23 ms·

NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again

433 points by hrldcpr 11mo ago

everdrive 11mo ago
Hopefully society continues to develop healthy norms with regard to this sort of technology. Collectively it's taken us a while, but I think people generally are starting to get the picture. Smartphones are bad in a wide variety of ways, but even when people miss some of the nuance I think we can make progress regarding the minimization of their usage.
- causal 11mo ago
  Hopefully as a society we can also learn the lesson that tech companies cannot be trusted to deliver what's best for us.
  - chronciger 11mo ago
    > Hopefully as a society we can also learn the lesson that tech companies cannot be trusted to deliver what's best for us. If society were ignorant, then it’s forgivable. But society is not ignorant. We know tech companies deliver things bad for us (lies and manipulation). And we knowingly choose it, over the good (truth).
  - 9rx 11mo ago
    Why would anyone expect them to deliver what is best for us when the purpose of a company is to deliver what others want?
    - array_key_first 11mo ago
      Because social media sites like Facebook literally said they're going to make the world better, by connecting more people and empowering more ideas. It was all bullshit of course, but people did believe it, myself included. Just 15 years ago the outlook of social media was much more optimistic.
      - 9rx 11mo ago
        > Just 15 years ago the outlook of social media was much more optimistic. Those who forget Usenet are doomed to repeat it, I suppose. > It was all bullshit of course Or, more likely, what was dreamed of ended up being incorrect. Like we learn every time we try social media, people don't actually want to be social online. That takes work and the vast majority of people don't want to spend their free time doing work. They want to sit back, relax, and be entertained by the professionals. As before, businesses can only survive if they give others exactly what they want, which doesn't necessarily overlap with what is good for them. A fast food burger isn't good for you, but it is a good business to be in because it is something many people want. Arguably small communities like HN with exceptionally motivated people can make it work to some extent, but that is not something that captures the masses. It's not coincidence that those who tried to make a go of social media ~15 years ago have all turned into what are little more than TV channels with a small mix of newspaper instead. That is where the want is actually found at the moment. Social media didn't work in the 1980s, the 2010s, and it won't work in the 2080s either. It's is not something that appeals to humans (generally speaking).
        RyanHamilton 11mo ago
        Can you provide an example of where facebook tried to do what most people would consider good that also required any >1% kind of sacrifice or risk on their part? My impression is their moto was win at any cost and ask forgiveness later (not because we mean that either but because it will reduce the legal penalties and make us look like normal humans.) In some ways watching Mark reminds me of the infamous cigarette cartel testifying.
        9rx 11mo ago
        > Can you provide an example of where facebook tried to do what most people would consider good They gave the social media thing an honest try for a short period of time. And it even came with a lot of fanfare initially as people used it as the "internet's telephone book" to catch up with those they lost touch with. But once initial pleasantries were exchanged, people soon realized why they lost touch in the first place, and most everyone started to see that continually posting pictures of their cat is a stupid use of time. And so, Facebook and the like recognized that nobody truly wanted social media, gave up on the idea, and quickly pivoted into something else entirely. Social media is a great idea in some kind of theoretical way — I can see why you bought into the idea — but you can't run a business on great theoretical ideas. You can't even run a distributed public service without profit motive on great theoretical ideas, as demonstrated by Usenet. You have to actually serve what people actually want, which isn't necessarily (perhaps not even often) what is good for them.
  - rc5150 11mo ago
    This is the same logic that has parents buying games like GTA for their prepubescent children and being dumbfounded that the kids are exposed to violent images. While we can definitely point the blame at tech companies that manipulate algorithms, engage in dark patterns, etc, it's ultimately up to the consumer to consume judiciously and moderate their own well being. Nobody ever asked Apple or Google to "deliver what's best" for society. What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults.
    - mrguyorama 11mo ago
      America has an entire political party who runs a party line that unregulated businesses will naturally do what's "best" because of "free market mumble mumble". They even sometimes outright insist that "best" in that context means "best for humans and society", and that any attempt to constrain that will be Communism and cause all of society to collapse. >What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults. That same party insists that you should be able to choose to enroll your child in a school that does nothing but teach weird christian doctrines, and outright lies like "Evolution is controversial" or "Continental drift is not proven" or "The USA is a Christian country". They demonstrably want to be able to direct my tax dollars to these institutions, based on their choice. Everyone should spend time checking out what the tens of millions of self reported fundamentalist "Christian" americans pay money for. There is an entire alternative media economy and it is horrifying. It exists to reinforce tons of outright false and delusional narratives, like an imagined persecution complex against christians. If you think those tens of millions of Americans don't have power or sway in this country, they are literally the reason why visa and mastercard keep shutting down porn businesses (the higher fraud claim is just false and probably a lie, ask me how I know!) and the current House majority leader is their guy, as well as Trump's previous VP, as well as maybe technically JD Vance, as well as like Joe Rogan, who insists that AI is the second coming of christ because it doesn't have a mother, just like christ. Not joking, that is a real thing that Joe Rogan has made millions of dollars saying to over 20 million people. Oh, and at least one Supreme Court Justice.
      - justinclift 11mo ago
- thinkingtoilet 11mo ago
  Here in MA there is a 'bell to bell' phone ban bill in the works. I'm very happy we're letting kids be kids again. There is no need for a phone during the school day.
  - 0_____0 11mo ago
    I'm expecting a kiddo this winter and my use of devices+my likely future kid's relationship with tech has really been on my mind. The fact that people are thinking through this and actually working on it puts me slightly more at ease.
    - eitally 11mo ago
      You probably won't have much to worry about until you have to decide whether screen time for your kid (at age 3-4) is a reasonable trade-off for you and your partner to have peaceful time to yourselves. Then it'll rear it's head again, after lulling you into complacency, when the kid is middle school age and all their friends have smartphones. Then you have to decide whether the convenience factor (for you) of your kid having a device is worth the trade-off of... them having a device. Fwiw, my older two are 14 & 16 and we still use device control software on their phones and laptops. The younger of the two complains a bit periodically but the older one just accepts that it's the way it is and gets on with his life [most of the time]. I personally advise you not to let your young kid get into e-gaming. Things like Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft are gateways to increased device usage, and the benefits are (again, imho) not remotely worth it nor irreplaceable by much healthier alternatives. Fun tidbit: my 8yo has a Kindle Fire and we've let her have Netflix & Disney+ installed on it. She also uses the Kindle & Libby apps to read voraciously, and Khan Academy for math. When she watches streaming media, though, she frequently watches it on mute with subtitles. That shocked me to see, and I asked her about it. She's 100% cool with that and appreciate the "privacy" of being able to watch things without other people meddling in her business. Shrug.
      - Yeul 11mo ago
        Parents have always wanted time for themselves. There are Americans alive today who will tell you that they used to play outside from dusk to dawn and only saw their parents at dinner.
- amelius 11mo ago
  Some people will slap a label like "liberal" on "using my smartphone whenever the hell I want". And then people will think that's how it should be.
  - rootusrootus 11mo ago
    An electronic version of coal rolling. "You can't tell me this is unhealthy, and I'm going to prove it!"
    - StarGrit 11mo ago
      People "roll coal" it because it is kinda amusing to do it, and it is a middle finger towards people they perceive to be preachy. I accidentally "rolled coal" in my 90s Landrover because I was in totally the wrong gear going up a steep hill. It was amusing in the way of "oh shit! I kinda just blew a load of black smoke in the driver face behind me". Obviously, I don't do this deliberately.
