enough to pass through the hurdles. I worked on some skills like writing tiniest cheat sheets (fine motor skill training haha), basic networking to have someone to copy homework from, composing essays without even opening the source material, confidence tricks, breaking into storage rooms, hacking into computer systems and so on.

A valuable social skill set, but probably only for a failing simulacra of a society. (Well, I lived in exactly such a society - one under a post-Soviet curse, so it all fits.)

And while those were some fun times, I hate how I had totally lost a lot of opportunities to learn many useful things when I had all the time in the world for it - and way more capable brains than I have in my thirties or forties. I didn't do it because I just didn't knew that I cared about it. I don't blame anyone, of course - things just happened that way.

So, I strongly disagree with the "doesn't want" bit. Kids do want to learn things. I wanted to. I believe we all normally do - curiosity and desire to learn is humanity's signature trait. But kids cannot steer themselves, so they need guidance. And compulsion does a poor job as such.

But I agree that catering to the outliers is not efficient in present day real-life conditions. Probably not just inefficient, but outright impossible until(if) we ever reach post-scarcity. I even wrote a regret: "[approach] that doesn't work because it requires ideal environment". The compulsion is basically all we realistically have. I just made a note how it's a shame that it's a poor man's solution to a problem that ideally should be solved very differently.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#247

Post by wkat4242 »

luzojeda wrote: post #126
wkat4242 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only distraction though. The phone is a window to the internet which offers all the knowledge of the world. And in 'my day' I spent a lot of time at the library which was full of thrillers and comics. And spent most of my time learning about computers and electronics. It's not an unprecedented problem and offers new offers new opportunities too.

Having instant access from your pocket to an infinite source of entertainment is literally an unprecedented problem.

Is it really very entertaining though?

I use instagram as a tool to follow certain parties and tattoo shops (for announcements of visiting artists). Since about a year they've spammed their 'reels' on me and make it much harder to avoid them. But every time I look at them it's the same brainless crap as the tiktok-branded videos that people send on to me via whatsapp or telegram.

I don't really understand how people are being captivated by this. It's all so hollow, shallow and brainless.

Youtube is no better. Only full of corporate marketing drones like marcus brownlee and linus tech tips. All very hollow, sponsor-ridden and glossy. The only one I appreciate is dave from eevblog but he posts pretty rarely these days so I never really watch youtube anymore.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#248

Post by singleshot_ »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #211
singleshot_ wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be challenging to make your way to the school’s office once the facility has been taken over by an armed gunman, which is a great reason for kids to have comms at all times, if not one that commonly arises.

In that rare situation, we do not at all need every student calling out. Why is it "a great reason"?

Well, in order to have _any_ children calling out, at least one of them would have to have a phone. One great reason for not banning phones is to increase the chances that at least one student has one.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#249

Post by hyperG »

iambateman wrote: post #21
mhh__ wrote: post #15

On the reading question raised by another comment: I went to school recently enough that we had smartphones but before tiktok. You were allowed them but they'd be confiscated if seen in lessons or corridors. On balance I'd probably try and get rid entirely, but vividly recall my academic/engineering/whatever awakening being from downloading huge quantities of textbooks and the like onto my phone at the age of 14 or 1…

I think the question “how do we encourage digital exploration without causing phone addiction” is the defining question of our generation.

As someone who has used zero social media in 10 years, this is incredibly trivial.

No one complains about being hopelessly addicted to listening to audio books or doing anki flashcards.

I suspect it isn't just social media but the cultivation of an online presence that is hopelessly addicting to many.

It is kind of like saying how do we get people to stop being addicted to smoking crack pipes. The crack is the problem, not the pipe.

Re: The phone ban has had a big impact on school work

#250

Post by hed »

agrippanux wrote: post #23

I swapped my high school son’s iPhone for an Apple Watch w/cellular for school days and his grades and social life improved significantly.

Is it just paired with his phone that he has access to on the weekends? Asking because I've thought about this before (younger kids) but I don't think the AW operates standalone and I didn't want to pair it with my phone.
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