581–590 of 706 posts
When I see all these "phone ban" experiments, I always wonder, is the phone that's the issue, or is it the apps/websites tailored for engagement (a.k.a addiction)? Maybe instead of banning kids from using phones, they should consider banning companies from making their apps addictive on purpose.
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I had unfiltered internet access from around the age of ten onwards. I can confidently say that was a horrible idea and I would have been much better off as a person without it.
I personally learned to program before widespread internet access, so know it’s not at all a requirement.
Forcing every adult to exercise 30 minutes a day would probably also have positive health outcomes. But would that be a good enough reason to introduce such a policy?
In US schools most students are forced to exercise about 30 minutes per day during gym class. I had this from at least 6th-10th grade, though maybe only a handful of days per week had any serious exercise, usually running or playing sports like soccer or basketball.
When I see all these "phone ban" experiments, I always wonder, is the phone that's the issue, or is it the apps/websites tailored for engagement (a.k.a addiction)? Maybe instead of banning kids from using phones, they should consider banning companies from making their apps addictive on purpose.
How do you police what's addictive on purpose vs what's addictive by use? Who polices the difference between addictive additives versus standard driving of engagement? After all, I think sites/apps Youtube or even Hacker News would be guilty depending on how you draw the lines.
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No. Paper and handwriting is great.
For a subset of the population who are manually adept. Excluding modalities from school isn't productive.
And of course, people who physically can't write need to have specialized curriculae. Just like we have them for deaf or dyslexic kids.
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I had unfiltered internet access from around the age of ten onwards. I can confidently say that was a horrible idea and I would have been much better off as a person without it.
i think about this a lot as someone who had unfiltered access to the internet since being a kid around 2010. on the one hand i learned to understand english as a young boy, on my own, without realizing. on the other hand i've seen videos of beheadings, terrorist acts, violent accidents, war crimes and many more, lovely things. that being said...still not sure if it's a net-negative. feels positive to me, just not wit…
I cannot begin to tell you how much more respect and care I give to the road and cars after witnessing so many videos of how violently and suddenly car accidents can take a life. Many of the horrors of these videos are burnt into my mind and I am confident this is for the better.
We live in the real world. It is important to see the real world as it is.
There are if course mental health limits to this. I never want to be desensitized. But in moderation I think it can be net-positive.
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Yeah so the smartphones and socials can be difficult addictions to shake, but this is the flip side of it: when you do put them aside for an extended period of time you often see your productivity absolutely go through the roof. I started sticking my phone in my bag or in another room during my afternoon work session and my productivity with that time doubled, in terms of actual output - tasks completed, lines of cod…
By do you ruminate negative thoughts? That’s my excuse for keeping my phone playing at night: I’m single, and despite being a successful professional and trying hard at dating when I was younger, my private life is full of bad experiences. I think about it and get angry. Youtube masks it. Yes I’ve seen psychologists but no, really, they try to où the blame on me but every time it’s the others who bullied me. Anyway —…
If you ruminate a lot I would look into cognitive behavioral therapy and its variants and think about how their principles can be incorporated into your ruminations. The TLDR of CBT is it involves analyzing your negative thoughts critically, rationally and systematically in writing. Often when we do that the thoughts lose their emotional hold on us, even if some of them are true.
Avoiding may be better than ruminating, but processing is better than both. I spent way too much of my life thinking that ruminating was worthwhile on its own and eventually realized it is not unless you structure it narrowly and productively.
It seems to me the issue is phone apps that are designed to exploit the limbic system. This is why you don't have slot machines in most localities. The phone itself is just a computer. Using the phone to write, help with homework, or communicate doesn't seem to be the problem. It's the addictive gambling-like apps (TikTok, Instagram, ...) that what generate compulsive and disruptive behavior.
If you want children to learn to be able to write, you have to get them to do it themselves. Not with a computer, not with a phone, not with ChatGPT, with a piece of paper and a pen(cil).
They may not like this(!)