      - eesmith 11mo ago
        Yes, people do all sorts of nasty and cruel things because they think it's kinda amusing. That doesn't justify the behavior. The act of riding a bicycle in and of itself is not "preachy". That happens. "six bicyclists training for a road race were run over by a 16-year-old who was rolling coal", at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal . Rolling coal nearly always implies deliberate intent, not coincidental timing. Some examples from state laws listed at that same Wikipedia page: "knowing release of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions", "with the intent", "may not knowingly or intentionally cause", "intentionally release significant quantities of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions"
        StarGrit 11mo ago
        Your reply is exactly the preachy response that causes people to be defiant and resentful. > Yes, people do all sorts of nasty and cruel things because they think it's kinda amusing. That doesn't justify the behavior. Blowing a bit of soot up in the air isn't in itself cruel. It is just a bit naughty. Now doing it in someone's face like I've seen in videos deliberately is not very nice and can be dangerous. I think it should go without saying that I don't condone anti-social and dangerous behaviour. > The act of riding a bicycle in and of itself is not "preachy". That happens. "six bicyclists training for a road race were run over by a 16-year-old who was rolling coal", at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal . Who said anything about riding a bicycle is preachy? BTW, I am a cyclist that spent 3 months out of work because of a hit and run accident that left me with a permanent weakness in my right shoulder as a result. The reason I don't spend a lot of time with other cyclists, is because everything started to become a political issue against drivers, a lot of my fellow cyclists are preachy. I heard people saying that owning a pet was akin to slavery and other such nonsense. As someone that enjoys both driving and cycling, it left a bad taste in my mouth. BTW, In the story he caused a collision while rolling coal. The issue was dangerous driving. Not blowing some soot up into the air itself. > Rolling coal nearly always implies deliberate intent, not coincidental timing. In my case it was, it was because I was stuck in the wrong gear. My vehicle is currently in a garage being repaired for that very issue now (clutch is worn). It was funny in the sense of "OMG that is embarassing".
causal 11mo ago
It makes me so sad that it's possible for technology to steal the need to talk and play, even from our youth. If you have little kids you know how frantically they NEED to yap and play. I hold such horror for anything that would sap such life away.
- AndrewDucker 11mo ago
  It varies a lot. My kids will run around and play given the opportunity, but when they arrive home at 6pm from after-school club, completely exhausted, I think it's fair that they get to collapse in front of a screen for a bit.
  - IAmBroom 11mo ago
    For my generation (just post-Boomer), it was the TV. For my parents, it was the radio. For their parents, reading out loud for everyone to enjoy ("Mr. Dickens has published another episode of The Pickwick Papers!"), or playing instruments.
    - AndrewDucker 11mo ago
      Yup. I'm Gen X (1972), and I'd read a book, watch TV, or (once we hit the mid-80s) I had a home computer.
      - technothrasher 11mo ago
        I spent much of my free childhood hours from about 1976 to 1988 in front of a computer screen. But I was certainly not in the mainstream.
        AndrewDucker 11mo ago
        I don't think the mainstream people end up on HN.
        11mo ago
cramcgrab 11mo ago
No more kids cameras in the classroom
- leptons 11mo ago
  This does nothing to ban cameras. The fact that a smartphone has a camera doesn't mean cameras are banned. You can still bring a standalone camera to school.
  - 1718627440 11mo ago
    Which would cause a lot of questions if you pull it out in the classroom.
    - leptons 11mo ago
      Maybe in a private school, but a public school should be considered public, making it perfectly legal to film in a classroom thanks to the first amendment.
      - 1718627440 11mo ago
        What? Public means publicly funded, not that the students need to live like they are in public on the streets. A school should still be a safe space, how can children be allowed to develop and be educated? At least were I am coming from, you can also not just film random adults on the street.
        leptons 11mo ago
        >At least were I am coming from, you can also not just film random adults on the street. If you live in the United States, the first amendment absolutely allows you to film anyone in public. It's a constitutional right. This also applies to publicly funded facilities, like courthouses, libraries, post offices, the DMV, and also public schools - any publicly accessible area, in any facility that is publicly funded. I'm not making this up, it's actually part of the constitution.
bfkwlfkjf 11mo ago
The school president is 17?
- IAmBroom 11mo ago
  Yes, the president of the student-elected body of mostly-powerless "school government."
  - JJMcJ 11mo ago
    The student-elected body is often called the Student Council. Sometimes each grade level will have a class president. Varies from school to school for the details.
    - JJMcJ 11mo ago
      Can't edit so I'll reply: This is in the United States.
- jes5199 11mo ago
  it’s an america thing
  - hrimfaxi 11mo ago
    Other countries don't have prefects? Wikipedia seems to indicate the phenomenon is worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_president https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_president
    - 1718627440 11mo ago
      We wouldn't call such a thing a president, but yes.
- IncreasePosts 11mo ago
  That's just an elected student position that usually interfaces with the school leadership about student issues - it isn't the vice principal/principal/superintendent that run the school(s)
jollyllama 11mo ago
I don't think smartphones should be allowed in schools but as someone who was dumbfounded by the lunchtime cacophony of my peers, I wouldn't lead with that as a triumph.
- browningstreet 11mo ago
  Those of us who hate the noise of boisterous social conversation are the outliers, but it is a sign of their healthy social environment. I personally was always able to find a quiet spot. My early dinner, empty restaurant habit is the adult persistence of my teenage preferences, and I don't expect my personal tolerance to be their norm.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- cmxch 11mo ago
  Tech will prevail on the long term, even with these misguided bans.
  - 1718627440 11mo ago
    The smartphone OSs hide all that "tech". They are not more educational (by themselves) than interactive advertisement streams.
- Loughla 11mo ago
  The problem, when it comes to smartphone bans, isn't the kids, believe it or not. My experience (consulting with multiple k-12 institutions) is that it's the parents. If the parents can't be in CONSTANT contact with their kids, it's a problem. People are scared of everything all the time. It's not great.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  Schools should provide quiet spaces for kids who don't want noise during lunch. The library should always be open during lunch hours. There should always be an outdoor space for those who want it (unless there is lightening - I assuming you know how to dress for any other weather). Or we can go the opposite way: for kids who want to be loud during lunch there should be a place for them to do that. Wanting to be loud it too common to ignore, and it isn't like perfume/peanuts/... where we have to force a policy for a minority.
sidewndr46 11mo ago
This is really funny for me to read because as a kid we were prohibited from having telecommunications devices while at school entirely. We were also prohibited from speaking during lunchtime. Our lunch was most definitely not loud.
- throwup238 11mo ago
  You can always tell a Milford man.
- jabroni_salad 11mo ago
  When I was in elementary school one of the teachers would hold a decibel meter and subtract minutes off of recess if we got above a whispered conversation.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bluGill 11mo ago
    In class that is good. However at lunch kids should be talking to other kids. I know many teachers/schools are control freaks and so they would do such things, but it was always evil.
    - 1718627440 11mo ago
      Have you never been to a room full of people/children? If there aren't these 'control freaks' in the room, then it gets louder and louder until to the limit where nobody can understand anything while all are shouting. It's surprisingly fast, about ~2 minutes to the maximum/stable loudness. This 'control freaks' are the requirement to allow children to have a conversation.
      - bluGill 11mo ago
        in small doses, but I've seen them go overboard to the point where we are better off without.
tootie 11mo ago
So I have eye witness accounts of this lunchroom saying that's not true. The lunchroom was deafeningly loud before the ban. This school is also a magnet school with only high-performing kids who did not suffer from distraction problems and who actively made use of phones during class for classwork.
- donohoe 11mo ago
