Because the little shits (affectionate) don’t want to put them down when appropriate
Am I the crazy one? Millennial myself. We had cell phones and got detentions for using them in class. When did that stop being a thing? Why is this a question at all??
You’re there to learn. You sneak texts between periods. If we were caught our phone was given to the principal
In the 2000s and early 2010s, less of your life was lived on a cell phone or smartphone.
For kids now, it’s 100% of their lives. Post-COVID, the majority of social interaction between peers is through a social media app.
That means that close to 100% of kids are on their phones during the school day. If you aren’t, you run the risk of social isolation and FOMO.
Administrators can’t send a kid to detention for using their phone because ALL kids would be in detention every day.
Here’s one article that examines the problem
As long as the phone isn’t used in class I fail to the the issue. There’s no need to ban phone use in general while on school premises.
Read the article, the problem is that kids don’t care and don’t listen. Teachers asking kids to take their airpods out during class, and receiving harassment back when asking. To me the kids proved they couldn’t handle it (not their fault, it’s an addiction device), but the school had to step in or it wasn’t doing its job
And the kids that are this brazenly disrespectful and disruptive would be disrespectful and disruptive without phones too. Most kids aren’t though, no matter how much alarmist media wants them to be. It’s a good old fashioned moral panic. Punish the actual wrongdoers, leave the test of the kids alone.
I don’t think wanting kids to pay attention in school is alarmist panic, to me your comment is more inflammatory than the post. Whether they should do it for just classes or not, or if they should take a punishment first approach can be debated, but out of all media and journalism, this is not alarmist.
And most kids already do. People have been complaining about “kids today” for literally thousands of years. Probably longer, we just don’t have records of it. There have always been troublemakers, and there always will be. People have been blaming everything from literature to TV to music to video games to, nowadays, phones. This, too, will blow over, and it’ll be fine.
And why would these children comply with a phone ban if they don’t comply with anything else?
So you didn’t read the article.
Schools are literally mini-prisons that feed into actual prison.
The important thing is not reasonable control but complete control.
There’s a fine line between being allowed to have your phone in school and mitigating its usage. I don’t entirely disagree with you, but I do think you’re being a bit too… Strong, about your stance.
When I was in middle school, phones were banned through and through. Weren’t allowed to be on, weren’t allowed out, etc. One day I think at lunch period, I was digging through my backpack while walking and the phone flew out of the bag. It was confiscated by the jerk volunteer and given to the principal, and I had to get it with my parents after school. It’s was embarrassing and I knew it was wrong because I had done nothing wrong. This fits to your point.
Everyone involved with a rational mind knew it was bullshit. However, this was also the same school that had major issues with gang violence. We had a (pretty reasonable) dress code policy that involved no local gang colors - no red, no blue, no purple. Phone were banned because there had been a driveby shooting that was called in by a gang affiliated student who got into an argument. From their perspective, they wanted to take no chances from insane 11-13 year olds who were already smoking weed and active in gangs.
I grew up in the ghetto where school is the only opportunity for people to get out of a terrible situation. My high schools graduating class was the first to have reached over 74% graduation rate in over a decade. This school (literally nicknamed Jail For Kids), had actual students with probation officers. We had multiple lockdowns monthly, almost all of which were due to people with weapons and police activity nearby.
The point I’m getting at is that, to an extent, schools absolutely mold and shape the status quo. However, it’s completely wrong to make the assumption that all schools feed into the prison industrial complex. In my area, school was the one chance a kid who grew up slinging had to get out, and for many in my class it was.
I agree with you that schools have a number of issues, but from what I’ve read here today I don’t entirely agree about your stance, from having grown up in and worked with schools like this as an adult. And to get back on topic, students not being allowed to use their phones during class is not a bad thing. During lunchtime, I agree a ban is too much, however I can also understand wanting to keep students socialized with each other. That 30 minutes during lunch doesn’t need to be spent on your phone, when you have the rest of your day at home to do so.
After Covid, in my area, this dynamic changed entirely. By the time I came back from college and started working, kids weren’t involved in that anymore. Middle school was completely normal, kids weren’t affiliated with gangs, had no idea what weed was, let alone the other stuff. But the one thing they all had in common was the debilitating addiction to their phone. You can’t go 5 minutes without seeing a child smashing their finger on the screen, in classes, during lunch, after school, on the bus. Just walking around with their eyes glued to their phone.
And I get it, I’ve been a screen kid too. I’ve always loved tech and games, still spend way too much time on it. But as a kid we had more options, our entire lives weren’t spent engaging through the phone, whereas now that is how you have to engage with others. When we had playtime growing up, only a portion of it was spent on the PlayStation and a majority of the rest was imagination and exploring. Then when we were done, I’d explore the Internet on a laptop with Neopets, Gamefaqs, or Gaia Online.
To me, it seems that the intent is pretty obvious. Students have had a really difficult time being properly engaged in school due to how poor quality the level of schooling had become from the changes after 2016 that were made from the Secretary of Education, then further floundered through Covid. When schools came back into session, the level of dependency to phones has grown exponentially, and these students abilities to go without have been shortened drastically.
If the one common trend among all these students is that poor support during a critical period of education led to the overabundance of cell phone dependence, doesn’t it make sense to consider banning it, to at least try and see if it results in a positive change?
From what I’ve read from you, it seems like the answer would be no, because it’s taking away the freedom. Which, sure. But shouldn’t we also make as many efforts as possible to prepare our students? If the options are 1) teach people or 2) let them ignore it and spend all their time doing nothing, wouldn’t we choose to avoid option 2?
