5 ms·

Agreed. Teachers are seeing the massive benefits from banning phones entirely during school hours. I think once we get data from bans for certain things like so

by willio58 11mo ago

Agreed. Teachers are seeing the massive benefits from banning phones entirely during school hours. I think once we get data from bans for certain things like social media for kids, we'll all want to get on the wave.

colechristensen 11mo ago
This has to be done carefully because prohibition breeds desire and adults will absolutely try to force the attitude of 35 year olds onto 15 year olds forgetting a lot of life lessons have to be learned through experience and not just told. Everybody wants to get on the wave about how children these days are so much worse because of the new thing. And literally as long as we have recorded human writing we have adults complaining how the children are being ruined by the new culture or new item... and I mean we have these complaints from thousands of years ago. So be careful, you don't have to be completely wrong to still be overreaching.
- logifail 11mo ago
  > prohibition breeds desire Sure, but we (as societies) have always had to deal with this. Wherever you are in the world there are things that simply aren't allowed under a certain age, whether that's 15, 16, 18, 21 or whatever. My (just turned) 16 year old told me last that he didn't think it looked to be that hard to drive a car. Me: "Umm. You'll find out. When you get to it."
  - wizzwizz4 11mo ago
    It's not that hard to drive a car! Unfortunately, physics motivates us to have unreasonable expectations of our drivers, like "doesn't drive off the road at 100km/h ever", and "avoids all obstacles all of the time". That's the hard part.
  - tintor 11mo ago
    It doesn't look to be that hard to be a dentist. You drill a dark spot on tooth and put some resin inside to fill it up. /s
  - eastbound 11mo ago
    Many countries have the driving license at 16. In France it’s accompanied by a parent; in USA it’s the full driving license (I’ve learnt at 13 and never had an accident for 30 years). 16 is ok if you withstand peer pressure.
    - pempem 11mo ago
      Insurance and actuarial science is some of the most data-drivenwork we have. It is incredibly hard to withstand peer pressure and there is not much wrong in admitting what the data has already proven.
  - colechristensen 11mo ago
    >My (just turned) 16 year old told me last that he didn't think it looked to be that hard to drive a car. I was driving when I was 5 on the farm, it's not that hard and if you have the attitude that things aren't hard that tends to be true. Don't set your kid up for failure.
    - logifail 11mo ago
      > I was driving when I was 5 on the farm, it's not that hard [..] I would hazard a guess you didn't meet that many other drivers on the farm (!) > Don't set your kid up for failure I'm doing my damndest not to ... but you have no idea ;)
      - colechristensen 11mo ago
        Driving on the farm is actually a lot different, you usually have no more than one or two other drivers, but there's no rules. You have to know where everybody is, know what they intend to do, and know whether or not they know where you are and if they can see you. it makes people much better and more patient drivers because you can't just rely on traffic laws you have to know the intention of somebody in a piece of machinery and if they plan to back up or where they're going and what's in their head... and how to communicate with hands or a yell
- cycomanic 11mo ago
  > This has to be done carefully because prohibition breeds desire and adults will absolutely try to force the attitude of 35 year olds onto 15 year olds forgetting a lot of life lessons have to be learned through experience and not just told. The interesting tidbit in the case of social media and smart phones is that they are at least partially pushed by the parents (I've seen plenty of examples of parents demand that their children have smartphones at school). > Everybody wants to get on the wave about how children these days are so much worse because of the new thing. > And literally as long as we have recorded human writing we have adults complaining how the children are being ruined by the new culture or new item... and I mean we have these complaints from thousands of years ago. I think there is a difference though. There is the "off my lawn" crowd of "children today are so bad because..." sure, but I think they are not the ones demanding social media bans. The bans are being motivated largely by health professionals ringing all sort of alarm bells because mental health indicators paint a pretty dire picture. These are based on actual statistics and have been confirmed many times. > So be careful, you don't have to be completely wrong to still be overreaching.
  - pembrook 11mo ago
    Lots of bending over backwards and appeals to authority to rationalize an emotional feeling of "This time is different." Again, every generation thinks that. This time might be different. But it's probably not.
