9 ms·

Get Phones Out of Schools Now

91 points by jasonhansel 3y ago

wnevets 3y ago
Not until we fix the gun problem. A child's phone could be the difference between life or death.
- anotherhue 3y ago
  The gun problem doesn't impact 100% of kids though -- so why not both? Anyway, they can probably still have old Nokias
  - wnevets 3y ago
    > The gun problem doesn't impact 100% of kids though it impacts far too many. Let them have their phones.
    - hanklazard 3y ago
      let them have a simple communication device. they don't need tiktok and instagram in school.
      - wnevets 3y ago
        social media has proven indispensable during times of crisis in the past. No reason to handicap the kids when their school is being shot up.
        bart_spoon 3y ago
        Yes, how can we forget the countless lives that were saved during school shootings thanks to ready access to Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok?
        prepend 3y ago
        This is silly. TikTok is not indispensable during times of crisis. Neither is instagram. To make this claim you’d need some way to distinguish the value of TikTok vs just phone and messaging. But it’s definite that kids using TikTok in a class of 25-30 lowers performance. Schools have multiple problems (why 30 kids in a class) but phones make it even harder.
        wnevets 3y ago
        If you want to deprive your child of a potentially life saving device be my guest but you don't get to impose such limitation on my family .
        prepend 3y ago
        [flagged]
        wnevets 3y ago
        > Statistically, a cell phone will do more harm to a child than a gun (comparing injury and death as a rate of gun ownership vs depression rates for kids with smartphones). To even suggest a child owning a gun is safer than a smart phone is in incredibly poor taste and a smack in the face of any parent who has lost a child to this crisis.
        prepend 3y ago
        [flagged]
        JonathanDnk 3y ago
        Scroll up to see my reply above - law enforcement and security experts tend to say that children using their phones causing more harm than good during a crisis.
  - igetspam 3y ago
    You're not completely wrong but you're heading that way. Almost every public and private school in the country does shooter drills now. Kids who haven't been through a school shooting suffer PTSD. They are genuinely afraid that they'll die at school and this is a reality they hear from many adults. What you mean to say is that not 100% of kids will suffer through a school shooting and that's true but I'll be damned if going to opt to remove phones from kids at school until the likelihood inverts, year over year.
    - JonathanDnk 3y ago
      As the article notes, believing that they need their phone to hedge against that possibility and won't be safe without it likely makes their mental health worse, not better.
- creato 3y ago
  This is the “ what about emergencies” argument but phrased in the way that is least likely to lead to productive conversation.
- hanklazard 3y ago
  How about "get fully capable smart phones out of schools now"? This safety argument could still be fulfilled with a cheap, simple phone that allows the student to text / call 9-1-1 and a handful of trusted contacts.
  - igetspam 3y ago
    That's our plan. A simple device that allows for emergency use. Call mom, dad, trusted friend, 911. But our kid is young and limits are hard. As they age up, this will evolve.
  - ryanmercer 3y ago
    Or just put voip phones in every classroom for emergencies and ban mobile phones for students. 99.99999% of teachers have a cell phone anyway in the event of a proper emergency.
  - wnevets 3y ago
    No, I want my children to have access to high precision GPS, bluetooth, hd video and a high speed data connection during a crisis. I'm not worried whether or not the cops will be called. I simply refuse to wait outside for a hour with them while a crazy person shoots up classrooms one by one. https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/mom-who-saved-her-kids-from-uvalde-school-shooting-says-police-are-targeting-her-texas-robb-elementary-gunman-salvador-ramos-law-enforcement-response-angeli-rose-gomez-first-responders-who-is-pete-arredondo-town-square-protests-elementary-school-massacre https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/mom-who-saved-her-ki...
- nosefurhairdo 3y ago