The way I have experienced it, we need to allow for healthy technological exploration while encouraging the focus on school studies. Right now, I’m honestly more on the side FOR banning phones from schools because I’ve seen firsthand the way students use them. When I was in highschool, it was common for people to put in headphones and ignore the teacher, and it was common for the teacher to put them on blast for it. When I go to do my job at the schools, it is a majority of the students using headphones or their phone during class to ignore the teacher. The teachers can’t do anything about it, the parents don’t care, and so what options are left? We just let our youth grow up going to school for 12 years ignoring every part of it?
That’s a recipe for disaster. We’re already seeing the effects of this with Gen Z entering the workplace (and I don’t mean your standard retail or 9-5, I work in performing arts) and while many have been beyond amazing, there are a few who clearly are struggling. I worry this will be the case as more younger generations begin trying to navigate their career choices. As I said at the beginning, there is a clear line between trying to motivate the usage of phones in spaces where their presence isn’t needed, and outright controlling people. In my opinion, mitigating cell phone usage in students isn’t an attempt at control. It’s an attempt at giving students a chance to thrive.
Btw: I definitely think we should adjust curriculums to allow for more engaging education. For some odd reason, the usage of cell phones in certain classes is way, way down. For example, yearbook, art, music, and digitally related classes (hardware/software) almost none of the students pull out their phone during class. Almost as if having students engaged in something they are interested in is a way to mitigate them using their phones to entertain themselves. I can’t imagine why. (/////S)
Instead we are seeing further funding cuts to these programs, so that’s great…
Tl;Dr I don’t disagree, but I also do.
Gamefaqs and Gaia, you’re taking me back. :)
One thing that leans me towards technocrit’s more absolutist stance on schools is how different they are now compared to when I was in high school (2003-2007):
Schools have become much more prison-like since then. My partner is a high school teacher, and all the stuff I remember being important parts of socializing like recess, gym, free periods, clubs, band, theater, etc, have been absolutely slashed.
There are schools now that are trying to enforce “no talking in the hallway” rules in place.
My partner is on teacher conversation boards where other teachers are lamenting that kids talk to each other too much, but they’re locked inside with each other for 8 hours against their will! People are treating kids like school is their job, but it’s completely uncompensated from the kids’ view.
Is school an important tool for social mobility? Yeah, absolutely, and I don’t think either I or technocrit would advocate abolishing schools, but they need to be heavily reformed in terms of what they actually offer the students before I’m comfortable discussing the next thing that schools want to strip away from them.
I graduated in 2013 and my first two years of highschool we lost our extracurricular classes, music and theater, which only came back in my senior year, so I definitely understand that. My class was on the cusp, as now schools bring in programs like the one I work with in order to teach them music and theater. It is not nearly the same as an actual course.
I think the examples you mention have been exacerbated by the changes made during Sec. Of Education’s Betsy DeVoss time, which some states have really shined to, so I think this is something that varies widely by region. California instituted few of the national policies outside of the leniencies on homeschooling curriculums, so so just like California in 2016, some states in 2020 are doing the same by igno, and these states that have weaker support for education have suffered immensely. I cannot even imagine what the landscape looks like in Arizona, Texas, the Carolina’s/Dakota’s, Florida.
In that regard I definitely don’t disagree, but I’ve noticed that our current Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, the pushes have been trying to make public schools more able to deal with the problems they have on their own - here’s money set aside, here’s better Internet for your schools… Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis just cut funding for arts programs entirely in Florida.
So if the states don’t want the help and avoid the wider national policies put in place to help them, I really have to wonder how much of it is regional microcosms that are actively trying to impede on the public education system from being effective. Or rather, a branch of our government that doesn’t want to educate people. To that end, I don’t think the education system should be dismantled and I don’t think the original commenter necessarily does either. It’s clearly flawed since not even 2 different states, but 2 different local counties have wildly different experiences, just based on the county’s school board and how rich the area may happen to be.
From personal experience, John F. Kennedy high school, or “Jail For Kids”, in my freshman year I witnessed our senior class try and join the U.C. Berkeley College walkouts, which resulted in a student getting tased when an altercation between a student and an officer happened resulting in a stampede, which the tasing prevented. I mentioned the lockdowns, but not that it wasn’t entirely uncommon for them to last over 2 hours after the end of the day, but we couldn’t leave due to safety concerns. My sophomore year we had metal detectors installed at the entrance (due to students bringing guns on campus). So I definitely understand how easily it has shifted into what you’re talking about with your partners experience.
I just wonder how much of the changes are in areas where education isn’t something that matters to the politicians making the local policy. I know for a fact that some areas are unaffected entirely, my friends ritzy high school in Malibu and my local highschool in Orinda for rich white students are still making kids doctors and senators both in the top 400 schools in the U.S.
I don’t know what solution there is, other than making all aspects of education the most imperative factor to the success of the U.S. Clearly that’s not of interest, but I can’t trust homeschooling either because of how heavily co-opted it has become by the anti-vax/alt right crowd, and that every homeschooled child I worked with in California were not on the same level as their peers and didn’t have basic foundations – high schoolers who are struggling with sentence structure.
And I know literacy has become an even more widespread issue through and post-covid, but if homeschooling is the answer to combat it and the students I’ve met are even further behind… Granted, I’m just one person in one area and I don’t expect this to be how it is everywhere, but anytime I hear about it online, the people working with homeschooled children say they’re struggling and the people trying to homeschool their kids are complaining about the state requirements. It just doesn’t give me a lot of hope.
Anyway, I went on a bit of a tangent. I agree with your last sentence entirely, I’ve just also seen the damage that not caring about phones in class has had on the students. Post Covid screen dependency is an ongoing symptom of a wider issue though, and I agree that restriction of them at all isn’t the solution.