    - AppleBananaPie 11mo ago
      Letting people figure out cigarettes were bad for them took a very long time, and if social media is another form of addiction why not treat it how we treat other addictive products? We could assume that this time is different and people, well children and minors specifically, will learn to avoid the addiction rather than banning them like alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. This time might be different. But it's probably not.
      - card_zero 11mo ago
        Books, for instance. Some people will read for five hours without pausing, and they can use three or four books every week.
- burnished 11mo ago
  Just nitpicking your first sentence: prohibition broadly works, just in the US (at least) it breeds negative externalities that don't seem worth it in balance.
DocTomoe 11mo ago
Teachers are not good indicators of measuring 'benefits', as they are both the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more bored, more asleep student body, they have rose-tinted ideas about the way things used to be, and they are also grading the success - which all too often comes down to compliance. That's why if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether smartphones are diametral or beneficial, we'd have a double-blind, standardised anonymously-graded test. If control group with smartphones gets consistently less points by graders who do not know them or their smartphone habits as compared to those who live in digital exile, we can talk. Until then, 'peace and quiet' in the classroom is mistaken for educational success. Funny how no-one seems to be eager to finance such a study. For me, that's an indication that the outrage is pearl-clutching.
- Jap2-0 11mo ago
  > they are... the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more bored, more asleep student body > 'peace and quiet' in the classroom is mistaken for educational success. To clarify, do you think that phones or the removal of phones leads to these outcomes? Do you think that teachers like or dislike phones? Or is the point that there are many biases both ways? > they have rose-tinted ideas about the way things used to be Some do. Are teachers the only ones? > if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether smartphones are [detrimental] or beneficial, we'd have a double-blind, standardised anonymously-graded test.... Funny how no-one seems to be eager to finance such a study. I am not sure how you would set this up in a way that does not fall victim to a dozen confounding variables. There have been comparisons of standardized tests before and after phone bans, of course, but those also fall victim to similar statistical issues.
  - Sleaker 11mo ago
    You also can't have double-blind study on something both the participant and teacher know is present or not.... But that doesn't mean the study is invalid, it just means you have to account for it.
    - rileymat2 11mo ago
blitzar 11mo ago
Once the data is in bosses will see the massive benefits and ban mobile phones entirely during work hours.
- b112 11mo ago
  Good. I recall "no personal calls" at work as a rule, in the old days. Inbound emergencies allowed, of course. Why do people think looking at their personal email, or looking at their phone is acceptable at work? It's no different than sitting, reading a magazine pre-Internet. The very idea would have been absurd.
  - gametorch 11mo ago
    Why do you care? Basic human decency says your workplace environment should be chill enough to let you take breaks as you, yourself, dictate. If you're underperforming because of it, you're fired. Enforcing a rule as you claim strips the employee of what little respect they have left. To be honest, your suggestion is sickening to me.
    - ethbr1 11mo ago
      This is part of the K-shaped economy. Highly skilled jobs can absolutely be 'perform or be fired', because you're paying for a person's ability to do a specialized thing, and there's usually only so much specialized work to be done. But there are also a lot of 'we need bodies at a low cost' jobs. And those latter jobs run on work_output : labor_cost, which can always be maximized by making fewer workers do more. (Consequently, why the real goal for people studying / graduating in the modern economy should be to find a way to get into the former jobs...)
      - gametorch 11mo ago
        Yes, and this dichotomy has been analyzed by political and economic theorists for centuries and everyone except autocrats and slave owners has agreed that the conditions surrounding the "work_output : labor_cost" jobs you describe are a huge miscarriage of justice and ought to be discarded with the past. Whether that is predicted to occur via bloody revolution or capitalist accelerationism is a matter of your particular economic and philosophical taste. But every ethical human being says we shouldn't treat people like that.
illiac786 11mo ago
I am looking for data regarding this, do you have references? I need to convince my school ;)

