Submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools
What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation | US education | The Guardian::Teachers say mobile phones make their lives a living hell – so one Massachusetts school barred them
Today my computer science teacher asked a friend of mine to show his screentime statistics as a joke. Bro literally spent an average of +11h A DAY on his phone…
Smartphones and apps are scientifically designed to be addictive. The same techniques that make people spend hours at slot machines goes into modern games.
Are you saying the app I’m using to browse Lemmy is scientifically designed to be addictive?
I’m paranoid about checking mine… Plus my Deck and computer (for work). It’s probably more than your mate.
I configure mine to show it to me weekly. It helps me keep tabs on a low social media diet. I’ve been reading, playing music and watching movies more frequently thanks to that.
I was curious so I looked at mine, it isn’t accurate, it says 10 hours 22 minutes average, but it says 7 of that is gaming, there’s no way i spend 7 hours of gaming, I’m on social media a hell of a lot more then gaming but my social is only at roughly 2 hours. I don’t think you can rely on it lol
Uh huh…
Jesus. I’m at just above two hours for my weekly average. It used to be 8-10 hours daily when I had a job where I had to leave my house, go into an office, and not do any work. Now that I do the same thing but from home, I don’t need to use my phone as much.
Crazy how people otherwise firm supporters of freedom of speech and freedom of tech suddenly change their minds when the person involved is under 18.
Are you unfamiliar with the principal that things which are appropriate for adults are often not appropriate for children?
I’m familiar with the sad fact that many people believe that. Knowledge should never be age restricted. If a kid doesn’t want to learn about, for example, sex, and finds it gross, that’s one thing. An entire society conspiring to keep them from knowing about it till they’re about 11 is quite another.
According to the United States, it’s appropriate to imprison children for delinquency that is things that are criminal for children that are not criminal for adults.
So no, I have little faith regarding what my society decides is right for kids.
Having lived my whole life in the Information Age, I am 100% in support of this.
Problem with the digital world is it’s all fake, it’s all bullshit. It’s only anything at all because we’re here. But like everything, it comes with a cost.
During the brain formation years, the brain should get opportunity to form both with and without it, so the maximum number of possible capabilities are preserved for future access.
I watched the first generation that got personal unrestricted mobile phones for themselves. Somehow I thought it was a good idea at the time.
Now I think that a parent who gets their under 12 year old kid a smart phone should be treated the same way if he gave them cocaine.
We got an iPhone for my niece who is 8. It’s locked down so all she can do is text, call, and take pictures/video and she can’t contact anyone not in her contacts list. She has some games but can’t use them for more than an hour per day and they won’t open during school hours.
A big issue is parents not bothering to learn how to use and set up parental controls.
Controls like these don’t work if the kid is smart, determined or the parents are too tired or uninvolved. There’s more to the cellphone issue than the actual cellphone.
12? Those kids get phones at 8-9 around here as far as I saw.
Yeah, I haven’t gotten to that point with my kids but he’s getting a flip phone first if I can find one. I see other kids on his bus (elementary level) with smartphones and I think it’s insane.
I lent my 8yo my old phone, heavily restricted and with Family Link installed; She’s only allowed 2 hours a day and isn’t allowed on stuff like YouTube. There are ways to do it responsibly.
Anyone and everyone can benefit from putting away their smartphone, not just students.
Off topic, but when were the photos of these students taken? Their clothing and hair looks like they came straight out of the 90s. Even some of the photos themselves looks “film-like”.
The 90s are in rn. All my friends kids have nirvana shirts and such.
I don’t think the Nirvana shirts have ever really gone away.
I went to school right at the time where Smartphones become popular and at the beginning most either had no phone or a basic featurephone and in the end almost everyone had a smartphone. And I think the impact was very minimal. School sucked regardless. People were bullied regardless. Some had really short attention spans regardless.
For enclosed schools, it surprises me they don’t just faraday cage all the rooms, and then run school-controlled wifi.
But in my day, teachers freaked out about electronic calculators and word processors. I’d think the appropriate thing to do is integrate smart-phone use into curricula. If your kids are texting, then your teaching model sucks.