  This point was addressed in the article: > But would a school where every student has a smartphone be safer than one in which only the adults have smartphones? Ken Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services, warns that using a cellphone during an emergency can increase safety risks. “During a lockdown, students should be listening to the adults in the school who are giving life-saving instructions,” Trump explains. “Phones can distract from that. Silence can also be key, so you also don’t want that phone noise attracting attention.” In addition, it seems to me that 300 parents rushing to the school in 300 cars would probably make things more difficult for first responders. I would add that if Haidt is correct that removing phones improves mental health, then the likelihood of school shootings might decrease as a result. In any case, if you're going to argue with the headline, you might as well respond to the relevant portion of the article.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  There are over 115,000 schools in the United States. In the 23 years since Columbine there have been 380 school shootings (one is too many, of course). Any loss of life is tragic but school shootings are a lot like plane crashes: shocking, clustered loss of life. It’s the old story about 150 people dying in a plane crash gripping national (and international) media attention for days while 117 people die in car crashes EVERY DAY and they barely make the local newspaper. Oh yeah phones are a large contributor to these too… Meanwhile, suicide is the third largest leading cause of death for people aged 15-24 (somewhere around 5,000/yr). Accidents (including cars) are by far the leading cause of death. Not to mention drugs… School shootings are terrible and any loss of life is tragic. However, the actual statistical chances of a young person being harmed or involved in a school shooting are tiny. I have a friend who is a high school principal and as the article describes, far more young people are harmed (up to and including suicide) by phones than guns. The sexting, constant and relentless bullying, distraction, overall device addiction, etc does far more damage to far more kids than guns (as wild as that might seem). Thousands of adults at a time, with far more responsibility (many of whom are parents), will surrender their phones in magnetic pouches to see Dave Chapelle (as one example). Tragedy doesn’t strike when they don’t have constant and immediate access to their phones. It’s actually not the difference between life and death. Meanwhile, asking 14 year olds (many of whom have no responsibilities other than school) to not have their phones in an environment allegedly dedicated to focus and learning for a few hours at a time receives pushback. It’s truly bizarre. Get phones AND guns out of schools.
  - igetspam 3y ago
    School shootings are not like plane crashes, they are like plane hijackings by suicidal terrorists. (Because that's what they are.) There are now kids who have loved through two school shootings. You're downplaying this significantly. Find a way to keep guns out of the hands of domestic terrorists and I'll listen to your concerns about phones but not before.
    - balderdash 3y ago
      This is comically irrational
- ryukoposting 3y ago
  The teacher has a cell phone. Even if the teacher doesn't have a cell phone, there's yet another system in place: a telephone on the teacher's desk. The article already talks about why the "what if" argument doesn't work. Uncoordinated responses triggered by direct child-to-parent interaction are inefficient and counterproductive to a coordinated response.
  - wnevets 3y ago
    > The teacher has a cell phone. Even if the teacher doesn't have a cell phone, there's yet another system in place: a telephone on the teacher's desk. The teacher is going to call the cops and then what? We get to watch the cops wait outside for a hour while kids are being murdered[1] ? If you wanna depend on the cops to save your child that is your business but you don't get to make that choice for me. [1] https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/uvalde-cops-waited-77-minutes-to-try-entering-classrooms-during-shooting/ https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/uvalde-cops-waited-77-minutes-...
anotherhue 3y ago
https://archive.is/frnOK https://archive.is/frnOK
- whammykiss 3y ago
  [dead]
kgwxd 3y ago
Meh, I've got kids in school, it's not really that bad. The school systems getting worse every year is way more important to fix.
all_these_years 3y ago
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/phone-free-schools https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/phone-free-schools
Apreche 3y ago
Maybe instead it is the school that should change and adapt to a world where everyone is assumed to have a phone.
- jhanschoo 3y ago
  The article outlines a "change and adaptation to a world where everyone is assumed to have a phone". Do you have a superior alternative change and adaptation that resolves the issues outlined by the article?
- joenot443 3y ago
  We live in a world where adult temptations like cigarettes, guns, alcohol, and sex are rightfully not allowed at school. There's hardly a bodega in New York where you can't buy beer or cigarettes, yet I think schools (generally) do a good job of keeping them away from kids during the day. These days, more and more do I perceive internet-connected smartphones as an adult temptation which children needn't be exposed to. Yes, they live in a world where most people have phones. They also live in a world where most people drink! It will take some time and it will be uncomfortable, but I'm of the opinion that a slow, society-wide shift away from all-day children's device usage is what's needed to stop the bleeding.