My personal stance has always been accountability to the individual, so if you’re using it in class for work then I’m fine with it. That means, using it when it’s appropriate and practicing self control/focus by limiting what you do on the device. This inherently forces the students to not have it at specific times, while encouraging using all the tools at their disposal. And if a student is playing around on their phone, I ask them to leave the class or write their notes by hand for the rest of it.
It’s okay to get bored or get distracted, and it’s okay for a teacher to set a reasonable boundary. We are an outside program, so the students 97% of the time want to be there and a majority of the time have no reason to be on their phone in the first place (are you really going to be texting while dancing, acting, or playing an instrument?). But full on authoritarianism is never the way, it’s frustrating that it’s like… the go to solution instead of doing the work to figure out what needs to be changed.
While I do agree that rules that are clear oversteps; like “No Talking in the halls”; should be curbed; I don’t think depriving students of their phones is on the same level.
Kids should be required to pay attention when they are a student. Banning things that disrupt classrooms from functioning is a fundamental thing we all should agree needs to be done. In short; the child should have learned something that was being taught before leaving that classroom if reasonably possible.
Do I think that means schools must run like prisons? Hell no. But I do believe the teachers and administration need the ability to contain disruptions in class.
I’d be all for phones in schools if they were school-issued devices that were tailor-made to be educational and actively contributed to the classroom and learning environment…but those sorts of implementations are very sparse and unlikely these days; and tend to be scoffed at because of their cost.
Phones in pockets are damaging, too, FYI. Children 15 and under shouldn’t have smart phones at all, ideally, but definitely not at school
It makes sense, I really like what this principal did, and he was fully aware that kids were addicted and were going to go through a withdrawal period. I think the pouches are a good thing, they may have gotten addicted during covid, but now is the time to end that and make sure the next wave of kids don’t suffer the same. I really liked the results:
Gabe Silver, another eighth-grader, echoed that sentiment. When the pouches first arrived, “everyone was miserable and no one was talking to each other,” he said. Now he can hear the difference at lunch and in the hallways. It’s louder. Students are chatting more “face to face, in person,” Gabe said. “And that’s a crucial part of growing up.”
Some students hadn’t realized how much their phones diverted their focus. Nicole Gwiazdowski, 14, followed the earlier rule not to use her cellphone in class. But even in her pocket, it was still a distraction. Her phone would buzz five to 10 times a day with notifications, she said, prompting her to take it out and check it.
Everyone is paying more attention in class these days, she said. And it turns out that being separated from your phone for the day isn’t as big a deal as some students feared.
“People thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to miss so much,’” Nicole said. “You don’t miss anything. Nothing important is happening outside school.”
Thank [some deity] for video chats, those little bastards couldn’t spell to save their lives 😅
I’m an early gen Y. I knew maybe 4 people who had a cell phone, and only one of them could record a 30 second, shitty quality video. Kinda glad phones weren’t in constant use when I was in school.
Based on my interactions with teachers, the administrative class that runs these schools are cowards who don’t want to deal with angry parents, nor the liability if the phones get confiscated and then stolen/damaged. There’s also a lot of parents who want to text their kids during the school day and get mad when they can’t. A lot of teachers have given up since the higher ups won’t back them up. This happened around 2015 or so, when smartphones became ubiquitous.
Agreed, which is why I liked the princiyin the article and how he handled it
The lack of etiquette is really frustrating. Had a tech student that was always putting in both earbuds as I was speaking. Had to walk over and wave my hand in front of the screen to get their attention.
When they graduated they said they were excited to get a job in the industry. Internally can’t help but think “with what knowledge or experience? You spent the entire class blocking it out.”
“Excuse me child, can you please not hit that crack pipe while class is in session?”
This is not on the kids at all. Kids need to be protected by adults including from themselves.
It’s our job to limit their free access to addictive stuff. Once they’re adults, addiction management becomes their own problem. But these phones are like crack.
Somehow they passed though, right?
Unfortunately, failing classes in public education is not at all common anymore. It requires a lot of documentation, meetings, calls, individualized curriculum adjustments, and a multitude of second chances. On top of that, administration is not a fan because it makes the school look bad in their eyes.
A lot of the teachers I worked with would vent their frustration that it was way too much work to fail a student or get them dropped from the program. Unfortunately, I was too busy figuring out how to update the curriculum from Windows 7, on machines built to run Windows 7, as well as just learning how to teach (my “training” was about half a day of sitting in on other classes), to fight that kind of battle. At some point, it’s a disservice to the rest of the class to spend that time and energy on the ones who are there to coast.
I tried my best. Hopefully everybody learned a few things. If nothing else, I certainly did.
As an education professional: what the hell, dude? It’s not unfortunate that we aren’t just dropping struggling students without first carefully examining why they’re not succeeding.
You might be right that you can’t let some students detract from the class for other students, but the solution there is advocating for better funding and more staff to be able to give every student what they need, whether they’re above or below the expectation for their age.
Saying it’s “unfortunate” that students don’t fail (read: ruin their whole god damn lives) as often anymore is blaming our most vulnerable YOUTH for the systemic problems of our society. It’s not their job to be what the school environment wants them to be, they don’t even have a choice about whether or not they are there. It’s our (as educators, and as tax paying and voting community members) responsibility to make sure they get the education they need to be functional members of our society.
We even have huge bodies of research to reinforce this. It’s not a secret that the school environment excels at making nice workers, not critical-thinking and well-adjusted adult humans.
Take it up with the school board! Take it up with the local, state, and federal government! Take it up with the voters!
To add, this was many years ago now, but my school let me continue to the next grade despite getting failing grades in multiple of my classes. There’s a strong “no child left behind” mentality (at least in the state I grew up in), which imo is a good thing, but the approach is to just pass people anyway rather than try to address why they are struggling.
Ah yes… Affectionate condescension and authoritarianism. The best kind.