But here in the states, we already know our teaching model sucks, because the state doesn’t take it seriously and gives zero fucks about kids until they can be loaded with debt and can serve as a laborer or soldier for billionaire vanity projects.
You actually hit it right in the nail. What actually works is talking to them like thinking, rational human beings, explain the situation and then be a mature adult and understand that they will have to make their own choices and there is nothing you can do about it.
Ideally we should be teaching self-control instead of submission and evasion. A lot of what’s going on in the world stems from this tendency.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Students, faculty and guests grab their food from the kitchen, and eat together under a white tent that overlooks western Massachusetts’ Berkshire mountains.
As the close of the school year neared last June, talk turned to final assignments (the English class was finishing Moby-Dick) and end-of-year fun (there was a trip planned to a local lake).
The devices can make calls, send texts (slowly) and can’t load modern applications; instead coming with deliberately cumbersome versions of music and mapping apps.
When a middle school in Canada surveyed staff, 75% of respondents thought that cellphones were negatively affecting their students’ physical and mental health.
Providing dumb phones could be part of the way forward, Nina Marks admits, but she wonders if funds at already strapped public schools could be put to better use.
While Hollier says that Light Phones are intentionally small and slow, so that people use them less, students report that they also break easily and the batteries die quickly, which wasn’t in the plan.
The original article contains 1,688 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Don’t all schools ban phones? They were banned when I was in highschool maybe ten years ago. And smartphones were already very much a thing by that point. Everyone still used them because enforcement was basically impossible.
The only teacher I ever saw who had an effective strategy was my math teacher. He told kids to put their phones on their desk at the beginning of class so that they were out in the open. If he found out you had come to class with a phone and didn’t put it on the desk, you’d lose it, even if you weren’t using it. And then he said you could use them for a few seconds to check them, but you had to keep them out in the open. No hiding the phone by your legs.
narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 9 months ago
“Back in my day” (when phones were not that smart but already had color screens and crappy cameras) the teacher would seize your phone if you dared to take it out of your pocket or if it even did as much as vibrate. Not sure why kids would need to check their phone during class nowadays.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I think we’re from the same day. I’m pretty goddamn glad, honestly. I’ve seen how much the phone has invaded my life, and I’m on the lowest scale of intrusion. I typically find myself out with a group of people all on their phones. It feels weird and gross. I could see how that constant attachment could be such a problem for teachers today, even if they were banned. It’s almost automatic, when someone gets bored or distracted, their hand is already in their pocket pulling out the phone.
We had texting, but the smart phone was invented the year I graduated high school. So really even my college years weren’t really tainted by constant phone use. We were really lucky for that reason, I hink.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
That’s how most teachers in my school operated, and it meant people were constantly screwing around on their phones and not paying attention, because it was an unenforceable policy. Like I said, the only teacher I ever had who effectively prevented people from screwing around on their phones excessively was that math teacher.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Because the way we detect and curb abusive teachers is the same way we do abusive police officers, by recording their actions and posting them online.
Back in my day abusive teachers just did their damage, and left my generation with scars. Without publicly-accessible evidence of these events, and consequential pressure on the state, the process just continues.
And then your society teams with intergenerational mental illness, such as what I’m diagnosed with.
simple@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Definitely depends on the school and where you live, but in my experience the rules have become really loose. Every kid has a phone and mobile data. They’re banned in class but kids always try to open their phones to check them and hide them quickly anyways. Many kids spend breaks on their phone. Banning kids from coming into school with phones in their first place is what the article means.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
When I was in school, just pulling out a phone meant confiscation.
Even ringing meant a call for the parents to get it back.
bluewing@lemm.ee 9 months ago
My local school has a simple system. Every student is required to place their phones in a clear plastic similar to this - []www.amazon.com/…/ref=sr_1_6?crid=1X4FP5L6YX60T&ke… - hanging right next to the door. The pockets are transparent so the teacher can quickly see if everyone has done so and they are cheap.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Terrible. Imagine how many poo particles live on that nasty-ass thing.