  - ryanmercer 3y ago
    >, yet I think schools (generally) do a good job of keeping them away from kids during the day. When I was in high school 99-03 you couldn't go into the bathroom without seeing someone smoking a cigarette or a joint, I even had a teacher that would let you have a restroom pass under the condition he reserved the right to smell you (at a reasonable distance) when you returned to make sure you didn't smoke. Now kids try to sneak vapes in class (my wife is a high school teacher) and at a school she taught at before we got married they had a student OD on fentanyl that someone had laced his vape cartridge with. When I was in high school you'd have kids on MDMA in class too with some regularity. A friend that is also a teacher, about 7-8 years ago, had (presumably) a student dose her Starbucks sitting on her desk with a roofie which required her being in the hospital for 2 days. Schools aren't doing a good job of anything in that regard. Even prisons can't keep drugs out and they have strip and cavity searches.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rhaway84773 3y ago
Is there any argument that phones are a good thing for kids to have in school? There are a lot of things children are not allowed in school. Why are phones, which at best have little to no benefit, and at worst may impede learning, cause depression, cause bullying that follows the child all the way back home from the playground, cause social stratification, etc allowed until we have a better idea of their impact?
- david38 3y ago
  I can think of at least one. Bullying on buses has dropped significantly in many places because people can now browse the internet instead of tormenting weaker students to kill boredom?
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    I can think of a better solution: bring proper discipline back to schools.
  - Llamamoe 3y ago
    Reduced engagement with the world and other kids around them is a pretty sharp price to pay for less bullying. We really should do better.
    - Nasrudith 3y ago
      Spoken like one who has never been bullied. "Engagement" is the last thing the victim wants for a damned good reason.
      - Llamamoe 3y ago
        I have been. I just find the prospect of a world where humans barely interact with each other and are even closer to universally lonely and even less engaged with real life than right now to be extremely, extremely concerning. There's data to suggest that mobile phone use and social media in particular are responsible for vastly higher levels of mental illness than any bullying has ever been. Cutting humans off from reality is an extremely bad solution to bullying. We can and need to do better.
pcj-github 3y ago
I would really like to see level four and five implemented at all public schools.
DoreenMichele 3y ago
Ah, Jonathan Haidt who has had two recent articles on HN -- that I've seen -- insisting he should be allowed to win this argument with less evidence than a criminal trial. Here's one of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35948332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35948332 And the footer of this paywalled piece indicates he has a book coming out in 2024 that is probably about exactly this same topic. I can't read most of this article, but I can see the promo for his next book. #Priorities
balderdash 3y ago
“They said too many parents would be upset if they could not reach their children during the school day.” This just seems so foreign to me. I could probably count on one hand the number of times my parents needed to get ahold of me during the school day.
- quartesixte 3y ago
  This is the euphemistic way of saying “Parents need to be able to call their kids in the event of a school shooting”.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    There's much better ways to solve that problem than "being able to call your kids in the event of".
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    Given that I notice the same phenomenon in Sweden where school shootings are rarer than hen's teeth I do not think that this is true. Parents - or maybe I should say 'mothers' - want to be able to get hold of their offspring to tell them to come home in time/tell them to water the horses when they walk by the field/tell them they will collect them at the station/etc. The assumption that people are supposed to be reachable wherever they are really has permeated through society. I for one am glad that I was not assumed to be reachable when I cycled to and from school, paddled my inflatable boat over the river to the next village at 12yo, cycled through the Netherlands at 15yo and more. Not only did this add to the sense of freedom - being all by myself in that boat or cycling past places unknown to me without the risk of that stupid phone starting to blare at any moment - but it also helped in 'growing up' since I had to make decisions on my own without being able to call for help and advice at any moment. I was free, children nowadays are tethered - the opposite of what The Waterboys sing about in This is the Sea [1]: once you were tethered now you are free that was the river this is the sea This has turned into: now they are tethered, once they were free If you have children - I do - allow them the freedom you had yourself or the freedom you would have liked to have. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx--j1F5Ppg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx--j1F5Ppg