The same way that I’d call my cat a little shit if she was being a brat for the fun of it like she does sometimes
I usually let my students keep their devices, but I had one student… I had asked everyone to write 5 sentences about a made up place. The kid was on his phone, showing things to his classmates while assuring me he was doing his work. Everyone finished but him, with nothing. I let every other student share their answers first to buy him time, then when it was his turn, nothing. I took away his phone and he had it done in less than a minute.
Sounds like you should have taken his phone away when everyone else had finished, or before that, since he was distracting others. Also sounds like the assignment wasn’t challenging enough for him.
You’re right on that I should have taken his phone away sooner, but he was the weakest student in class. Three of his sentences were the same sentence said more and more poorly each time. Not sure what he thought he was getting away with there. Of course I did a peer correction check of his presentation and had him do it again.
Ouch. So he didn’t actually complete the assignment in a minute…
Technically, no. In fact, if you want to be a stickler for details, it was actually 8 sentences, not five, and it was absolutely longer than a minute, but I encouraged the class to help him. It’s a 1-2 week ESL program in the Mediterranean, and he was an Italian 12 year old who likely signed up for girls on beaches than speak English. The Italian government is apparently paying students’ ways into programs like the one I teach at in order to improve general English proficiency across the country, so we end up with a lot of kids who just come to party.
It’s disappointing but not surprising to see so many people (on lemmy) willing to violently control children and their access to tech, information, etc.
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/thousands-young-people-told-us-why-kids-online-safety-act-will-be-harmful-minors
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/schools-and-edtech-need-study-student-privacy-year-review-2022
It’s pretty telling when people don’t want to do anything about the many other much bigger causes of psychological harm. Where’s the law that stops cops from harassing minority youth? Yeah right.
Peeps are literally upvoting Ron DeSantis. Fascism is not the goal here. Wake up, y’all.
Come off it, not being allowed to be on your cell phone during school hours isn’t the same as KOSA.
The APA document you linked even specifically discusses the effects of social media (what do you think they’re using their phones for?) on mental health.
Christ almighty, that was dramatic.
Not being able to use your cell phone for the duration of the school day is fascism.
Fascinating.
I always wonder what kind of experiences people like this had in their life to reach such a state of delusion. They also claimed schools were “literally mini-prisons that feed into into actual prison” and suggested that asking students to pay attention in class was “authoritarianism”.
Ironically, I had friends in school who had come from juvy. I guess you could say prision fed into school instead? I’d love to ask them their opinions on that statement though and see how similar to prison school really was.
As far as I can tell, that person is just rage baiting. If they genuinely believe school is the same as prison, having visited one myself (not for myself), all I can say is they should actually visit one and see for themselves what a prison is actually like.
Even if they had a terrible experience in school and it genuinely felt like prison, most of us got through school absolutely fine with no long-term issues. You have to be seriously removed from reality to think all children hate school and turn into young adults with severe trauma because of it.
You don’t have kids huh?
I have a kid, I spent 10 years working with kids professionally, and I agree with this dude.
In fact, lots of people, myself included, are drawn to leftist anarchism BECAUSE of lessons we learned about the failures of authoritarianism in school from parents and teachers. It’s always super annoying to see parents and teachers settling comfortably into an authoritarian role with their own kids, after hearing them wax emphatically about the effects of authoritarianism in adult society. I’m surrounded by hypocrites, and it’s not harmless. It’s like everybody either forget what it’s like to be kids, or think that the lessons of adulthood give them license to stop caring about those “little” problems, (and be fricken condescending in the process) when actually they just find it “easier” or it “feels safer” to them.
I have friends who we’re excellent teachers, but left the school system in absolute despair because they went in intending to be collaborative, entertaining teachers and passionate advocates for the kids in their care… Only to run up against all the bureaucratic walls the education system throws up to prevent exactly that and create as much conformity as possible… And then the icing on the cake is the vast majority of parents who just don’t get it, Don’t even try to get it, Don’t listen, know what they know, their opinions are their opinions and talking to them is just effing hopeless.
Whenever I’ve dealt with really difficult children, 9 times out of 10 you meet the parents and you’re like “Oh, this all makes sense!” (I can actually only think of three exceptions and two of those were clinical sociopaths). Or you go to work with a school (I’ve worked with and at dozens of schools) and you’re like “Oh, I understand why the kids from this school that I see in my program are always behaving in X, Y and Z dysfunctional ways. How is everyone this clueless and incompetent??” I have watched teachers utterly fail to teach or connect with the kids in their charge, and then watched those same teachers play politics and keep their positions while teachers who are doing a great job get let go (or forced out through social bs) because they want to ignore all that crap. I have had teachers come up to me when I’m running a program or event at their school and had them say “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I saw the kids in your program and those are all the most difficult children we have!” And I’m like “these kids are fine! You’re an authoritarian in an authoritarian environment, aren’t you??”
And I’m literally surrounded by adults who like think they know what they’re doing, and aren’t even trying to get it and MAN do they have opinions they want to share and it pisses me the fuck off.
My kid creates super good boundaries, he emphasizes kindness in communication in ways I was totally unable to do it his age, he advocates for himself (and other kids) like someone a decade older, and if he’s on his phone in class, it’s because the teacher is failing to engage the class. End of discussion. When I see that situation, I’m almost always like “I could teach this class and these kids would not be on their phones, and I have the experience under my belt to prove it.” (And I have seen shit like that).
Respect. You and yours are the educators that treat kids as people and not cattle to be controlled. Mind bending how revolutionary that act is. Thank you
Thank you. But I don’t do it anymore. I could not earn enough money to have a stable life and family.
I have a whole different rant about that.
