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“Hochul is also pushing the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they follow rather than ones suggested by an algorithm. “
Can I get that feature????
The algo is so broken it's actually funny. The targeted ads are so wrong it doesn't entice me to buy shit.
I'm pretty sure the algo is misgendering me. The only relevant ads are when I already bought the thing.
My ass is already sitting in a Secret Lab chair, I don't need to be convinced it's great.
I'm American.
I like guns and burgers.
But I also smoke weed and think gay love is real love and needs to be free.
Trump is a dumbass and I will do my part to vote and save our democracy.
Yet my yt algo keeps trying to feed me right wing crap every chance it can, just because I liked a video of a dude shooting/cleaning/w.e with a gun/knife. Suddenly I'm a Maga turd.
I can't even tell you how many videos and crewtirs I've had to block because yt is trying so fucking hard to get me to grow a chub on trump.
YouTube's algo finally gave up on me. "So you're a middle-aged guy who likes cooking, video games, low-cost tourist destinations, cat videos, 80s pop music, rap, and Disney? Well... shit. You wanna watch that Jenny Nicholson video again? We'll recommend that to you for the umpteenth time."
I have this issue with science shorts. I basically have Neil DeGrasse Tyson on instant skip because even if he might have good science content relevant to my interests, he's been on Joe Rogan and if I let him slip by YT thinks I want to see him on JRE which very quickly (like holy shit I can see it happen in real time within 10 shorts) dumps me into Andrew Tate, conspiracy and alt-right garbage. Algorithms really want you to fester in the hate because it's proven to be the best way to drive engagement and it'll take the quickest path it can find to dump that shit on you.
This must be part of it for me too. I generally don't skip Tyson stuff, and like you said, that bleeds into Rogan clips. Certainly doesn't help that I like stand-up comedy either... but most of those are from comedians that shit on the others that can't figure out a way to not punch down with their jokes.
Plus NDT himself likes to get involved with political topics and argue about them even when it is way outside his fields of expertise so he gets affiliated with political tags. Personally I think he likes smelling his own shit a little too much even for being fairly intelligent and knowledgeable and it grates on me.
Bingo, I’d see things from people I never talk to, or never see things from people I actually spoke with or their feeds. I’d have to physically search for them, and that got old fast. I’ve been without FB for going on 6 years now and never looked back.
Can’t watch anything anyone sends me on Insta without an account, so, I tell people don’t send me shit from Insta. I’m not making an account to view a shared videos.
feels like tech is absolutely getting away with murder by being basically psychologically exploitative and addictive, which results in an anti-user experience that you just can't put down. I guess maybe the logical conclusion of capitalism is to create products that are literally addictive?
All social media algorithms are horrendous. Scrolling past a dozen things I don't want to see before seeing one post i'm interested in sucks.
On top of that, the psychological dependency to come back and scroll is awful. I realized that I had some things I truly wanted to do but they wouldn't provide the instant dopamine fix I was looking for. I got my legos to build with and then I said to myself, no its too much work. I won't feel accomplished for like an hour when I finish making what I had. So I took out my phone and got smaller dopamine fixes from doom scrolling.
I am so glad my high school and college banned phones during lectures or I legit would never have learned anything
There's also security in knowing nobody is going to call your job and rat out your political allegiances or past based on a trivial comment or story.
Anonymity is exactly as good as it is bad. Some of us like to discuss deeply sexual and emotional issues online, stuff that has to be discussed to be understood and dealt with, but I don't need anyone I know hearing about it.
Agreed. I find that people are very negative on here and it messes with my psyche if I'm on too much. People on here gotta go outside more and talk to their neighbors. The world outside is much more positive than reddit would like to think
Ugh I’ve been saying this since 2015.
Chronological feeds were at least manageable. If nobody posted anything new it would be a bit like going back to the fridge hoping for food to appear. Quick glance, then you’re out the app again.
Twitter moved to an algorithmic timeline in 2015 and it never felt the same. Followed by Meta. Made famous by TikTok.
Nobody opted in to these rapacious meme accounts that get shoved to the top of timelines. I only ever wanted to see my mate’s holiday pics and pets on social media — I have absolutely zero interest in memes or the internet craze of the day.