sharts 3y ago
just put kids in apple vision pro headsets 24/7.
dusted 3y ago
Phones, Tablets, Laptops, TVs.
ryanmercer 3y ago
Yeah, good luck with that. My wife is a high school teacher, parents get livid if you confiscate their kids phone for even a single period citing "I need to be able to reach him/her!"
taylodl 3y ago
This is a popular narrative - phones are causing anxiety and depression in kids, especially girls. Sounds great, but there's only one problem. I'm pretty sure it's false. My daughter had mental health issues that manifested itself in late high school. That's been over a decade ago. Neither her, her friends, or the overwhelming majority of her peer group at the time had smartphones. They were just too new and too expensive for kids. Her group therapy was comprised of almost all girls (so many that one girl didn't even realize it was a co-ed group therapy, the single guy had already graduated before she started therapy). In talking with the therapists they mentioned they were seeing a sharp rise in the number of girls with mental health issues. Any guesses as to what the didn't blame? Smartphones. They practically didn't exist at the time. Tablets practically didn't exist at the time. Most households at the time still only had one computer and kids weren't typically allowed to use it for long periods of time. Yet the mental health crises of teenage girls was already in full swing. I've never heard anyone explain why this crises began before smartphones, tablets, and laptops became as ubiquitous as they are today. Unfortunately, what you hear in group therapy you're not allowed to repeat, but I can tell you the underlying problem is far more sinister than some stupid smartphone.
- lisasays 3y ago
  You need to give us some idea of what the "real" problem is, then. Otherwise we have nothing to go on here.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Performance stress. The schools are stressing college to the kids. Living in a more affluent neighborhood they're afraid if they don't go to college then they'll be taking a considerable hit to their standard of living. Apparently they don't mention it every so often. I'm probably over-exaggerating a bit but they're pounding college! college! college! into these kids' heads every single period of every single day. Making things worse, they can't get a reprieve in sports. If you've been involved in kids sports you know there's a huge push for kids to use sports to get a college scholarship. Even if they're not trying to get a scholarship they're using it to build their college resumé. Gotta get those extracurricular activities in! In fact that's how all extracurricular activities are. All the joy has been sucked out. It's college! college! college! Become president of the club - looks good on the college resumé! Make sure you have the right variety of activities for your resumé! I unwittingly signed my kids up for this nightmare. When I signed them up for sports I had no expectation they'd be star athletes - I just knew from my experience growing up playing team sports really helped me learn to work with others. The other activities were to engage the mind. Do things outside of school for both your mind and body. I knew the crazies were there, but I didn't realize the effect they were having. Now it's becoming clearer what's happened. The girls and boys have responded to the stress in two different ways. The boys are dropping out. You see article after article trying to explain why boys aren't going to school, not getting jobs, and so forth. They've dropped out. On the other hand, girls have freaked out. They've become an anxiety-ridden mess. Meanwhile everybody is trying to figure out why the boys are becoming deadbeats and the girls are depressed. They blame video games, they blame phones. They blame everything but where the fault actually lies: stress. The more interesting question then is why do today's kids feel the stress more than the kids from previous generations? I have ideas but this answer is already too long.
ghusto 3y ago
I'm so happy to see the majority of responses here being in support of this argument. Parent's get upset when you point this out, because admitting to yourself that you damaged your child is the most painful thing in the world. To those parents; it doesn't make you a bad person; the sooner you take it on the chin, the sooner you can do the (really hard work) of healing your child.