colechristensen 11mo ago

This has to be done carefully because prohibition breeds desire and adults will absolutely try to force the attitude of 35 year olds onto 15 year olds forgetting a lot of life lessons have to be learned through experience and not just told. Everybody wants to get on the wave about how children these days are so much worse because of the new thing. And literally as long as we have recorded human writing we have adults complaining how the children are being ruined by the new culture or new item... and I mean we have these complaints from thousands of years ago. So be careful, you don't have to be completely wrong to still be overreaching.

logifail 11mo ago
> prohibition breeds desire Sure, but we (as societies) have always had to deal with this. Wherever you are in the world there are things that simply aren't allowed under a certain age, whether that's 15, 16, 18, 21 or whatever. My (just turned) 16 year old told me last that he didn't think it looked to be that hard to drive a car. Me: "Umm. You'll find out. When you get to it."
- wizzwizz4 11mo ago
  It's not that hard to drive a car! Unfortunately, physics motivates us to have unreasonable expectations of our drivers, like "doesn't drive off the road at 100km/h ever", and "avoids all obstacles all of the time". That's the hard part.
- tintor 11mo ago
  It doesn't look to be that hard to be a dentist. You drill a dark spot on tooth and put some resin inside to fill it up. /s
- eastbound 11mo ago
  Many countries have the driving license at 16. In France it’s accompanied by a parent; in USA it’s the full driving license (I’ve learnt at 13 and never had an accident for 30 years). 16 is ok if you withstand peer pressure.
  - pempem 11mo ago
    Insurance and actuarial science is some of the most data-drivenwork we have. It is incredibly hard to withstand peer pressure and there is not much wrong in admitting what the data has already proven.
- colechristensen 11mo ago
  >My (just turned) 16 year old told me last that he didn't think it looked to be that hard to drive a car. I was driving when I was 5 on the farm, it's not that hard and if you have the attitude that things aren't hard that tends to be true. Don't set your kid up for failure.
  - logifail 11mo ago
    > I was driving when I was 5 on the farm, it's not that hard [..] I would hazard a guess you didn't meet that many other drivers on the farm (!) > Don't set your kid up for failure I'm doing my damndest not to ... but you have no idea ;)
    - colechristensen 11mo ago
      Driving on the farm is actually a lot different, you usually have no more than one or two other drivers, but there's no rules. You have to know where everybody is, know what they intend to do, and know whether or not they know where you are and if they can see you. it makes people much better and more patient drivers because you can't just rely on traffic laws you have to know the intention of somebody in a piece of machinery and if they plan to back up or where they're going and what's in their head... and how to communicate with hands or a yell
cycomanic 11mo ago
> This has to be done carefully because prohibition breeds desire and adults will absolutely try to force the attitude of 35 year olds onto 15 year olds forgetting a lot of life lessons have to be learned through experience and not just told. The interesting tidbit in the case of social media and smart phones is that they are at least partially pushed by the parents (I've seen plenty of examples of parents demand that their children have smartphones at school). > Everybody wants to get on the wave about how children these days are so much worse because of the new thing. > And literally as long as we have recorded human writing we have adults complaining how the children are being ruined by the new culture or new item... and I mean we have these complaints from thousands of years ago. I think there is a difference though. There is the "off my lawn" crowd of "children today are so bad because..." sure, but I think they are not the ones demanding social media bans. The bans are being motivated largely by health professionals ringing all sort of alarm bells because mental health indicators paint a pretty dire picture. These are based on actual statistics and have been confirmed many times. > So be careful, you don't have to be completely wrong to still be overreaching.
- pembrook 11mo ago
  Lots of bending over backwards and appeals to authority to rationalize an emotional feeling of "This time is different." Again, every generation thinks that. This time might be different. But it's probably not.
  - AppleBananaPie 11mo ago
    Letting people figure out cigarettes were bad for them took a very long time, and if social media is another form of addiction why not treat it how we treat other addictive products? We could assume that this time is different and people, well children and minors specifically, will learn to avoid the addiction rather than banning them like alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. This time might be different. But it's probably not.
    - card_zero 11mo ago
      Books, for instance. Some people will read for five hours without pausing, and they can use three or four books every week.
burnished 11mo ago
Just nitpicking your first sentence: prohibition broadly works, just in the US (at least) it breeds negative externalities that don't seem worth it in balance.