  I have a kid in a non-magnet HS and one in a magnet HS (in NYC). This article isn't off-the-mark but I would say there will always be variations by school.
- schuyler2d 11mo ago
  All my teacher friends (before this article) had joyously reported on lunch rooms being loud again (and even fights and lol, sex) happening.... But in a good way. If kids aren't getting into some trouble then they're not interacting and learning about society and human nature enough
bemmu 11mo ago
Senior Raya Osagie, 16, said she has to “think more in class” because she used to Google answers or use artificial intelligence. “Now when we get computers, I actually have to [do] deep research instead of going straight to AI,” she said. This kind of blew my mind a bit, as I had always imagined AI being used to do homework, hadn't occurred to me it could be used during a class as well.
- ugh123 11mo ago
  That just sounds like lazy teacher discipline in class. Decades ago we couldn't even use calculators on some tests, but now (or up until recently) they could practically have a computer in their hands all class?
  - phainopepla2 11mo ago
    Allowing kids to have their phones in class, even if they weren't allowed to use them, was setting teachers up for failure. It's easy to call them lazy, but if you've ever tried to police the phone use of a bunch of screen-addicted adolescents you would understand. The calculator comparison is not a good one.
  - malnourish 11mo ago
    I encourage you to seek first-hand accounts of what teaching in a contemporary public school classroom is like. Teacher discipline can account for so much.
  - zormino 11mo ago
    When I was in university, I had a math teacher that brought extra chalk to class everyday because if he saw you on your phone, he'd snap a piece off and throw it at you pretty damn hard. Maybe that wouldn't exactly work in a high school but damn if Dr Murphy didn't have me paying attention in that class.
    - bongodongobob 11mo ago
      It's "literal violence" now and you'd get sued and lose your job.
kevinfiol 11mo ago
As a millennial, the concept of public school lunch not being loud is weird to me! I always remember the constant chatter of school lunch. Definitely had my share of hearty shared laughs, and heated conversations during lunchtime.
- DavidPeiffer 11mo ago
  I graduated in 2011. Smart phones were rare, but dumb phones were quite common. The lunch room was quite loud. To keep people from being in their own world on their phones too much, my lunch table had a rule that if you laugh out loud at something on your phone, you had to share it with the table. It was quite effective, though somewhat embarrassing from time to time.
  - mc3301 11mo ago
    In the early 2000s, when everyone had a phone but no smart phones, we had this "thing" at the college bar: Sitting around the table with some beers and friends, everyone put their phones in the center of the table. First one to touch their phone had to buy the next round of drinks. It was effective. I've tried similar recently, but people are less enthusiastic about the idea.
havblue 11mo ago
I'm guessing that teachers never wanted smartphones in class in the first place and that this was just about pushing back against the helicopter parents.
- bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  Kids have phones for "safety" reasons. It's pretty irrational, but hard to push back against without help from on high.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    The "Safety" excuse is bullshit. What safety problem could exist in a school that a child with a cell phone can solve? Fire? School administrators will call the fire department. Intruder? School administrators will call the police. School shooter? Same. There's nothing that a child with a cell phone will fix.
    - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
      Yeah, I think people are downvoting me because they don't realize I meant what you're saying when I called it irrational.
    - quietbritishjim 11mo ago
      It probably is bullshit, but everything you've written is a straw man. A phone is useful for the kid on their journey to or from school, which by secondary level I would hope is on their own. Even just, "I'm going to Steve's, I'll be late for dinner". But it doesn't need to be a smartphone for that, and it doesn't need to be out during school hours.
- wavemode 11mo ago
  I'm astounded that this has become a thing. My school had a zero-tolerance "if I see it, I confiscate it" phone policy. And your parent had to come retrieve it. There are kids who lost their phones because it accidentally fell out of a pocket lol
- 11mo ago
sp4cec0wb0y 11mo ago
It is interesting to see how rapidly social fabrics deteriorated when smartphones came around. I was in highschool from 2014-2018, and for most of the years, I could remember everyone socializing during lunch, break times, and even in the classroom. Which is odd because we had access to smartphones, airpods, and laptops. Perhaps it was because we spent the majority of our lives without them still? Seems to have gotten a lot worse since then.
- chis 11mo ago
  That's an interesting data point. I think covid did a lot of damage too. Kids spending formative years stuck in their room texting just didn't get the chance to build basic social skills and habits. But it's hard to separate out that effect from just earlier and earlier exposure to modern phones. The class of 2018 was ~10 when the iphone 4 came out. And even that wasn't nearly as addicting as modern phones - it was tiny, and didn't have vertical scrolling video (except for Vine, briefly).
  - NoPicklez 11mo ago
    It's also difficult to build social skills if your peers around you are stuck looking down at their phones as opposed to looking at those around them. If you're wanting to meet new people and chat with new people but a large chunk of them are sitting on their phones it makes it more difficult.
- squigz 11mo ago
  Smartphones have been around much longer than before 2014. My takeaway from this is that people just always think it's worse than what they went through.
  - tstrimple 11mo ago
    There is certainly an unhealthy dose of "kids these days" bullshit that inevitably propagates literally every single generation. This is especially disappointing on a forum for "hackers" though. I wouldn't be the person I am today without unrestricted internet access as a teen. My parents wanted me in their ignorant little conservative box not knowing or understanding anything outside of it. Their ignorance exceeded mine, so I was able to circumvent them by the very means many "hacker" news participants would love to see locked down and eliminated. I can't help but think of them as simple and pathetic as my parents were trying to strictly control what I could learn. They are the very definition of an anti-hacker culturally.
danlugo92 11mo ago
Smartphones are this century's cigarrettes.
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
It’s fascinating to see a practice that was previously limited to Silicon Valley executives become first a national class signifier and now go mainstream. We haven’t extensively studied how social media and smartphones affect a kid’s brain. It’s becoming abundantly clear the former is inappropriate for kids and adolescents. It’s emerging that the latter is at least destructive for non-adolescent children.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
Der_Einzige 11mo ago
A whole lot of people who got to their great tech jobs by commoditizing their screen addictions (I.e a significant amount of this very website) are massively harmed by these policies. I can’t believe that the folks here nearly universally like this. We should celebrate screen addiction and not fight it.
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  I learned to use a computer, by doing things that are possible air-gapped. Using a shell, etc. I did not by scrolling through social media, while all my peers treat computers like magic and lack basic knowledge, because they only know how to scroll through apps. Even today I learn and produce the most when the network is down.
gostsamo 11mo ago
The ban will be revoked after Meta sues for business damages caused by unlawful government interference with their customer acquisition operations. /s
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  We need to sue Meta (et al.) for social damage caused by unlawful acquisition of addicts from the public education system. (My personal opinion)
leptons 11mo ago
FOOD FIGHT!!
legel 11mo ago
All of this read and written on a smartphone. Reversion to the past is not preparation for the future.
chis 11mo ago
It's so insane that they let things go this far. It could have been immediately obvious to those involved that cell phones in class would have immensely negative effects. I mean they talk about a lunch room "quiet enough to hear a pin drop"?? I think I learned half my basic social skills from lunch rooms in school. That time period is probably more important than any of the classes themselves.
- HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
  > 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 of passage, and lunch rooms are as much a part of that as any other space. If everyone was so absorbed in their phones, that may have been a benefit for social harmony and escaping real-life bullying and shaming.
  - SR2Z 11mo ago
    Asociality is not the same thing as social harmony. It's not better for children if their shithead peers are replaced with smartphones. The unfortunate truth is that cliquey behavior and bullying are some of things that children have to be exposed to - you won't come out of school as a fully-capable human being unless you've spent the last several years being exposed to a ton of different adult emotions.
    - HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
      That high school is necessarily a place of cliquey behavior and bullying, and that kids may even benefit from it, is not a universal thing. In some countries, viewers of imported American TV shows are baffled by that depiction of high school, because in their high schools there aren’t such hard knocks.
      - 11mo ago
m463 11mo ago
title should include "school" like in original article: "NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again"
zkmon 11mo ago
Why should articles like these always start with some fictional story like a novel? The actual news is buried somewhere half-way after the throw-away story.
- StarGrit 11mo ago
  It is following a magazine style. This is partly to elicit an emotional reaction and partly I suspect because the copy writer is bored and wishes they were writing novels instead.
  - throwaway290 11mo ago
    if it's a proper news source they (and every other paper) already reported it who knows how many times. "city is about to ban phones in schools" "city is banning phones in schools" "the phones in schools were banned". everybody who needs to know already knows This is not intended to be a news piece. It's a story. But whoever is in charge of CMS messed up categories. It should not be labeled news
    - StarGrit 11mo ago
      It is an annoying writing style that is done on a lot of sites in both news articles and "stories" as you call them.
      - throwaway290 11mo ago
        annoying? if you want Crime and Punishment to be "guy killed a grandma" that's your thing but believe me this style is not annoying to many people aside from vocal minority
        StarGrit 11mo ago
        Firstly, I love the straw-man. I am fine with length and the more story driven approach if it is warranted. More often than not I do not believe it is warranted. Secondly, I am allowed (whether you like it or not) to complain about something if I don't like it. I find this style annoying and I often believe it is written in a way to manipulate people, which I have a distaste for. Thirdly, whether I am in a vocal minority or not doesn't mean that vocal minority is incorrect in its criticism. A lot of sites have adopted this style even more more "news" style articles.
rs186 11mo ago
Is it just me who finds it annoying that some people like using the pattern "make something <adjective> again"? Like, you don't have any other choice?
duderific 11mo ago
> In the cafeteria, Ryan Tripathi, 16, was paging through “Lord of the Flies,” which he said is slow-going. “I'm just not used to reading,” he said. “I’m usually on my phone.” Damn, that hits pretty hard.
- Retr0id 11mo ago
  Understandable, I never finished Lord of the Flies despite not having a smartphone at the time.
  - theshrike79 11mo ago
    I think it's a prerequisite for a book to become required reading in schools to be boring as shit first :)
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - mexicocitinluez 11mo ago
      I couldn't disagree more. And it was the one thing that surprised me every time we cracked open a new book. "All Quiet on the Western Front" sounded terrible to a 14 year old me, but after starting it, I couldn't put it down. Same with Lord of the Flies. Fahrenheit 451. The Giver. I loved Animal Farm. And the Great Gatsby (though I get people not liking this one). The Outsiders was good. The Old man and the Sea was pretty boring I'll admit. Who thinks To Kill a Mockingbird is boring as shit?
      - goda90 11mo ago
        I read quite a bit when I was in school, but I honestly don't remember a direct assigned book I actually liked. There were times we got to choose what we were reading for school and in those cases I read some that stuck with me like "1984".
      - theshrike79 11mo ago
ForgetItJake 11mo ago
Why is it that Hacker News is overwhelmingly liberal on most issues but when it comes to teenagers/children incredibly authoritarian and big government?
- mordae 11mo ago
  Because, like most of the population in the West, HN readers are not actually liberals but rather centrists, which means they lean roughly equally conservative, liberal and socialist on the political triangle - on average. Sometimes you have to trade personal liberties (makes liberals sad) and/or privileges (makes conservatives sad) to obtain better societal outcomes, i.e. mandatory vaccination or minimum wage. Those are socialist policies. And since the major media and thus our shared social space is heavily anti-socialist (qui bono?), everyone is closeted and tries extremely hard to justify socialist policies as liberalism, which is not shunned. Hence people in the US now perceive them as closer or even "allied".
- AngryData 11mo ago
  Because many people only support freedoms for themselves, the second someone else wants to do things different than they would they get angry because they don't understand why anyone would think differently than them. Also they don't ever have to worry about becoming young again so they literally never feel the consequences of their ideals and actions against kids. They feel safe in completely dismissing concerns and actual reality because they are so far removed from it and can cling to whatever imaginary view of the youthful world they made up.
NoPicklez 11mo ago
Crazy, I went to boarding school 2009-2011 and our dinner hall was always loud with talking and laughter. However sometimes it would slowly get quieter until the room went silent with everyone looking oddly at each other, then a massive wave of laughter would erupt. Some weird phenomenon. I also remember downloading Froggy jump on my iPhone and playing it with friends, but you certainly put your phone away more than you do now. You also had it taken off of you if you were on it when you shouldn't have been. If my parents found out they took my phone off of me, they'd probably crack it at me because I wasn't paying attention. I get the feeling many parents might just get angry at the teacher rather than their child.
skeptrune 11mo ago
Just get the standardized test scores you need and call it a day. I find this to be very performative from a student perspective.
getnormality 11mo ago
The impact of phones on teen social life seems to be still controversial in academic circles. I think it would be a lot less controversial if everyone knew the lunchroom had fallen silent because everyone was scrolling, and became loud again when they banned the phones.
thorin 11mo ago
AFAIK know phones are banned in all secondary school (and primary school) from the start till the end of the school day. My daughter just started secondary school and one kid was trying to text her mum to add credit to her lunch money account in the first week and got a one hour detention for getting her phone out during school. This was in the canteen, not in a lesson. Bit harsh but seemed to get the message across. Ironically most homework is done by the kids on their phones so when I tell her to get off her phone she always has the excuse that she's checking/doing her homework, or looking at her timetable online. [edit] note this is a UK perspective, not sure why this got downvoted
lambdanil 11mo ago
I don't see how a loud lunch break is good in any way
- millerm 11mo ago
  It means your in a large room with a lot of people talking to each other. It's not a fine dining experience where people whisper. It's a social place. The social aspect was taken out of the experience, which is vital to development. The "loud" (meaning, it's not quiet) aspect is not a negative. It's not a "lunch break" for adults to go decompress from the stress at work. If kids want quiet for studying, they can hit their school library, or other places for solitude and tranquility. It's about younger people actually communicating and discussing what is going on in the day, their life, after school, hobbies, interests, relationships, etc.. Imagine going to a playground where there are 100 children. None of them are making a sound. That would be a scary sign. You should hear kids laughing, screaming, crying... experiencing social engagement. People are being isolated from each other because they are becoming "addicted" to screens and short media formats. We are training our brains for instant gratification, but there is no retention or learning going on. Younger people aren't learning how to communicate directly with others. Without these engagements we hobble our development of things like empathy. How to control our emotions with others. It's damaging for all. That's my take.
zahma 11mo ago
I’d like to know what happens to cell phone use after school lets out. Are these students more likely to spend the rest of the day online? I could also see it going the other way. And if that’s the case, Cardozo is one of the first cell rehabs for students. Terrific to see!
mcprwklzpq 11mo ago
> Enakshi Barua, 14, said she’s also opposed to the ban, on principle. Barua said. "I feel like the trust isn’t there between the students and teachers." > staff members are collecting around 30 contraband phones a day > There’s a strike system with escalating punishments Does not sound good.
josefresco 11mo ago
Anecdotally burner phones are already being discussed and presumably used. They lock up your primary phone, and you sneakily use your burner phone which if confiscated can be used again or easily replaced/abandoned.