91 points by jasonhansel 3y ago

wnevets 3y ago

Not until we fix the gun problem. A child's phone could be the difference between life or death.

anotherhue 3y ago
The gun problem doesn't impact 100% of kids though -- so why not both? Anyway, they can probably still have old Nokias
- wnevets 3y ago
  > The gun problem doesn't impact 100% of kids though it impacts far too many. Let them have their phones.
  - hanklazard 3y ago
    let them have a simple communication device. they don't need tiktok and instagram in school.
    - wnevets 3y ago
      social media has proven indispensable during times of crisis in the past. No reason to handicap the kids when their school is being shot up.
      - bart_spoon 3y ago
        Yes, how can we forget the countless lives that were saved during school shootings thanks to ready access to Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok?
      - prepend 3y ago
        This is silly. TikTok is not indispensable during times of crisis. Neither is instagram. To make this claim you’d need some way to distinguish the value of TikTok vs just phone and messaging. But it’s definite that kids using TikTok in a class of 25-30 lowers performance. Schools have multiple problems (why 30 kids in a class) but phones make it even harder.
        wnevets 3y ago
        If you want to deprive your child of a potentially life saving device be my guest but you don't get to impose such limitation on my family .
        prepend 3y ago
        [flagged]
        wnevets 3y ago
        > Statistically, a cell phone will do more harm to a child than a gun (comparing injury and death as a rate of gun ownership vs depression rates for kids with smartphones). To even suggest a child owning a gun is safer than a smart phone is in incredibly poor taste and a smack in the face of any parent who has lost a child to this crisis.
        prepend 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - JonathanDnk 3y ago
        Scroll up to see my reply above - law enforcement and security experts tend to say that children using their phones causing more harm than good during a crisis.
- igetspam 3y ago
  You're not completely wrong but you're heading that way. Almost every public and private school in the country does shooter drills now. Kids who haven't been through a school shooting suffer PTSD. They are genuinely afraid that they'll die at school and this is a reality they hear from many adults. What you mean to say is that not 100% of kids will suffer through a school shooting and that's true but I'll be damned if going to opt to remove phones from kids at school until the likelihood inverts, year over year.
  - JonathanDnk 3y ago
    As the article notes, believing that they need their phone to hedge against that possibility and won't be safe without it likely makes their mental health worse, not better.
creato 3y ago
This is the “ what about emergencies” argument but phrased in the way that is least likely to lead to productive conversation.
hanklazard 3y ago
How about "get fully capable smart phones out of schools now"? This safety argument could still be fulfilled with a cheap, simple phone that allows the student to text / call 9-1-1 and a handful of trusted contacts.
- igetspam 3y ago
  That's our plan. A simple device that allows for emergency use. Call mom, dad, trusted friend, 911. But our kid is young and limits are hard. As they age up, this will evolve.
- ryanmercer 3y ago
  Or just put voip phones in every classroom for emergencies and ban mobile phones for students. 99.99999% of teachers have a cell phone anyway in the event of a proper emergency.
- wnevets 3y ago
  No, I want my children to have access to high precision GPS, bluetooth, hd video and a high speed data connection during a crisis. I'm not worried whether or not the cops will be called. I simply refuse to wait outside for a hour with them while a crazy person shoots up classrooms one by one. https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/mom-who-saved-her-kids-from-uvalde-school-shooting-says-police-are-targeting-her-texas-robb-elementary-gunman-salvador-ramos-law-enforcement-response-angeli-rose-gomez-first-responders-who-is-pete-arredondo-town-square-protests-elementary-school-massacre https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/mom-who-saved-her-ki...