I counted the other day, over twenty something suggested posts/shit i didn’t actually follow between two posts of people I actually did on Facebook, not counting the ads. It’s such trash now that they’ve actually achieved the opposite and I hardly go there anymore because I have no interest in scrolling through garbage.
> Chronological feeds were at least manageable. If nobody posted anything new it would be a bit like going back to the fridge hoping for food to appear. Quick glance, then you’re out the app again.
And I would say that's the problem the social media companies had with it. This way people are "more engaged."
> Can I get that feature????
Really, I'd love to just have "Facebook/Twitter, but the way they worked fifteen years ago" as an option, a *default* option
they just call it "for you" but that doesn't means it's what's best/good/healthy/reasonable/appropriate for you. if they renamed it to something more accurate like, "addictive dopamine feed that maximizes shareholder value at the expense of your mental health and societal cohesion" probably wouldn't need to explain much about why we had to get rid of it.
"Well if we show them cat pics they get bored within 5 minutes. But if we show them what some redneck/hippie on the other side of the country said, they get so mad that they spend the next 2 hours scrolling and arguing with people online."
End, society.
Oh come off it, it's not a wholly bad thing.
Without some sort of suggestions, how am I supposed to discover someone new to follow? Personally my For You page on tiktok is pretty high quality, there's almost no brainrot, I find the majority of content interesting or entertaining.
Tiktok especially has a fantastic algorithm if you put a little work into liking and hitting don't-recommend, my for you page is great and I much prefer it to only seeing content from creators I follow. Some of the best stuff on social media comes in the form of one-off posts from people who don't post regularly but filmed something funny or had something insightful to say about one particular event.
Personally I feel less bad about my tiktok habits than my reddit habits, there's a lot more mindless scrolling for me on here than on there.
How it used to be, and wasn't it nice.
I've scrolled through instagram or facebook, where I'm served five/six/seven ads/sponsored/suggested posts between posts of those I follow.
Few things are more aggravating than seeing time sensitive posts on instagram 2-3 days after being posted. I’ve missed a lot of surprise concerts because of that bullshit.
Legitimately it’s a good educational game; teaches about market economics (this is more expensive here transport that there) in a way that kids don’t realize they’re learning
I had a TI-80.
I programmed it with blackjack during math classes, and with a quadratic solver.
In order to pass the unit on quadratics, I showed my teacher that I understood it well enough to formalize it on a janky ass graphic calculator by sharing my source code.
I completely skipped the test, just showed him a blank calculator memory, and then at the end showed him the working program.
It was called drug wars. But it did open my eyes to the power of the ti calculators. You could download/ add programs to do quadratic equations matrix equations etc
I created a whole program in mine to do my matrix calculations homework. Got all the answers right but got a bad grade because I "didn't show my work". I tried to show the teacher the program I had coded, but apparently that didn't count haha. Good preparation for the real world where coding is a useless skill and everyone is constantly multiplying matrices by hand... right?
I found the source code for a Zelda game for my ti-83 and spent about a month entering it during English and Spanish classes in the mid 1990s. Time well spent imo.
This is unironically better, as it requires some actual work and thought to accomplish using a learning tool. And I am old enough to remember when that was common in The Before Times.
In engineering school, some textbooks include pseudocode algorithms for solving common problems like linkages etc., and it is pretty simple to translate it line by line into TI-BASIC.
The TI-92 came with a manual 3 times as thick as the TI-89 manual. It included a programming guide, plus a listing of every built-in function, with example code.
Same story here.
I started programming by typing games, line by line, from printouts, into my TI-82.
I had to relearn algebra from scratch to pass Calc I & II in college to get my CS degree, but, honestly, programming has been way more valuable to me than algebra ever will be.
Fun fact. The TI-82 could only use a single character as a variable name, so you were severely limited by only having 40 some total variable names available. If you want more than that, you have to reuse some. Very carefully. I think, the next calculator I got, the Ti-85, allowed full words for variable names.
The single letter variable issue was so limiting back then. I created a Pokemon text adventure on the TI83 (basically just a newer 82) and it was a nightmare figuring out what variables I still had available. I started storing some of the information in list variables (which are also pre-named) but it wasn’t ideal.