433 points by hrldcpr 11mo ago

Hopefully society continues to develop healthy norms with regard to this sort of technology. Collectively it's taken us a while, but I think people generally are starting to get the picture. Smartphones are bad in a wide variety of ways, but even when people miss some of the nuance I think we can make progress regarding the minimization of their usage.

causal 11mo ago
Hopefully as a society we can also learn the lesson that tech companies cannot be trusted to deliver what's best for us.
- chronciger 11mo ago
  > Hopefully as a society we can also learn the lesson that tech companies cannot be trusted to deliver what's best for us. If society were ignorant, then it’s forgivable. But society is not ignorant. We know tech companies deliver things bad for us (lies and manipulation). And we knowingly choose it, over the good (truth).
- 9rx 11mo ago
  Why would anyone expect them to deliver what is best for us when the purpose of a company is to deliver what others want?
  - array_key_first 11mo ago
    Because social media sites like Facebook literally said they're going to make the world better, by connecting more people and empowering more ideas. It was all bullshit of course, but people did believe it, myself included. Just 15 years ago the outlook of social media was much more optimistic.
    - 9rx 11mo ago
      > Just 15 years ago the outlook of social media was much more optimistic. Those who forget Usenet are doomed to repeat it, I suppose. > It was all bullshit of course Or, more likely, what was dreamed of ended up being incorrect. Like we learn every time we try social media, people don't actually want to be social online. That takes work and the vast majority of people don't want to spend their free time doing work. They want to sit back, relax, and be entertained by the professionals. As before, businesses can only survive if they give others exactly what they want, which doesn't necessarily overlap with what is good for them. A fast food burger isn't good for you, but it is a good business to be in because it is something many people want. Arguably small communities like HN with exceptionally motivated people can make it work to some extent, but that is not something that captures the masses. It's not coincidence that those who tried to make a go of social media ~15 years ago have all turned into what are little more than TV channels with a small mix of newspaper instead. That is where the want is actually found at the moment. Social media didn't work in the 1980s, the 2010s, and it won't work in the 2080s either. It's is not something that appeals to humans (generally speaking).
      - RyanHamilton 11mo ago
        Can you provide an example of where facebook tried to do what most people would consider good that also required any >1% kind of sacrifice or risk on their part? My impression is their moto was win at any cost and ask forgiveness later (not because we mean that either but because it will reduce the legal penalties and make us look like normal humans.) In some ways watching Mark reminds me of the infamous cigarette cartel testifying.
        9rx 11mo ago
        > Can you provide an example of where facebook tried to do what most people would consider good They gave the social media thing an honest try for a short period of time. And it even came with a lot of fanfare initially as people used it as the "internet's telephone book" to catch up with those they lost touch with. But once initial pleasantries were exchanged, people soon realized why they lost touch in the first place, and most everyone started to see that continually posting pictures of their cat is a stupid use of time. And so, Facebook and the like recognized that nobody truly wanted social media, gave up on the idea, and quickly pivoted into something else entirely. Social media is a great idea in some kind of theoretical way — I can see why you bought into the idea — but you can't run a business on great theoretical ideas. You can't even run a distributed public service without profit motive on great theoretical ideas, as demonstrated by Usenet. You have to actually serve what people actually want, which isn't necessarily (perhaps not even often) what is good for them.
- rc5150 11mo ago
  This is the same logic that has parents buying games like GTA for their prepubescent children and being dumbfounded that the kids are exposed to violent images. While we can definitely point the blame at tech companies that manipulate algorithms, engage in dark patterns, etc, it's ultimately up to the consumer to consume judiciously and moderate their own well being. Nobody ever asked Apple or Google to "deliver what's best" for society. What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults.
  - mrguyorama 11mo ago
    America has an entire political party who runs a party line that unregulated businesses will naturally do what's "best" because of "free market mumble mumble". They even sometimes outright insist that "best" in that context means "best for humans and society", and that any attempt to constrain that will be Communism and cause all of society to collapse. >What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults. That same party insists that you should be able to choose to enroll your child in a school that does nothing but teach weird christian doctrines, and outright lies like "Evolution is controversial" or "Continental drift is not proven" or "The USA is a Christian country". They demonstrably want to be able to direct my tax dollars to these institutions, based on their choice. Everyone should spend time checking out what the tens of millions of self reported fundamentalist "Christian" americans pay money for. There is an entire alternative media economy and it is horrifying. It exists to reinforce tons of outright false and delusional narratives, like an imagined persecution complex against christians. If you think those tens of millions of Americans don't have power or sway in this country, they are literally the reason why visa and mastercard keep shutting down porn businesses (the higher fraud claim is just false and probably a lie, ask me how I know!) and the current House majority leader is their guy, as well as Trump's previous VP, as well as maybe technically JD Vance, as well as like Joe Rogan, who insists that AI is the second coming of christ because it doesn't have a mother, just like christ. Not joking, that is a real thing that Joe Rogan has made millions of dollars saying to over 20 million people. Oh, and at least one Supreme Court Justice.
    - justinclift 11mo ago
thinkingtoilet 11mo ago
Here in MA there is a 'bell to bell' phone ban bill in the works. I'm very happy we're letting kids be kids again. There is no need for a phone during the school day.
- 0_____0 11mo ago
  I'm expecting a kiddo this winter and my use of devices+my likely future kid's relationship with tech has really been on my mind. The fact that people are thinking through this and actually working on it puts me slightly more at ease.
  - eitally 11mo ago
    You probably won't have much to worry about until you have to decide whether screen time for your kid (at age 3-4) is a reasonable trade-off for you and your partner to have peaceful time to yourselves. Then it'll rear it's head again, after lulling you into complacency, when the kid is middle school age and all their friends have smartphones. Then you have to decide whether the convenience factor (for you) of your kid having a device is worth the trade-off of... them having a device. Fwiw, my older two are 14 & 16 and we still use device control software on their phones and laptops. The younger of the two complains a bit periodically but the older one just accepts that it's the way it is and gets on with his life [most of the time]. I personally advise you not to let your young kid get into e-gaming. Things like Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft are gateways to increased device usage, and the benefits are (again, imho) not remotely worth it nor irreplaceable by much healthier alternatives. Fun tidbit: my 8yo has a Kindle Fire and we've let her have Netflix & Disney+ installed on it. She also uses the Kindle & Libby apps to read voraciously, and Khan Academy for math. When she watches streaming media, though, she frequently watches it on mute with subtitles. That shocked me to see, and I asked her about it. She's 100% cool with that and appreciate the "privacy" of being able to watch things without other people meddling in her business. Shrug.
    - Yeul 11mo ago
      Parents have always wanted time for themselves. There are Americans alive today who will tell you that they used to play outside from dusk to dawn and only saw their parents at dinner.
amelius 11mo ago
Some people will slap a label like "liberal" on "using my smartphone whenever the hell I want". And then people will think that's how it should be.
- rootusrootus 11mo ago
  An electronic version of coal rolling. "You can't tell me this is unhealthy, and I'm going to prove it!"
  - StarGrit 11mo ago
    People "roll coal" it because it is kinda amusing to do it, and it is a middle finger towards people they perceive to be preachy. I accidentally "rolled coal" in my 90s Landrover because I was in totally the wrong gear going up a steep hill. It was amusing in the way of "oh shit! I kinda just blew a load of black smoke in the driver face behind me". Obviously, I don't do this deliberately.
    - eesmith 11mo ago
      Yes, people do all sorts of nasty and cruel things because they think it's kinda amusing. That doesn't justify the behavior. The act of riding a bicycle in and of itself is not "preachy". That happens. "six bicyclists training for a road race were run over by a 16-year-old who was rolling coal", at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal . Rolling coal nearly always implies deliberate intent, not coincidental timing. Some examples from state laws listed at that same Wikipedia page: "knowing release of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions", "with the intent", "may not knowingly or intentionally cause", "intentionally release significant quantities of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions"
      - StarGrit 11mo ago
        Your reply is exactly the preachy response that causes people to be defiant and resentful. > Yes, people do all sorts of nasty and cruel things because they think it's kinda amusing. That doesn't justify the behavior. Blowing a bit of soot up in the air isn't in itself cruel. It is just a bit naughty. Now doing it in someone's face like I've seen in videos deliberately is not very nice and can be dangerous. I think it should go without saying that I don't condone anti-social and dangerous behaviour. > The act of riding a bicycle in and of itself is not "preachy". That happens. "six bicyclists training for a road race were run over by a 16-year-old who was rolling coal", at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal . Who said anything about riding a bicycle is preachy? BTW, I am a cyclist that spent 3 months out of work because of a hit and run accident that left me with a permanent weakness in my right shoulder as a result. The reason I don't spend a lot of time with other cyclists, is because everything started to become a political issue against drivers, a lot of my fellow cyclists are preachy. I heard people saying that owning a pet was akin to slavery and other such nonsense. As someone that enjoys both driving and cycling, it left a bad taste in my mouth. BTW, In the story he caused a collision while rolling coal. The issue was dangerous driving. Not blowing some soot up into the air itself. > Rolling coal nearly always implies deliberate intent, not coincidental timing. In my case it was, it was because I was stuck in the wrong gear. My vehicle is currently in a garage being repaired for that very issue now (clutch is worn). It was funny in the sense of "OMG that is embarassing".