nosefurhairdo 3y ago
This point was addressed in the article: > But would a school where every student has a smartphone be safer than one in which only the adults have smartphones? Ken Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services, warns that using a cellphone during an emergency can increase safety risks. “During a lockdown, students should be listening to the adults in the school who are giving life-saving instructions,” Trump explains. “Phones can distract from that. Silence can also be key, so you also don’t want that phone noise attracting attention.” In addition, it seems to me that 300 parents rushing to the school in 300 cars would probably make things more difficult for first responders. I would add that if Haidt is correct that removing phones improves mental health, then the likelihood of school shootings might decrease as a result. In any case, if you're going to argue with the headline, you might as well respond to the relevant portion of the article.
kkielhofner 3y ago
There are over 115,000 schools in the United States. In the 23 years since Columbine there have been 380 school shootings (one is too many, of course). Any loss of life is tragic but school shootings are a lot like plane crashes: shocking, clustered loss of life. It’s the old story about 150 people dying in a plane crash gripping national (and international) media attention for days while 117 people die in car crashes EVERY DAY and they barely make the local newspaper. Oh yeah phones are a large contributor to these too… Meanwhile, suicide is the third largest leading cause of death for people aged 15-24 (somewhere around 5,000/yr). Accidents (including cars) are by far the leading cause of death. Not to mention drugs… School shootings are terrible and any loss of life is tragic. However, the actual statistical chances of a young person being harmed or involved in a school shooting are tiny. I have a friend who is a high school principal and as the article describes, far more young people are harmed (up to and including suicide) by phones than guns. The sexting, constant and relentless bullying, distraction, overall device addiction, etc does far more damage to far more kids than guns (as wild as that might seem). Thousands of adults at a time, with far more responsibility (many of whom are parents), will surrender their phones in magnetic pouches to see Dave Chapelle (as one example). Tragedy doesn’t strike when they don’t have constant and immediate access to their phones. It’s actually not the difference between life and death. Meanwhile, asking 14 year olds (many of whom have no responsibilities other than school) to not have their phones in an environment allegedly dedicated to focus and learning for a few hours at a time receives pushback. It’s truly bizarre. Get phones AND guns out of schools.
- igetspam 3y ago
  School shootings are not like plane crashes, they are like plane hijackings by suicidal terrorists. (Because that's what they are.) There are now kids who have loved through two school shootings. You're downplaying this significantly. Find a way to keep guns out of the hands of domestic terrorists and I'll listen to your concerns about phones but not before.
  - balderdash 3y ago
    This is comically irrational
ryukoposting 3y ago
The teacher has a cell phone. Even if the teacher doesn't have a cell phone, there's yet another system in place: a telephone on the teacher's desk. The article already talks about why the "what if" argument doesn't work. Uncoordinated responses triggered by direct child-to-parent interaction are inefficient and counterproductive to a coordinated response.
- wnevets 3y ago
  > The teacher has a cell phone. Even if the teacher doesn't have a cell phone, there's yet another system in place: a telephone on the teacher's desk. The teacher is going to call the cops and then what? We get to watch the cops wait outside for a hour while kids are being murdered[1] ? If you wanna depend on the cops to save your child that is your business but you don't get to make that choice for me. [1] https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/uvalde-cops-waited-77-minutes-to-try-entering-classrooms-during-shooting/ https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/uvalde-cops-waited-77-minutes-...