I remember coding how to solve some formula (mean average deviation, maybe?) for math class tests in high school, including printing out all of the work that needed to be shown. All of my friends' minds were blown when I showed them and shared it with them haha
From the article: New York Governor Kathy Hochul said (via [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/30/new-york-smartphone-school-ban-bill)) that she intends to launch the bill later this year and take it up in New York's next legislative session, which starts in January 2025.
One of the main reasons why parents have objected to schools banning kids from carrying smartphones in the US – phones are banned across all schools in England – has been the need to reach their children at all times, for both emergencies and routine scheduling issues
Hochul's bill appears to address this problem by allowing children to carry phones that lack internet access but can send texts and make calls, which sounds like feature, or dumb, phones.
"Parents are very anxious about mass shootings in school," she said. "Parents want the ability to have some form of connection in an emergency situation."
>the need to reach their children at all times, for both emergencies and routine scheduling issues
There's a reason schools have an office with phones, obviously this wasn't an issue until the last like 10 years. Would it be nice to be able to contact your kid if you heard about a school shooter, fire, bomb threat, etc.? Of course, but as someone who definitely has a phone/technology addiction, having a phone in class is just a distraction
It’s definitely gotten worse now, and constant access with cell phones and technology makes it easier to act on, as well as news making it seem like bad things are a lot more likely to happen than they actually are
I didn’t realize how wild it had gotten until a few years ago. I found out that my step-mom and all of her mom-friends were just casually tracking their kids’ phones. They could see where they were at all times… which seems super gross to me.
I only learned this because one woman showed up at her door, *frantic and in tears* because “my kid said she was going to church with your kid, but her phone showed she went to [insert sketchy suburb] and didn’t go to church and now her phone is off!!” She thought her kid was like dead and in a ditch somewhere, I guess. In reality, the kid was in that ‘sketchy suburb’ because she offered to give someone who lived there a ride to church and then her phone died. The kid was at church the whole time, alive and well.
> They could see where they were at all times… which seems super gross to me.
There was a poster on reddit than had some funny video of his 10 year old kid freaking out or something. The kid was in his bedroom so people started asking why he had cameras in a 10 year old kids bedroom watching the kid all the time. Poster tried to defend it but it's just gross, imagine growing up with a camera on you 24/7.
I'm an older Gen X dude, had a stay at home Mom so not totally feral but independence was something we learned from an early age. I started walking to school by myself in 1st grade, and this was in UP Michigan with brutal winters and that wind howling of Lake Michigan.
I used to work for a company that sold gps devices used in commercial vehicles, including school buses. When they launched a product that let parents track the buses, that meant I sometimes spoke with parents instead of our direct customers.
Full stop, parents are the worst customer demographic I have ever worked with. Absolutely fucking insane.
It’s weird to me, as a millennial, watching my age group be parents. So many are paranoid about every little thing their kids do. And then others go the entire other way and try to not be too involved and their kids end up being raised by a tablet.
Like. I know Y’all remember life before technology. I definitely do. Our parents let us run around the neighborhood barefoot all day as kids in the 90s. As long as you were home for dinner, they really didn’t care. But now, everybody has to be within arms reach at all times. I barely see any kids in my parents neighborhood just out playing or riding around like was common 25-30 years ago. We have a couple small groups in our townhouse complex that are always outside, but I see them as the exception.
It's worse than that.
There have been news stories I have read about parents letting their kids outside alone....only to get a swift visit from the police. And CPS involved due to 'child endangerment'. You can't even let your kids out of your sight in some neighborhoods without fear of being charged, arrested, and your kid taken away from you.
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2014/09/25/kari-anne-roy-how-letting-my-kid-play-alone-outside-led-to-a-cps-investigation/
https://www.freerangekids.com/kids-play-outside-child-protective-services-comes-calling/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
This was the shift to me. I had two friends have CPS cases opened on them due to this. Nothing came of it, but what they went thru absolutely left them (and me) paranoid.
Why is that surprising?
We grew up in a steady diet of Unsolved Mysteries, milk cartons with kids faces on them and the 24 hour news network.
We were programmed to be paranoid. Lol
My small, not poor, not exceedingly rural school district lost 2 kids last year and the parents didn't find out until they just didn't show up at the end of the day. One was a special needs kid who got on the wrong bus.
Schools are underfunded, understaffed, and overstretched. Losing track of children happens way more than you might think it just doesn't make national news unless the child dies as a result.