causal 11mo ago

It makes me so sad that it's possible for technology to steal the need to talk and play, even from our youth. If you have little kids you know how frantically they NEED to yap and play. I hold such horror for anything that would sap such life away.

AndrewDucker 11mo ago
It varies a lot. My kids will run around and play given the opportunity, but when they arrive home at 6pm from after-school club, completely exhausted, I think it's fair that they get to collapse in front of a screen for a bit.
- IAmBroom 11mo ago
  For my generation (just post-Boomer), it was the TV. For my parents, it was the radio. For their parents, reading out loud for everyone to enjoy ("Mr. Dickens has published another episode of The Pickwick Papers!"), or playing instruments.
  - AndrewDucker 11mo ago
    Yup. I'm Gen X (1972), and I'd read a book, watch TV, or (once we hit the mid-80s) I had a home computer.
    - technothrasher 11mo ago
      I spent much of my free childhood hours from about 1976 to 1988 in front of a computer screen. But I was certainly not in the mainstream.
      - AndrewDucker 11mo ago
        I don't think the mainstream people end up on HN.
        11mo ago

cramcgrab 11mo ago

No more kids cameras in the classroom

leptons 11mo ago
This does nothing to ban cameras. The fact that a smartphone has a camera doesn't mean cameras are banned. You can still bring a standalone camera to school.
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  Which would cause a lot of questions if you pull it out in the classroom.
  - leptons 11mo ago
    Maybe in a private school, but a public school should be considered public, making it perfectly legal to film in a classroom thanks to the first amendment.
    - 1718627440 11mo ago
      What? Public means publicly funded, not that the students need to live like they are in public on the streets. A school should still be a safe space, how can children be allowed to develop and be educated? At least were I am coming from, you can also not just film random adults on the street.
      - leptons 11mo ago
        >At least were I am coming from, you can also not just film random adults on the street. If you live in the United States, the first amendment absolutely allows you to film anyone in public. It's a constitutional right. This also applies to publicly funded facilities, like courthouses, libraries, post offices, the DMV, and also public schools - any publicly accessible area, in any facility that is publicly funded. I'm not making this up, it's actually part of the constitution.

bfkwlfkjf 11mo ago

The school president is 17?

IAmBroom 11mo ago
Yes, the president of the student-elected body of mostly-powerless "school government."
- JJMcJ 11mo ago
  The student-elected body is often called the Student Council. Sometimes each grade level will have a class president. Varies from school to school for the details.
  - JJMcJ 11mo ago
    Can't edit so I'll reply: This is in the United States.
jes5199 11mo ago
it’s an america thing
- hrimfaxi 11mo ago
  Other countries don't have prefects? Wikipedia seems to indicate the phenomenon is worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_president https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_president
  - 1718627440 11mo ago
    We wouldn't call such a thing a president, but yes.
IncreasePosts 11mo ago
That's just an elected student position that usually interfaces with the school leadership about student issues - it isn't the vice principal/principal/superintendent that run the school(s)

jollyllama 11mo ago

I don't think smartphones should be allowed in schools but as someone who was dumbfounded by the lunchtime cacophony of my peers, I wouldn't lead with that as a triumph.

browningstreet 11mo ago
Those of us who hate the noise of boisterous social conversation are the outliers, but it is a sign of their healthy social environment. I personally was always able to find a quiet spot. My early dinner, empty restaurant habit is the adult persistence of my teenage preferences, and I don't expect my personal tolerance to be their norm.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
cmxch 11mo ago
Tech will prevail on the long term, even with these misguided bans.
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  The smartphone OSs hide all that "tech". They are not more educational (by themselves) than interactive advertisement streams.
Loughla 11mo ago
The problem, when it comes to smartphone bans, isn't the kids, believe it or not. My experience (consulting with multiple k-12 institutions) is that it's the parents. If the parents can't be in CONSTANT contact with their kids, it's a problem. People are scared of everything all the time. It's not great.
bluGill 11mo ago
Schools should provide quiet spaces for kids who don't want noise during lunch. The library should always be open during lunch hours. There should always be an outdoor space for those who want it (unless there is lightening - I assuming you know how to dress for any other weather). Or we can go the opposite way: for kids who want to be loud during lunch there should be a place for them to do that. Wanting to be loud it too common to ignore, and it isn't like perfume/peanuts/... where we have to force a policy for a minority.

sidewndr46 11mo ago

This is really funny for me to read because as a kid we were prohibited from having telecommunications devices while at school entirely. We were also prohibited from speaking during lunchtime. Our lunch was most definitely not loud.

throwup238 11mo ago
You can always tell a Milford man.
jabroni_salad 11mo ago
When I was in elementary school one of the teachers would hold a decibel meter and subtract minutes off of recess if we got above a whispered conversation.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 11mo ago
  In class that is good. However at lunch kids should be talking to other kids. I know many teachers/schools are control freaks and so they would do such things, but it was always evil.
  - 1718627440 11mo ago
    Have you never been to a room full of people/children? If there aren't these 'control freaks' in the room, then it gets louder and louder until to the limit where nobody can understand anything while all are shouting. It's surprisingly fast, about ~2 minutes to the maximum/stable loudness. This 'control freaks' are the requirement to allow children to have a conversation.
    - bluGill 11mo ago
      in small doses, but I've seen them go overboard to the point where we are better off without.

tootie 11mo ago

So I have eye witness accounts of this lunchroom saying that's not true. The lunchroom was deafeningly loud before the ban. This school is also a magnet school with only high-performing kids who did not suffer from distraction problems and who actively made use of phones during class for classwork.