anotherhue 3y ago

https://archive.is/frnOK https://archive.is/frnOK

whammykiss 3y ago
[dead]

kgwxd 3y ago

Meh, I've got kids in school, it's not really that bad. The school systems getting worse every year is way more important to fix.

all_these_years 3y ago

https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/phone-free-schools https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/phone-free-schools

Apreche 3y ago

Maybe instead it is the school that should change and adapt to a world where everyone is assumed to have a phone.

jhanschoo 3y ago
The article outlines a "change and adaptation to a world where everyone is assumed to have a phone". Do you have a superior alternative change and adaptation that resolves the issues outlined by the article?
joenot443 3y ago
We live in a world where adult temptations like cigarettes, guns, alcohol, and sex are rightfully not allowed at school. There's hardly a bodega in New York where you can't buy beer or cigarettes, yet I think schools (generally) do a good job of keeping them away from kids during the day. These days, more and more do I perceive internet-connected smartphones as an adult temptation which children needn't be exposed to. Yes, they live in a world where most people have phones. They also live in a world where most people drink! It will take some time and it will be uncomfortable, but I'm of the opinion that a slow, society-wide shift away from all-day children's device usage is what's needed to stop the bleeding.
- ryanmercer 3y ago
  >, yet I think schools (generally) do a good job of keeping them away from kids during the day. When I was in high school 99-03 you couldn't go into the bathroom without seeing someone smoking a cigarette or a joint, I even had a teacher that would let you have a restroom pass under the condition he reserved the right to smell you (at a reasonable distance) when you returned to make sure you didn't smoke. Now kids try to sneak vapes in class (my wife is a high school teacher) and at a school she taught at before we got married they had a student OD on fentanyl that someone had laced his vape cartridge with. When I was in high school you'd have kids on MDMA in class too with some regularity. A friend that is also a teacher, about 7-8 years ago, had (presumably) a student dose her Starbucks sitting on her desk with a roofie which required her being in the hospital for 2 days. Schools aren't doing a good job of anything in that regard. Even prisons can't keep drugs out and they have strip and cavity searches.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rhaway84773 3y ago

Is there any argument that phones are a good thing for kids to have in school? There are a lot of things children are not allowed in school. Why are phones, which at best have little to no benefit, and at worst may impede learning, cause depression, cause bullying that follows the child all the way back home from the playground, cause social stratification, etc allowed until we have a better idea of their impact?

david38 3y ago
I can think of at least one. Bullying on buses has dropped significantly in many places because people can now browse the internet instead of tormenting weaker students to kill boredom?
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  I can think of a better solution: bring proper discipline back to schools.
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  Reduced engagement with the world and other kids around them is a pretty sharp price to pay for less bullying. We really should do better.
  - Nasrudith 3y ago
    Spoken like one who has never been bullied. "Engagement" is the last thing the victim wants for a damned good reason.
    - Llamamoe 3y ago
      I have been. I just find the prospect of a world where humans barely interact with each other and are even closer to universally lonely and even less engaged with real life than right now to be extremely, extremely concerning. There's data to suggest that mobile phone use and social media in particular are responsible for vastly higher levels of mental illness than any bullying has ever been. Cutting humans off from reality is an extremely bad solution to bullying. We can and need to do better.

pcj-github 3y ago

I would really like to see level four and five implemented at all public schools.

DoreenMichele 3y ago

Ah, Jonathan Haidt who has had two recent articles on HN -- that I've seen -- insisting he should be allowed to win this argument with less evidence than a criminal trial. Here's one of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35948332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35948332 And the footer of this paywalled piece indicates he has a book coming out in 2024 that is probably about exactly this same topic. I can't read most of this article, but I can see the promo for his next book. #Priorities

balderdash 3y ago

“They said too many parents would be upset if they could not reach their children during the school day.” This just seems so foreign to me. I could probably count on one hand the number of times my parents needed to get ahold of me during the school day.

quartesixte 3y ago
This is the euphemistic way of saying “Parents need to be able to call their kids in the event of a school shooting”.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  There's much better ways to solve that problem than "being able to call your kids in the event of".
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  Given that I notice the same phenomenon in Sweden where school shootings are rarer than hen's teeth I do not think that this is true. Parents - or maybe I should say 'mothers' - want to be able to get hold of their offspring to tell them to come home in time/tell them to water the horses when they walk by the field/tell them they will collect them at the station/etc. The assumption that people are supposed to be reachable wherever they are really has permeated through society. I for one am glad that I was not assumed to be reachable when I cycled to and from school, paddled my inflatable boat over the river to the next village at 12yo, cycled through the Netherlands at 15yo and more. Not only did this add to the sense of freedom - being all by myself in that boat or cycling past places unknown to me without the risk of that stupid phone starting to blare at any moment - but it also helped in 'growing up' since I had to make decisions on my own without being able to call for help and advice at any moment. I was free, children nowadays are tethered - the opposite of what The Waterboys sing about in This is the Sea [1]: once you were tethered now you are free that was the river this is the sea This has turned into: now they are tethered, once they were free If you have children - I do - allow them the freedom you had yourself or the freedom you would have liked to have. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx--j1F5Ppg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx--j1F5Ppg

sharts 3y ago

just put kids in apple vision pro headsets 24/7.