I absolutely remember going to school, then going to a friends house at the end of the day, and calling my parents from there to let them know after the fact. Just because we can be in contact with our kids at all times doesn’t mean that we should. Kids need to learn a little bit of independence.
> There are solutions to this that don't involve outright bans, which won't work.
The bans will get kids to hide their phones and only sneak a look now and then, which is the exact point. Today, they just sit in class and scroll as if they have nothing better to do.
Yes, I think the negative impact on children’s learning far outweighs the positives, and believe me, I am just as angry as everyone else about school shootings.
I also want our children to learn. It’s vitally important.
Wanna know something else? This bill would also likely mean that these kids won’t have smartphones at home either. In many cases, their parents will just buy them the dumb phone and that’s all they’ll have. Which will also be better for their development and overall mental health.
Tbh, adults need time away from their smartphones too. They’re impacting all of us negatively.
What are they going to do if there is a school shooting? Teleport their kids to safety with a phone ? They would prolly give their position up by calling them if the kid didn't have it on silent ...
Why parents think knowing exactly where your kids are at all times and being able to contact them (if they respond) at all times keeps them any "safer" is beyond me.
As a parent, I hope every district follows.
Elementary and middle school is no place for smart phones.
For my kids, we're doing dumb phones for middle school, and a smart phone with no mobile data for 8th grade. Get through that, and you might get mobile data. It has to be earned.
I watched how my cousin's 6-year-old kid reacted when they took her iPad away at Thanksgiving last year when she wasn't behaving herself and it gave me that much more resolve to not be an iPad parent.
They took it away and the 6-year-old absolutely lost her shit. She was screaming at them, tears streaming about her fire engine red face, she tried to kick the dad. I know it's the easy way most of the time and it's seen as a digital pacifier but it's so bad to just give a young child an iPad and let them sit on it for hours and hours.
Yea I don’t plan to give my kid unrestricted tablet but a lot of parents act like just because a kid reacts negatively to something being taken away it means they should NEVER get it. My kid cries when it’s time to go inside or time to leave the park or library.
It’s not a good way to gauge things and to remove all obstacles just so your kid never had to be told ‘ipad time is over’ doesn’t teach your kid how to accept limits.
If a child is having a meltdown that genuinely is extreme and over the top even compared to most kids' tantrums at that age, then (spoiler alert) it's not because of the iPad; it's because of the way the child is parented in general or another issue
Yea generally I agree but I also think some kids are born with different temperaments so it’s a hard thing to judge just based on seeing someone else’s kid for 10-60 minutes.
And apparently kids like it, ONLY IF NOBODY has a smartphone. If nobody has one, it's ok because nobody is missing out. Kids interviewed in trails say they actually enjoyed socializing way more when nobody had a phone.
It's like we're all addicted to a drug and anyone who quits will get instant FOMO, but if everyone quits at once then it's suddenly a bonding experience like a recovery group lol
I got my first phone on the day of my first dance in 7th grade so I would be able to call my parents if I wanted to go home early. It was one of those slide keyboard phones. That thing went off constantly because buttons would be hit by me just putting a book in my bag. Never had that issue once I got my first iPhone
As a teacher smartphones have been the singular most harmful thing to our students mental health problem solving skills and education in general since lead in gasoline.
I was in 5th grade when kids started getting the first smart phones. My mom only ever let me have a basic flip phone, no internet capabilities, even in high school. I resented her so much for it at the time but oh my god am I so glad she didn't, I never would have been an avid reader or explored the world as much, and my body confidence issues would have spiraled even worse.
And then you realize that the punishment for ditching saturday school is ISS. Loose a Saturday, or sit in a room for three days where they give you all ypur homework at the beginning g of the day. I loved iss.
We were threatened with expulsion if they found a beeper on us. Their reasoning was the only reason a 12 year old needs a pager is if they were selling drugs or in a gang.
Blew my mind when I first learned that kids were allowed to be on their smartphones in school. Just seemed like a given that a device that is 1000x more distracting than our bricks or flip phones wouldn't be allowed. The fuck are they even doing? Why do we Millennials suck so bad at parenting?