Just to counterbalance some of the disagreement replies you’ve got - I agree with you, it’s scary how many people are happy to be ageist, even when they’re so progressive on other forms of equality. If you can control people based on how long they’ve been alive, that’s very dangerous in several ways, both to the people who’s autonomy is being stolen, and to others who it sets a precedent for.
Anecdotally, yes it does improve attention in class. I have friends who are teachers here in Australia and they are all massively in favour of the bans after a year of them being in place. The problem with the scoping review quoted in the article is that it conflates several different issues and suggests phone bans in schools are supposed to be a silver bullet for all of them. You are never going to solve the mental health and bullying problems with a phone ban that only lasts half of the day, five days a week. Those problems require much broader policy and greater responsibility from parents. Another problem is that research into the effect of smartphones on schooling (which does actually suggest improvements) generally focuses on test or exam results, which are not a reliable indicator of whether students are actually learning or gaining anything from the experience of school.
To add to your last point, academics aren’t even the biggest problem: it’s youth mental health that’s in a crisis right now. Focusing on academic “success” itself is a problem. Academics will come if students have mental health and resilience.
I agree with the conclusion of the article:
“School’s the same for 120 years, where kids go nine to three, have long holidays, sit at desks and have to regurgitate what the adults tell them to learn, basically all over the world. We’re blaming kids for falling academic standards, we’re blaming the rise in mental ill health, we’re blaming the rise of cyberbullying. Oh, well, it all must be the fault of the mobile phone,” Marilyn Campbell told Al Jazeera.
“I mean, what a simplistic view of how we are educating our children in a different world and taking away that main tool that we’re all using in society and saying, ‘No, the kids can’t have it now’.”
A balanced approach, involving regulated use and clear guidelines, may be the most effective way to harness the benefits of smartphones while minimising their drawbacks, experts say.
The general recommendation of Campbell and Edwards, who carried out the scoping review in Australia, was to leave it to individual schools to determine smartphone use and to focus on helping children to use smartphones positively.
As an educator and parent, I couldn’t disagree more strongly. Smart phones are addiction machines and childhood experience blockers. Children should not have smart phones at all until age 16. Age 16 would be a very appropriate time to introduce smart phones after their harms have been explained in detail at ages 12 through 15.
Banning cell phones during instructional time doesn’t go far enough. Students having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging. (Dumb phones are fine—SMS texting and phone calls are great.)
There has been a precipitous decline in youth mental health globally in nations where cell phones were affordable starting in 2010. The evidence is clear. Smart phones (and, more broadly, addictive dark patterns in all apps/games) are a big problem.
If you want to learn more, read the first chapter of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. (I’d recommend the full book if you want details, but chapter 1 is enough to give you a grounding in the data and the broad strokes of the argument.)
Out of curiosity, (given that in another comment you talked about home schooling) when you call yourself an educator, do you have a teaching certificate in your state, or other professional teaching certification?
I’m not trying to be rude, but since you began by invoking the title of “educator” as an appeal to authority in this area, I think it’s important to clarify that you are in fact such.
I’m certified to teach in my jurisdiction. I have a teaching degree, and I have completed additional professional training specific to this topic through conferences, books, and other professional development (PD).
I can’t source conference talks or teacher PD groups, so I sourced a popular press book that’s approachable to laymen.
Awesome, thank you.
“My jurisdiction” could mean their house and their degree could be from PragerU or some other sham online college. The way everything is worded so vaguely leads me to believe this is the case.
No reason to assume malice just because they’re not listing out identifying information. I don’t list my schools or company names online either. It’s not as though we could (or would) validate it anyways.
I mean, why wouldn’t we just ban smartphones for everyone then?
By age 16, there’s reason to think that youth can handle the addictive nature of phones, with support. Same for adults.
That said, yes, we probably should make dark patterns illegal, in general.
I am in full agreement that cell phones should not be out of the backpack or pocket unless there is an emergency or it’s lunch time / outside of class.
But for the love of critical thinking, also please ban the teachers from using ChatGPT to create their tests for them. I was appalled at finding out teachers at my kid’s school are doing that. While I support any tool (and funding!) that can make the lives and jobs of teachers easier, using a tool like ChatGPT is as irresponsible as telling kids to just Google it. And teachers/administrators should damn well know better.
Cool, so pay teachers more and give them ample time and resources to not need to cut corners.
Also using ChatGPT is fine, not checking the results after is not.
Agreed on the teachers getting more pay and time.
And I agree that checking for objective fact with respect to teaching and testing is necessary.
But…ChatGPT is not a credible source. So using it in the classroom is not exactly fine (outside of showing it as an example of a source that isn’t credible). It is in its infancy and any educator who uses it in the classroom and relies upon it is doing a considerable disservice to those they educate. That’s like teaching using Wikipedia. I get that it has information, many times accurate, but it should never be used as a source.
As a commentary…Far too often in this modern world people (not you, just a general sense of society) seem to see something that may be 50, or 75 percent accurate and claim it as fact. This is how entertainment news organizations function to get ratings. And if kids are to be taught critical thinking they must be taught how to discern what is or isn’t credible.
Otherwise we’re lost. And perhaps we already are.
You’re only considering one narrow use of LLMs (which they’re bad at). They’re great for things like idea generation, formatting, restructuring text, and other uses.
For example, I tend to write at too high a writing level. I know this about myself, but it’s still hard (with my ADHD) to remain mindful of that while also focusing on everything else that crowds my working memory when doing difficult work. I also know that I tend to focus more on what students can improve instead of what they did well.
So ChatGPT is a great tool for me to get a first pass of feedback for students. I can then copy/paste the parts I agree with for praise, then “turd sandwich” my suggestions for improvement in the middle. Or I can use ChatGPT to lower the writing level for me.