donohoe 11mo ago
I have a kid in a non-magnet HS and one in a magnet HS (in NYC). This article isn't off-the-mark but I would say there will always be variations by school.
schuyler2d 11mo ago
All my teacher friends (before this article) had joyously reported on lunch rooms being loud again (and even fights and lol, sex) happening.... But in a good way. If kids aren't getting into some trouble then they're not interacting and learning about society and human nature enough

bemmu 11mo ago

Senior Raya Osagie, 16, said she has to “think more in class” because she used to Google answers or use artificial intelligence. “Now when we get computers, I actually have to [do] deep research instead of going straight to AI,” she said. This kind of blew my mind a bit, as I had always imagined AI being used to do homework, hadn't occurred to me it could be used during a class as well.

ugh123 11mo ago
That just sounds like lazy teacher discipline in class. Decades ago we couldn't even use calculators on some tests, but now (or up until recently) they could practically have a computer in their hands all class?
- phainopepla2 11mo ago
  Allowing kids to have their phones in class, even if they weren't allowed to use them, was setting teachers up for failure. It's easy to call them lazy, but if you've ever tried to police the phone use of a bunch of screen-addicted adolescents you would understand. The calculator comparison is not a good one.
- malnourish 11mo ago
  I encourage you to seek first-hand accounts of what teaching in a contemporary public school classroom is like. Teacher discipline can account for so much.
- zormino 11mo ago
  When I was in university, I had a math teacher that brought extra chalk to class everyday because if he saw you on your phone, he'd snap a piece off and throw it at you pretty damn hard. Maybe that wouldn't exactly work in a high school but damn if Dr Murphy didn't have me paying attention in that class.
  - bongodongobob 11mo ago
    It's "literal violence" now and you'd get sued and lose your job.

kevinfiol 11mo ago

As a millennial, the concept of public school lunch not being loud is weird to me! I always remember the constant chatter of school lunch. Definitely had my share of hearty shared laughs, and heated conversations during lunchtime.

DavidPeiffer 11mo ago
I graduated in 2011. Smart phones were rare, but dumb phones were quite common. The lunch room was quite loud. To keep people from being in their own world on their phones too much, my lunch table had a rule that if you laugh out loud at something on your phone, you had to share it with the table. It was quite effective, though somewhat embarrassing from time to time.
- mc3301 11mo ago
  In the early 2000s, when everyone had a phone but no smart phones, we had this "thing" at the college bar: Sitting around the table with some beers and friends, everyone put their phones in the center of the table. First one to touch their phone had to buy the next round of drinks. It was effective. I've tried similar recently, but people are less enthusiastic about the idea.

havblue 11mo ago

I'm guessing that teachers never wanted smartphones in class in the first place and that this was just about pushing back against the helicopter parents.

bryanlarsen 11mo ago
Kids have phones for "safety" reasons. It's pretty irrational, but hard to push back against without help from on high.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  The "Safety" excuse is bullshit. What safety problem could exist in a school that a child with a cell phone can solve? Fire? School administrators will call the fire department. Intruder? School administrators will call the police. School shooter? Same. There's nothing that a child with a cell phone will fix.
  - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
    Yeah, I think people are downvoting me because they don't realize I meant what you're saying when I called it irrational.
  - quietbritishjim 11mo ago
    It probably is bullshit, but everything you've written is a straw man. A phone is useful for the kid on their journey to or from school, which by secondary level I would hope is on their own. Even just, "I'm going to Steve's, I'll be late for dinner". But it doesn't need to be a smartphone for that, and it doesn't need to be out during school hours.
wavemode 11mo ago
I'm astounded that this has become a thing. My school had a zero-tolerance "if I see it, I confiscate it" phone policy. And your parent had to come retrieve it. There are kids who lost their phones because it accidentally fell out of a pocket lol
11mo ago

sp4cec0wb0y 11mo ago

It is interesting to see how rapidly social fabrics deteriorated when smartphones came around. I was in highschool from 2014-2018, and for most of the years, I could remember everyone socializing during lunch, break times, and even in the classroom. Which is odd because we had access to smartphones, airpods, and laptops. Perhaps it was because we spent the majority of our lives without them still? Seems to have gotten a lot worse since then.

chis 11mo ago
That's an interesting data point. I think covid did a lot of damage too. Kids spending formative years stuck in their room texting just didn't get the chance to build basic social skills and habits. But it's hard to separate out that effect from just earlier and earlier exposure to modern phones. The class of 2018 was ~10 when the iphone 4 came out. And even that wasn't nearly as addicting as modern phones - it was tiny, and didn't have vertical scrolling video (except for Vine, briefly).
- NoPicklez 11mo ago
  It's also difficult to build social skills if your peers around you are stuck looking down at their phones as opposed to looking at those around them. If you're wanting to meet new people and chat with new people but a large chunk of them are sitting on their phones it makes it more difficult.
squigz 11mo ago
Smartphones have been around much longer than before 2014. My takeaway from this is that people just always think it's worse than what they went through.
- tstrimple 11mo ago
  There is certainly an unhealthy dose of "kids these days" bullshit that inevitably propagates literally every single generation. This is especially disappointing on a forum for "hackers" though. I wouldn't be the person I am today without unrestricted internet access as a teen. My parents wanted me in their ignorant little conservative box not knowing or understanding anything outside of it. Their ignorance exceeded mine, so I was able to circumvent them by the very means many "hacker" news participants would love to see locked down and eliminated. I can't help but think of them as simple and pathetic as my parents were trying to strictly control what I could learn. They are the very definition of an anti-hacker culturally.

danlugo92 11mo ago

Smartphones are this century's cigarrettes.

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

It’s fascinating to see a practice that was previously limited to Silicon Valley executives become first a national class signifier and now go mainstream. We haven’t extensively studied how social media and smartphones affect a kid’s brain. It’s becoming abundantly clear the former is inappropriate for kids and adolescents. It’s emerging that the latter is at least destructive for non-adolescent children.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

Der_Einzige 11mo ago

A whole lot of people who got to their great tech jobs by commoditizing their screen addictions (I.e a significant amount of this very website) are massively harmed by these policies. I can’t believe that the folks here nearly universally like this. We should celebrate screen addiction and not fight it.

1718627440 11mo ago
I learned to use a computer, by doing things that are possible air-gapped. Using a shell, etc. I did not by scrolling through social media, while all my peers treat computers like magic and lack basic knowledge, because they only know how to scroll through apps. Even today I learn and produce the most when the network is down.

gostsamo 11mo ago

The ban will be revoked after Meta sues for business damages caused by unlawful government interference with their customer acquisition operations. /s

1718627440 11mo ago
We need to sue Meta (et al.) for social damage caused by unlawful acquisition of addicts from the public education system. (My personal opinion)

leptons 11mo ago

FOOD FIGHT!!

legel 11mo ago

All of this read and written on a smartphone. Reversion to the past is not preparation for the future.

chis 11mo ago

It's so insane that they let things go this far. It could have been immediately obvious to those involved that cell phones in class would have immensely negative effects. I mean they talk about a lunch room "quiet enough to hear a pin drop"?? I think I learned half my basic social skills from lunch rooms in school. That time period is probably more important than any of the classes themselves.

HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
> 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 of passage, and lunch rooms are as much a part of that as any other space. If everyone was so absorbed in their phones, that may have been a benefit for social harmony and escaping real-life bullying and shaming.
- SR2Z 11mo ago
  Asociality is not the same thing as social harmony. It's not better for children if their shithead peers are replaced with smartphones. The unfortunate truth is that cliquey behavior and bullying are some of things that children have to be exposed to - you won't come out of school as a fully-capable human being unless you've spent the last several years being exposed to a ton of different adult emotions.
  - HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
    That high school is necessarily a place of cliquey behavior and bullying, and that kids may even benefit from it, is not a universal thing. In some countries, viewers of imported American TV shows are baffled by that depiction of high school, because in their high schools there aren’t such hard knocks.
    - 11mo ago

m463 11mo ago

title should include "school" like in original article: "NY school phone ban has made lunch loud again"

zkmon 11mo ago

Why should articles like these always start with some fictional story like a novel? The actual news is buried somewhere half-way after the throw-away story.

StarGrit 11mo ago
It is following a magazine style. This is partly to elicit an emotional reaction and partly I suspect because the copy writer is bored and wishes they were writing novels instead.
- throwaway290 11mo ago
  if it's a proper news source they (and every other paper) already reported it who knows how many times. "city is about to ban phones in schools" "city is banning phones in schools" "the phones in schools were banned". everybody who needs to know already knows This is not intended to be a news piece. It's a story. But whoever is in charge of CMS messed up categories. It should not be labeled news
  - StarGrit 11mo ago
    It is an annoying writing style that is done on a lot of sites in both news articles and "stories" as you call them.
    - throwaway290 11mo ago
      annoying? if you want Crime and Punishment to be "guy killed a grandma" that's your thing but believe me this style is not annoying to many people aside from vocal minority
      - StarGrit 11mo ago
        Firstly, I love the straw-man. I am fine with length and the more story driven approach if it is warranted. More often than not I do not believe it is warranted. Secondly, I am allowed (whether you like it or not) to complain about something if I don't like it. I find this style annoying and I often believe it is written in a way to manipulate people, which I have a distaste for. Thirdly, whether I am in a vocal minority or not doesn't mean that vocal minority is incorrect in its criticism. A lot of sites have adopted this style even more more "news" style articles.

rs186 11mo ago

Is it just me who finds it annoying that some people like using the pattern "make something <adjective> again"? Like, you don't have any other choice?

duderific 11mo ago

> In the cafeteria, Ryan Tripathi, 16, was paging through “Lord of the Flies,” which he said is slow-going. “I'm just not used to reading,” he said. “I’m usually on my phone.” Damn, that hits pretty hard.

Retr0id 11mo ago
Understandable, I never finished Lord of the Flies despite not having a smartphone at the time.
- theshrike79 11mo ago
  I think it's a prerequisite for a book to become required reading in schools to be boring as shit first :)
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mexicocitinluez 11mo ago
    I couldn't disagree more. And it was the one thing that surprised me every time we cracked open a new book. "All Quiet on the Western Front" sounded terrible to a 14 year old me, but after starting it, I couldn't put it down. Same with Lord of the Flies. Fahrenheit 451. The Giver. I loved Animal Farm. And the Great Gatsby (though I get people not liking this one). The Outsiders was good. The Old man and the Sea was pretty boring I'll admit. Who thinks To Kill a Mockingbird is boring as shit?
    - goda90 11mo ago
      I read quite a bit when I was in school, but I honestly don't remember a direct assigned book I actually liked. There were times we got to choose what we were reading for school and in those cases I read some that stuck with me like "1984".
    - theshrike79 11mo ago

ForgetItJake 11mo ago

Why is it that Hacker News is overwhelmingly liberal on most issues but when it comes to teenagers/children incredibly authoritarian and big government?

mordae 11mo ago
Because, like most of the population in the West, HN readers are not actually liberals but rather centrists, which means they lean roughly equally conservative, liberal and socialist on the political triangle - on average. Sometimes you have to trade personal liberties (makes liberals sad) and/or privileges (makes conservatives sad) to obtain better societal outcomes, i.e. mandatory vaccination or minimum wage. Those are socialist policies. And since the major media and thus our shared social space is heavily anti-socialist (qui bono?), everyone is closeted and tries extremely hard to justify socialist policies as liberalism, which is not shunned. Hence people in the US now perceive them as closer or even "allied".
AngryData 11mo ago
Because many people only support freedoms for themselves, the second someone else wants to do things different than they would they get angry because they don't understand why anyone would think differently than them. Also they don't ever have to worry about becoming young again so they literally never feel the consequences of their ideals and actions against kids. They feel safe in completely dismissing concerns and actual reality because they are so far removed from it and can cling to whatever imaginary view of the youthful world they made up.

NoPicklez 11mo ago

Crazy, I went to boarding school 2009-2011 and our dinner hall was always loud with talking and laughter. However sometimes it would slowly get quieter until the room went silent with everyone looking oddly at each other, then a massive wave of laughter would erupt. Some weird phenomenon. I also remember downloading Froggy jump on my iPhone and playing it with friends, but you certainly put your phone away more than you do now. You also had it taken off of you if you were on it when you shouldn't have been. If my parents found out they took my phone off of me, they'd probably crack it at me because I wasn't paying attention. I get the feeling many parents might just get angry at the teacher rather than their child.

skeptrune 11mo ago

Just get the standardized test scores you need and call it a day. I find this to be very performative from a student perspective.

getnormality 11mo ago

The impact of phones on teen social life seems to be still controversial in academic circles. I think it would be a lot less controversial if everyone knew the lunchroom had fallen silent because everyone was scrolling, and became loud again when they banned the phones.

thorin 11mo ago

AFAIK know phones are banned in all secondary school (and primary school) from the start till the end of the school day. My daughter just started secondary school and one kid was trying to text her mum to add credit to her lunch money account in the first week and got a one hour detention for getting her phone out during school. This was in the canteen, not in a lesson. Bit harsh but seemed to get the message across. Ironically most homework is done by the kids on their phones so when I tell her to get off her phone she always has the excuse that she's checking/doing her homework, or looking at her timetable online. [edit] note this is a UK perspective, not sure why this got downvoted

lambdanil 11mo ago

I don't see how a loud lunch break is good in any way

millerm 11mo ago
It means your in a large room with a lot of people talking to each other. It's not a fine dining experience where people whisper. It's a social place. The social aspect was taken out of the experience, which is vital to development. The "loud" (meaning, it's not quiet) aspect is not a negative. It's not a "lunch break" for adults to go decompress from the stress at work. If kids want quiet for studying, they can hit their school library, or other places for solitude and tranquility. It's about younger people actually communicating and discussing what is going on in the day, their life, after school, hobbies, interests, relationships, etc.. Imagine going to a playground where there are 100 children. None of them are making a sound. That would be a scary sign. You should hear kids laughing, screaming, crying... experiencing social engagement. People are being isolated from each other because they are becoming "addicted" to screens and short media formats. We are training our brains for instant gratification, but there is no retention or learning going on. Younger people aren't learning how to communicate directly with others. Without these engagements we hobble our development of things like empathy. How to control our emotions with others. It's damaging for all. That's my take.

zahma 11mo ago

I’d like to know what happens to cell phone use after school lets out. Are these students more likely to spend the rest of the day online? I could also see it going the other way. And if that’s the case, Cardozo is one of the first cell rehabs for students. Terrific to see!

mcprwklzpq 11mo ago

> Enakshi Barua, 14, said she’s also opposed to the ban, on principle. Barua said. "I feel like the trust isn’t there between the students and teachers." > staff members are collecting around 30 contraband phones a day > There’s a strike system with escalating punishments Does not sound good.

josefresco 11mo ago

Anecdotally burner phones are already being discussed and presumably used. They lock up your primary phone, and you sneakily use your burner phone which if confiscated can be used again or easily replaced/abandoned.