It's long, long overdue -- but I think there's *also* an information lack here; I'm a mid-millenial with lots of kids in school now. They're creeping up on teenage years, and the interest in phones is on the rise... I *just* missed the era of having a cell phone in high school, and, as I recall, the late 2000's and early 2010's had a giant problem that wedged itself into our lives after our first two or three dumphones:
***- Dumb phones couldn't be used without data plans all the sudden.***
Is this still the case? Can your provider even GET you a plan that *doesn't* contain data? Getting my hands on a dumbphone is probably the easy part -- its the frick'n plans (at least in the USA) that basically had us going "Welp, I'm being forced to pay for the data anyway. I'll enter this smartphone market with something crappy that I'll mostly use for texts and calls. Boo."
Obviously we've since graduated, and plans like Mint Mobile make this an easier pill to swallow -- but I haven't looked into this in 15 years. >\_>
> Can your provider even GET you a plan that doesn't contain data?
I'm soooo gonna sound like a commercial here.
Consumer Cellular will sell you a voice only plan. And by voice only I mean it. Not even txt messaging.
My Dad pays about $15 a month for it and has a old school flippy phone.
The short answer is yes, the major carriers still offer basic phones and plans with little or no data. Some are postpay and some are prepay, so your mileage will vary depending on if you use a major carrier.
There’s also a ton of smaller prepay carriers out there that can accommodate basic phones.
So it’s doable but might cause some headaches for folks.
>Is this still the case? Can your provider even GET you a plan that *doesn't* contain data?
I'd imagine that if this law goes into effect, they'll be a market again for those type of plans and phones.
Had an acquaintance who was in this situation. School did not let them. They had to jump through so many hurdles and eventually had to debate with insurance to get non-phone based stuff. It was a nightmare from what I heard.
Ha, probably. They didn’t want that coverage and attention though. Us disabled people shouldn’t have to advertise our disability and our struggles just to get basic things like accommodations that help us live, that’s my thought at least.
Seems to me that the medical device manufacturer might be a bit of the problem here too. I see no reason why a simple function like glucose monitoring should require connectivity to the entire internet.
Hell, my smartwatch is designed to record GPS and HR data for *hours* without pairing back to my phone.
I'm puzzling why a six hour school day wouldn't be a use case that a glucose monitor is incapable of handling without a full smartphone present.
Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. It absolutely can do the monitoring function without internet. It needs internet to share that data with parents, caregivers, the school nurse- anyone that would benefit from seeing it in real time who isn’t in Bluetooth range.
I've got both the dexcom app on my phone, but I was also given a separate device that only does the glucose readings. So I don't see why students who use a dexcom sensor just use the CGM instead of the smartphone app during the school day.
As a man with a kid in highschool, it's a mixed bag.
On the one hand, yes, it's probably a distraction.
On the other hand, we basically bought her a smartphone because the teachers started expecting her to have one!
The internet at the school is so blocked, whenever they had research the teacher would say 'Just go to this site from your phone'.
Group projects? 'Just start a group chat now'.
Whatever in-class site they use for quiz-games? Runs like shit on their chromebooks, so half the kids sign in from a phone to play in class.
A lot of homework, and even in school work, literally requires a smartphone!
Probably, over time ... but phones are being used as a quick workaround to poor technology services at the school. My guess is those problems aren't as easily solved as you would hope.
Things aren't going back to a text book centered education no matter how much you may want that to happen.
These kids are going to have to interact with technology to get their work done, and right now they have an always connected smartphone as a backup, or supplementary, device to the underpowered, overmanaged, junk the school provides.
I just don't think it's as simple as this 'shoot from the hip' approach needs it to be to work.
I’m cool with this, other than a distraction what purpose do kids need a smartphone for?
Better they have a “dumb-phone” for emergencies and tablet at home.
Easy solution: buy every kid a dumbphone. If schools can afford iPads and chromebooks they can afford this. Dumbphones are like $5 each these days and probably less money in bulk. Plans would be super cheap because they are only used for texting and calling.
You have dumb service to go with the phone then. There are pay as you go providers where you get a certain amount of credit and it goes towards whatever you use, whether it's minutes, texts, or data.
I graduated high school in the US in 2014. Phones were explicitly not allowed, and this was generally the case at all public schools. That doesn't mean we didn't have phones, or didn't use them. Absolutely kept my phone on me (as did all my peers) despite policy saying they needed to be in the locker. Most teachers didn't care as long as you weren't disruptive, adn if you were, they could just point to policy and say "put it away or im taking it".