For tests, it’s great to get it to generate a list of essay questions. You can feed GPT 4 up to 50 pages of text, too, so the content is usually really accurate if you actually know how to write good prompts.
I could go on. LLMs are a great tool, and teachers are professionals who (I hope) are using it appropriately. (Not just blindly copying/pasting like our students are… But that’s a whole other topic.)
They may eventually be useful in this space. But for now, they are more work than they’re worth and completely discredited for proper fact-based research. And the teachers my kid has had who used it for testing resulted in completely wrong answers that the teacher didn’t bother to check.
Yes that is the teacher’s fault, but so is using it to generate a test in the first place.
I will die on this hill. LLMs of any kind right now are not something that should be trifled with in a critical thinking-based curriculum. In time, perhaps. But not yet, not when LLMs are so easily manipulated (whether trained on public data or private). The various implementations haven’t earned credible trust despite CEOs drooling over them.
It’s a shame your child’s teacher used the tool incorrectly. That was unprofessional of them.
If it helps, there are people like me running training sessions for educators to let them know what LLMs are (and are not) capable of. The main point I was pushing this year was that LLMs don’t know or understand anything. “The I in LLM stands for Intelligence.”
I like that last statement. I might steal it 🤣
Thanks for your insights.
Depends how they use chatgpt, if they use it tlfor content that can be troublesome, but here its being used as a format tool. You copy some previous test and ask it to reorder the numbered questions ( to precent class before giving the AACDBA series of answers) or use to copy paste in a large test and tell it to strip out every other quesotion, renumber and replace body text with double line spacing. For stuff like that it is a godsend.
Perhaps. I concede maybe it makes mundane tasks simpler and quicker.
But it should most definitely not be used for fact-based research and testing. Not yet and not until it is proven to produce only credible fact backed by credible sources.
There is no emergency that can’t be handled by the adults of the school.
I can understand needing a phone for the commute, but at school it should stay in the bag turned off.
There are emergencies the adults at the school won’t understand. This has happened a few times to my spouse, where the nurse/teachers kept brushing off issues they didn’t understand, ranging from things like asthma to strep throat.
Otherwise, I agree that the phones should be put away during class.
I hear you. But my child will have a cell phone in case of a real emergency when the adults don’t properly act. While I trust teachers rather implicitly, my experience with most school administrators is far less stellar. Also, a student calling 911 when the teacher is having a heart attack or some other life threatening event will save time and possibly their life.
Barring any emergency situations, my child’s phone better be put away.
Our school had a buzzer, the office anawers the intercom, you tell them the emergency and they arrange everything. Cell phones really arent needed unless you are out on a field trip maybe
School shootings, intercom not working, teacher not available and student bleeding on the floor, etc, etc. There are numerous reasons for safety for the availability of a cell phone.
A dumb phone can do that without the damage caused by smart phones.
When did I mention the use of a smart phone?
Because people are out of touch, saved you an article
Well I don’t think that is the case. Parents and teachers are observing students not paying attention.
I would think if an educator can teach a full lesson, while also ensuring that students retain the information, when the student is watching YouTube, endlessly scrolling reddit or lemmy, or on Instagram this wouldn’t be an issue.
The problem is that students aren’t retaining the knowledge being provided to them.
Here’s the thing, in general. Phone or no phone, the problem your mentioned is down to the teacher. I’ve had good teachers that are able to make a lesson entertaining and guess what. That actually works, people aren’t bored to death and shit gets done.
To contrast, boring lessons, even without factoring in phones, nobody gives a shit for good reason. We just focus on something else, wetger that’s a phone or something else isn’t a factor. Its rather the lesson itself
To address the retaining info part. If somebody talked to you for about half an hour on some random thing you don’t care about. How much do you think you would remember or focus on. Spoiler alert, probably not much
So the students are out of touch?
I’m currently rebuilding my math foundation and part of that process was tracking down high quality educational resources with passionate instructors, rigor, and entertainment factor (because I want stuff to recommend to parents). I did eventually find something that was better than what I got in grade school, but I have to say that the Pythagorean Theorem just isn’t going to be as interesting as social media feeds and entertainment products custom tailored to my preferences. No teacher is realistically going to be able to compete with the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry for attention and tech companies are abusing psychology research to make their shit as addictive as possible. It’s not the biggest problem with the US educational system, but it is one of many, so I’m down with restricting smartphone access at schools.
Who is still going into teaching?
The pay is utter shite and you are dealing with other people’s children most of whom didn’t get much parenting.
Then these “parents” spend all a lot energy harassing teachers about their crotch fruit poor behavior and or performance.
The ones who know this and still want to better society by teaching are real heroes.
society is not getting better
At this point it’s more like delaying the bleed out while calling for help to arrive but that’s still good to do
Got several kids at regular public schools (not in US) and their policy never allowed phones during school hours from the start. It is pragmatic and doesn’t cause any drama. The kids get messages home if needed and can collect phones when they leave. It is a relatively normal society where kids walk and ride to school by themselves and parents aren’t obsessed with stalking kids or bubble wrapping them.
Schools have a duty of care and sadly are as much baby sitters for working parents as they are places of learning and phones create more problems than they introduce opportunities.
Just say you hate neurodivergent kids already…
I don’t see the connection between neurodivergence and phones
People would film me being acoustic and use the footage to bully me 🥰
A lot of research actually shows that neurodivergent kids rely on online spaces and communities, especially for companionship and social interaction. Forcing a lot of neurodivergent kids to sit in a chair for 8 hours and stare at a whiteboard never worked, but everyone used to just not care. They just sat there suffering, got sent to ISS and ignored, or got kicked out and sent to juvie.