dusted 3y ago

Phones, Tablets, Laptops, TVs.

ryanmercer 3y ago

Yeah, good luck with that. My wife is a high school teacher, parents get livid if you confiscate their kids phone for even a single period citing "I need to be able to reach him/her!"

taylodl 3y ago

This is a popular narrative - phones are causing anxiety and depression in kids, especially girls. Sounds great, but there's only one problem. I'm pretty sure it's false. My daughter had mental health issues that manifested itself in late high school. That's been over a decade ago. Neither her, her friends, or the overwhelming majority of her peer group at the time had smartphones. They were just too new and too expensive for kids. Her group therapy was comprised of almost all girls (so many that one girl didn't even realize it was a co-ed group therapy, the single guy had already graduated before she started therapy). In talking with the therapists they mentioned they were seeing a sharp rise in the number of girls with mental health issues. Any guesses as to what the didn't blame? Smartphones. They practically didn't exist at the time. Tablets practically didn't exist at the time. Most households at the time still only had one computer and kids weren't typically allowed to use it for long periods of time. Yet the mental health crises of teenage girls was already in full swing. I've never heard anyone explain why this crises began before smartphones, tablets, and laptops became as ubiquitous as they are today. Unfortunately, what you hear in group therapy you're not allowed to repeat, but I can tell you the underlying problem is far more sinister than some stupid smartphone.

lisasays 3y ago
You need to give us some idea of what the "real" problem is, then. Otherwise we have nothing to go on here.
- taylodl 3y ago
  Performance stress. The schools are stressing college to the kids. Living in a more affluent neighborhood they're afraid if they don't go to college then they'll be taking a considerable hit to their standard of living. Apparently they don't mention it every so often. I'm probably over-exaggerating a bit but they're pounding college! college! college! into these kids' heads every single period of every single day. Making things worse, they can't get a reprieve in sports. If you've been involved in kids sports you know there's a huge push for kids to use sports to get a college scholarship. Even if they're not trying to get a scholarship they're using it to build their college resumé. Gotta get those extracurricular activities in! In fact that's how all extracurricular activities are. All the joy has been sucked out. It's college! college! college! Become president of the club - looks good on the college resumé! Make sure you have the right variety of activities for your resumé! I unwittingly signed my kids up for this nightmare. When I signed them up for sports I had no expectation they'd be star athletes - I just knew from my experience growing up playing team sports really helped me learn to work with others. The other activities were to engage the mind. Do things outside of school for both your mind and body. I knew the crazies were there, but I didn't realize the effect they were having. Now it's becoming clearer what's happened. The girls and boys have responded to the stress in two different ways. The boys are dropping out. You see article after article trying to explain why boys aren't going to school, not getting jobs, and so forth. They've dropped out. On the other hand, girls have freaked out. They've become an anxiety-ridden mess. Meanwhile everybody is trying to figure out why the boys are becoming deadbeats and the girls are depressed. They blame video games, they blame phones. They blame everything but where the fault actually lies: stress. The more interesting question then is why do today's kids feel the stress more than the kids from previous generations? I have ideas but this answer is already too long.

ghusto 3y ago

I'm so happy to see the majority of responses here being in support of this argument. Parent's get upset when you point this out, because admitting to yourself that you damaged your child is the most painful thing in the world. To those parents; it doesn't make you a bad person; the sooner you take it on the chin, the sooner you can do the (really hard work) of healing your child.