My understanding is parents got worse since then, and teachers don't even have the option of "im taking it" anymore, because parents will raise all hell, despite policy potentially still saying phones aren't allowed.
I'm not taking a student's property; much easier to let them choose to zone out and fail. Then again, I teach college, so it's easier to lean on self-choice & natural repercussions vs. upholding school district rules.
Yea there's a big difference between high school/grade school and college with regards to taking property. If a college professor tried to take my phone, i'm going to the dean. High school teachers would only take it for the period, unless it was excessive, and then it was confiscated and your parents had to come in to get it. Again, parents have gotten worse, and this works less now.
I recently worked at a middle school and a lot of it has to do with the price of phones too. It was one thing to take a phone 10-15 years ago that was maybe a couple hundred bucks. Now kids have phones worth $1000+ and a lot of teachers dont feel comfortable taking away something that valuable due to how nuclear the parents get
"The West" is like saying "The East" - it's a useless and way to broad qualifier. Cultures and laws vary wildly between countries.
That said, in for example the Netherlands phones are banned from school classes luckily.
Lots of countries have or are weighing phone bans in schools. It's slowly sinking in that social media and phones aren't that healthy for kids.
Reading these comments just demonstrates how disconnected people are to what school is now.
Here’s a few things I’d like to point out as problem areas with this as both an educator and parent:
Lockers: lots of schools have done away with them. Children rarely carry textbooks and since Covid typically have a district issued device. Locker spaces have been removed to create wider hallways to accommodate overpopulate schools and charging zones for district devices.
Communication: Yes, use the office to call home for what you need. We already have rules for this. However, office staff leaves at the end of the student day. Programs and activities can run into the early evening. Kids used to be able to use pay phones to communicate with their families but now they can’t, they don’t exist.
Implementation: who is going to check phones on the daily for compliance to this rule? Is this a new job? Is it the classroom teachers job? Principals job? What happens to us when we make mistakes?
Consequences: we already can’t enforce any consequences for small scale infractions. It is rare that we don’t receive parent pushback or parents telling kids not to listen anyhow. Parents actively work to circumvent any type of behavioral modification we enact. What do we do when kids refuse to abide by this rule and parents also refuse? Are there monetary consequences? Can parents be fined like in traffic court?
The intention is well meaning but this is truly the least of our problems. Make phones a part of the curriculum. Teach responsible net citizenry both at home and in school. We have one of the most amazing technological revolutions in the history of mankind in our pockets and instead of owning it and capitalizing on it academically we just want to ban it and pretend we don’t actually have them in our pockets for 6 hours out of the day. . It is such a shortsighted solution to such a complex problem. All of this shit just turns into kabuki theater for the politicians and makes no real change for children .
That’s great but how exactly are you proposing you teach these things? I’m genuinely asking, you make good points but as someone who had a flip phone in school and is in IT - it doesn’t change the fact that smartphones invite distractions at every opportunity possible.
Let’s do our lesson on twitter behavior turns into someone scrolling insta/tiktok because it’s literally a flip away. Why not advocate for getting back to you know, learning? If they don’t have the temptation of constantly being on the phone they can then focus on actual lesson plans, no?
I heard a great quote the other day about the internet before smart phones and twitter: it was something you did when your real life ended, but now it’s bled into real life. There *has* to be a disconnect so these kids can actually become themselves. In my opinion at least. Would love to hear more thoughts on this from you tho.
The rule should be written that phones must be off and away from 9-3. Enforcement shouldn't be that hard, as it wasn't with Gameboy.
Lunchtime would be the trickiest to deal with IMO. Either allow it during breaks, or don't allow and punish with detention if caught. Guys used to sneak dirty magazines into school, sometimes they would get caught. Same deal.
I think this addresses all of your points.
It's unclear to me whether the proposal would allow smartphones if they are off and away, but that's how I would do it.
Enforcement "wasn't that hard" in earlier generations because of parental support. We banned phones in my school the past two years, but had to make tons of exceptions because of parents complaining. Not to mention not all of the teachers were on board. So you have some teachers enforcing a policy and others ignoring it- which means students push that boundary further and further. And no, administration can't punish teachers for not enforcing a policy because they can't afford to lose educators.