The nice thing is that the education system has an answer for that: home schooling! At least in my jurisdiction, the autism funding parents get is enough to send autistic students to specialized small-class tutoring services during the day (using public funds), so the burden on parents isn’t that high. Parents then get to focus on experiential learning with their kiddos outside of tutoring time, following their interests (and regulation).
Regardless, cell phones in the classroom are a problem for everyone, but especially for AuDHD/ADHD students.
Home schooling is never the correct answer as a societal solution for education.
Special needs education is a field that requires specialized training. This is something you need a degree for, not something parents can wing from self-study. It’s great that there is public funding for some people to allow them to get their kids specialized tutoring, but that is not common, and isn’t a substitute for actual school systems with IEP or other Special Education-trained professionals.
Yes, that’s why I specified above that “home schooling” usually comes with lots of extra funding.
In my jurisdiction, an autistic student gets ~$30K of funding, half of which is earmarked for education specifically. In a public school, that gets maybe 45 min of EA time + being on a learning support teacher’s caseload. With “home schooling”, that $15K can pay for enrollment in a specialized small-group part-time program for academics.
The other $15K funding can pay for respite workers, if parents need more time for work, or lots of other things.
Also, parents are much better equipped to follow their children’s interests with authentic experiential learning than any public school can be. Schools can’t afford 1-to-1 attention, and parents know their children best. With academic support covered, parents can focus on following their children’s interests.
These students are also followed by a teacher (like me) and a learning support teacher to help coordinate resources, support workers, and other planning. There are layers of support.
It’s an incredibly effective educational model.
I don’t know if something similar is available in the US. I imagine it varies by state, and I would not expect Red states to support programming like this.
Another comment already said everything I was going to say in a far more eloquent manner, so refer to @t3rmit3@beehaw.org 's comment below :P
A camera in every pocket isn’t so good for the ASD kid being mainstreamed into high school with a severe phobia of having his picture taken.
I’m not sure why I see people treating banning smartphones in class like child abuse or something. The only explanation I have is that it’s a cultural thing. Obviously, if used appropriately, a smartphone is a valuable tool, but this is only if they are used appropriately, which some students will do and some won’t (and this varies as well from school to school and class to class). Where I went to school, a significant number of students did not use them appropriately during class, so not allowing them made sense since they distracted from the lesson.
So, why do I have so little confidence that they’ll be used properly? Some people are posting anecdotes about their time as teachers in this thread, so I’ll post one from the student’s perspective. Despite smartphones not being allowed in my classes in high school, people used them anyway. Why? The teachers wouldn’t notice, or some might just not say anything. I played the heck out of one mobile game with my friends in both of my history classes, and nothing ever happened. I knew people who’d be listening to music during class too, and completely ignore the lecture itself. Almost everyone with a phone out used it as a distraction from class, not as a tool to help them learn. Despite there being a rule against them, I’d estimate more than half of the people I went to school with used them during class anyway.
So why didn’t the teachers enforce it more strictly? My guess is because it wasn’t safe. Many of my friends carried knives at school for self defense. There were a lot of violent students, ranging from fights in the hallway to students being part of a gang. To be clear, this wasn’t by any means the majority of the student body, but it wasn’t an insignificant portion of it either.
The violence escalated dramatically after the 2016 election, where students (who were understandably upset about the result) got up and threatened all the white people in the school. I had graduated by then, but I knew people who had to barricade themselves in a room with a mob of angry knife-wielding students on the other side of the door. Many of the students in the room weren’t even old enough to vote. One teacher left the school because of all the threats she’d received.
Also, not sure how common it is to have a “senior prank day” at other schools, but we had one every year. The “pranks” ranged from spray painting threats to teachers on the outside of the gym, to destroying school property. Once they had to put classes on pause while a company came out to replace the locks on all the doors since the “prank” was to destroy the locks so the doors couldn’t be opened.
This school was pretty tame too, compared to some of the schools I’d heard stories of. One teacher I talked to at a different school had stories about all the times some student threatened her or pulled a gun out on her or whatever, and it honestly just sounded like hell.
Anyway, I wouldn’t say I blame the kids for this behavior, and while I have strong opinions against feed-driven social media, I don’t think it was a major contributor to these behaviors (this was before social media was as big as it is now). I think it really comes down to parenting, whether the parents are just bad at raising kids, or they don’t have time or resources to properly raise their kids, or their kids have needs they don’t know how to (or refuse to) satisfy. Regardless, a teacher can only do so much, so rather than trying to correct behaviors in students at the risk of their own lives, I think a lot of them just put up with it for the sake of the students who do want to learn.
So if the rule is going to be broken anyway, why have a rule against smartphones? It sets the expectation of students regarding smartphone usage, and gives teachers an opportunity to enforce that rule when they feel it’s appropriate (and safe) to do so.
Edit: I should also add that I don’t think most schools are this violent. This school was exceptionally bad, but it wasn’t as uncommon as you might think to have a school this violent.
In general; I don’t think banning them will help. By all means; confiscate phones which do not get put away during class and return them after class. Give teachers and administrators the authority to do this.
Offer appropriate places to securely store and charge phones in each classroom until the teacher releases them. These places remain “locked” or “inaccessible” until class is over.
Do this from a young age and teach the children how to have moderation through this method.
I do not believe children should be deprived of their devices before and after school. If a student is found to be bullying other kids or students online; then charges can be filed in a school-based court and a Judge can consider ordering the bullying kids to have limited or no access to any smart device unsupervised. This puts the burden on the parents to manage any kids who are misusing the tech outside of school. Similarly the troublemakers can be transferred to other schools.
Students who are being bullied online can simply report this to the teachers or admins and get relief from their tormentors. If they can’t also learn how to get the adults involved in actually troublesome situations; that’s also a problem that needs addressing.