DocTomoe 11mo ago

Teachers are not good indicators of measuring 'benefits', as they are both the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more bored, more asleep student body, they have rose-tinted ideas about the way things used to be, and they are also grading the success - which all too often comes down to compliance. That's why if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether smartphones are diametral or beneficial, we'd have a double-blind, standardised anonymously-graded test. If control group with smartphones gets consistently less points by graders who do not know them or their smartphone habits as compared to those who live in digital exile, we can talk. Until then, 'peace and quiet' in the classroom is mistaken for educational success. Funny how no-one seems to be eager to finance such a study. For me, that's an indication that the outrage is pearl-clutching.

Jap2-0 11mo ago
> they are... the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more bored, more asleep student body > 'peace and quiet' in the classroom is mistaken for educational success. To clarify, do you think that phones or the removal of phones leads to these outcomes? Do you think that teachers like or dislike phones? Or is the point that there are many biases both ways? > they have rose-tinted ideas about the way things used to be Some do. Are teachers the only ones? > if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether smartphones are [detrimental] or beneficial, we'd have a double-blind, standardised anonymously-graded test.... Funny how no-one seems to be eager to finance such a study. I am not sure how you would set this up in a way that does not fall victim to a dozen confounding variables. There have been comparisons of standardized tests before and after phone bans, of course, but those also fall victim to similar statistical issues.
- Sleaker 11mo ago
  You also can't have double-blind study on something both the participant and teacher know is present or not.... But that doesn't mean the study is invalid, it just means you have to account for it.
  - rileymat2 11mo ago

blitzar 11mo ago

Once the data is in bosses will see the massive benefits and ban mobile phones entirely during work hours.

b112 11mo ago
Good. I recall "no personal calls" at work as a rule, in the old days. Inbound emergencies allowed, of course. Why do people think looking at their personal email, or looking at their phone is acceptable at work? It's no different than sitting, reading a magazine pre-Internet. The very idea would have been absurd.
- gametorch 11mo ago
  Why do you care? Basic human decency says your workplace environment should be chill enough to let you take breaks as you, yourself, dictate. If you're underperforming because of it, you're fired. Enforcing a rule as you claim strips the employee of what little respect they have left. To be honest, your suggestion is sickening to me.
  - ethbr1 11mo ago
    This is part of the K-shaped economy. Highly skilled jobs can absolutely be 'perform or be fired', because you're paying for a person's ability to do a specialized thing, and there's usually only so much specialized work to be done. But there are also a lot of 'we need bodies at a low cost' jobs. And those latter jobs run on work_output : labor_cost, which can always be maximized by making fewer workers do more. (Consequently, why the real goal for people studying / graduating in the modern economy should be to find a way to get into the former jobs...)
    - gametorch 11mo ago
      Yes, and this dichotomy has been analyzed by political and economic theorists for centuries and everyone except autocrats and slave owners has agreed that the conditions surrounding the "work_output : labor_cost" jobs you describe are a huge miscarriage of justice and ought to be discarded with the past. Whether that is predicted to occur via bloody revolution or capitalist accelerationism is a matter of your particular economic and philosophical taste. But every ethical human being says we shouldn't treat people like that.

illiac786 11mo ago

I am looking for data regarding this, do you have references? I need to convince my school ;)