I would encourage students to be open with their parents and teachers about things and definitely also focus on things like social media literacy and how to navigate through tricky situations as well.
Various apps and software tools could be used to manage a student’s phone (During school hours) as well; if and only if needed. They could make this mandatory; but it would only be restrictive on phones of students who misuse their phones; and thus are identified as needing ‘management’. This would ideally only enforce appropriate usage times and optionally; iff the student is being penalized for bullying or misusing; provide a way to disable various apps and browsers while preventing new ones from being installed without parent or teacher consent.
TL;DR: If the kid follows the rules; their phone isn’t going to be locked down. If they don’t; they get the lock-down experience while the adults ensure the kid is educated as needed.
Even if that sounds dystopian; it’s also a way to integrate phones into the school experience which addresses all the issues…and ensures the adults in charge of the students has ample opportunity to educate the kids about how to use their phones correctly…and intervene with a student’s usage if needed while still allowing them to have phones for emergency and necessary use.
You seem to care about this, but just FYI that it’s well studied at this point that having a smart phone at all during school hours is a problem.
It’s not about cyber bullying. Having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging. Children should have dumb phones exclusively until age 16.
Outside of class time sounds good, but it really means that students become fixated on checking all their notifications between classes. This is an experience blocker. Instead of engaging with their peers or teachers, they’re screen zombies caught in addictive dark patterns, generating anxiety constantly all day.
I’ve plugged it already in this thread, but The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt explains this really well , and he brings receipts.
Having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging.
There is not enough scientific evidence of this; and oftentimes studies of this nature are not randomized and controlled; but instead rely on anecdotes and self-reporting by parents.
Outside of class time sounds good, but it really means that students become fixated on checking all their notifications between classes. This is an experience blocker. Instead of engaging with their peers or teachers, they’re screen zombies caught in addictive dark patterns, generating anxiety constantly all day.
If you read; you would know I already advocate for the students being unable to use their phone during school hours. Their phones would remain locked up; much like the article mentions; for the entire school-day.
The only thing I advocate for is for them to have a phone in general so that they have it for when they need it; either in case of emergency or otherwise. Yes; that does mean they have access to it before the schoolday begins and after the final bell rings. That’s intended.
I do believe it is possible to raise children to resist the addiction; but it has to start early.
As for inflicting a ‘dumbphone’ on a child; I do think that’s not necessary all the time. it depends on the child and is definitely one way a parent can control a child’s screen time.
Smart phones in pockets being a problem is supported by robust psychology research. People do the worst at tasks when phones are on the desk in front of them, worse when phones are in their pockets, and best when phones are left in another room even if the devices are turned off, in all cases. It’s even worse if phones are on even without any sort of notification, like vibration. (And, obviously, notifications make things increasingly terrible.)
The research is not at all unclear or anecdotal; it is very strong. Phones are damaging to attention, task completion, and learning. This is established; the only disagreement is to the degree of the effect.
Re: phones in “class”, I think we’re misunderstanding each other due to terminology. Here, “a class” means a single instruction period. I thought you were for banning use during instruction time, but against phones being fully banned at school, but if you mean “class” to be the entire time from first bell to last bell, then we’re in agreement. No smart phones at all during school hours would be a good step.
Hopefully, that might also make parents more aware of the damage smart phones are causing and support a societal move away from giving youth addiction machines.
All research based on smartphones is based on anecdotal evidence.
It’s even worse if phones are on even without any sort of notification, like vibration.
This is false. There is minimal acceptable evidence that a phone that is online, in a pocket or purse, in a complete silence mode configuration, with no vibration or sound, affects anyone negatively.
I thought you were for banning use during instruction time.
All time spent at any K-12 school institution or local country equivalent; including transition time; is considered instructional time. At least it was by any school principal I’ve ever spoken to, many of whom were holders of American PhDs in education. Laws in all 50 states reflect this typically.
I think children must be taught how to self-regulate with phones for sure. Much like anything and everything; children must be taught how. I personally never struggled with this because all campuses in my home town would confiscate it at least until End of Day. Sometimes they’d attempt to hold the device longer; but that just resulted in parents going to the police and them being forced to return the item. They’d sometimes hold the item until your parent retrieved it however; and that was allowed as long as they returned it the moment the parent requested it. So you really couldn’t rely on parents retrieving it too many times.
I did however get the entire district policy hard limited from “on school grounds” to “In building, from bell to bell” because of the aforementioned involvement of police.
Similarly I will point out we had devices like Game Boys and other portable consoles growing up in the 90s.
You’re missing the point entirely, I think.
If you want to learn about the research, Jonathan Haidt’s book includes links to studies on the effects of cell phones. I don’t have time to find the sources for you right now, but you can look there if you want to learn more.
Random book, even one mentioned in the article, along with anecdotes by the author, lists more and better studies than the 1,317 studies scoped by the Queensland University of Technology? Doubt.
The actual analysis itself makes it clear that the research specifically on cell phone bans is lacking. In particular, of the 1317 studies, only 22 were relevant, more than half of which were Master Degree research projects, not peer-reviewed studies. It’s fair that the evidence for cell phone bans in schools is inconclusive, but that’s because there isn’t enough quality reach yet to draw conclusions.
I was actually referring above to studies on cell phones in general for task success, non-specific to schools.
Why not banning them in schools, are they needed for studying?
In the US you sometimes hear that phones in class are necessary to see if your kids are OK in a school shooting scenario.
I think this isn’t a good argument, since school shootings are rare, and it’s unclear if each student having a phone would do more harm than good in that kind of situation.
Also, dumb phones are fine. SMS and phone calls aren’t a problem, it’s smart phones that are addiction machines.
FA/FO
We’re on phase 2