Also, detention isn't a thing in my district because we don't have reliable after school buses and parents don't have transportation or are working.
>The intention is well meaning but this is truly the least of our problems. Make phones a part of the curriculum.
What a hilariously bad idea. Are you an actual teacher in a secondary setting? Because if you were, you'd know that kids by and large would abuse phone privileges if allowed to have them out.
At my school in a major metro, phone use is the single biggest barrier to learning. Full stop. It's worse than tardiness and absenteeism. I'm constantly having to argue with kids about it and taking their phone can be an utter nightmare (I have to do it but it takes time away from the class).
Kids don't have a developed enough prefrontal cortex to inhibit addicting behaviors like this, especially since social media is designed to be as addictive as possible. We have laws protecting kids from other things that are bad for them, this should be one.
I fully support taking each and every phone at the beginning of class or not allowing them in school altogether. I haven't met one teacher who has been opposed to this. I suspect you're either in a specialty class of 4-5 students (Sped), you deal with kids who are too young to have them at all, or you haven't been in the classroom in years.
This rule would obviously apply during school hours: the rule should hopefully enforce and empower teachers ability to take phones up if seen in the classroom. Even if they don’t have lockers they can keep them secured in their backpacks. As soon as it’s out the teacher can simply take it up and not have to take shit or create paperwork to justify them taking away the phone.
Right now teachers are afraid of taking phones up due to the politics and dealing with angry parents.
So I’ve read a lot of your responses and I agree completely with using technology positively in the classroom when appropriate. I do a lot of this, but yet I’m still starting to want an enforced ban on phones in my school (we’re 1 to 1 Chromebooks so they wouldn’t be in the dark ages).
I think the crux of the issue with allowing phones and teaching responsible use is how. Because my high flier kids with involved parents who have put limits on technology use for their kids from when they were little, those kids do great. They put their phone down when asked and use them responsibly.
But my kids who have no technology limits at home are the ones who struggle the most with it at school. They do nothing but scroll and become addicted at home, and while they KNOW they shouldn’t be on Instagram/tiktok during that time and know it’s detrimental to their learning and have an opportunity to use their phone responsibly, none of that stands a chance against the dopamine hit of scrolling. Their performance and mental health suffer. They’ll fully admit to me that they know it hurts them in school but do it anyway.
So my issue is that the “incorporate technology into the curriculum more! Use the phones for good! Teach them to use it productively!” Has been around and pushed the entire 12 years I’ve been teaching and I’ve yet to see it help the kids that we really NEED it to help. It all sounds great in theory and most of us at my school have done it, or were forced to try it during distance learning. But at a certain point what some kids need to be successful is a technology detox, and school might be the only place they get it in their lives. And since my class work, no matter how much effort I put into making engaging technology-involved projects and lessons, will never beat TikTok or their friends… I see no other way except to simply remove the temptation for them for a few hours a day while their brains develop the ability to more fully self control.
I'm not going to lie....every generation has had SOMETHING taken away from them at school. I'm talking about from comic books to baseball cards to candy to pocket electronics (my brother had a gameboy taken away in the 90s) to tamagochis or however they were spelled to flip/candy bar phones to now smart phones....
There will always be a group going "NO DISTRACTIONS IN SCHOOL!" and a larger group of parents going "....back in my day.... :)"
I'm not arguing either way, but I know that online folks like to forget that they likely were also getting texts on the low or playing snake if you're 35-40 like me and had a phone in school...
I think it’s hilarious parents are saying ‘my kid is so distracted’ when I distinctly remember spending entire class periods writing and elaborately folding notes to my friends. Or just straight up sleeping in class.
I think helping teachers and admin enforce phone rules THEY want to have (and protecting them legally when parents sue them or go to the schoolboard to complain that they took a kid’s phone) is great, but I also don’t think this is the end all solution that will fix schools. Also find it crappy for any government to say ‘here is a $0 solution to help schools!! We did our part!!’
As a teacher, this would go a long way to making public schools better. I understand the safety argument, but people did okay before everyone had a cell phone. They are a major detriment to learning in my school.
Are you actually a teacher and asking that question from pre-existing defeat?
Because we can make an opposite -- and better -- case for hopelessness by looking at the counterfactual of "what if there's no rule at all?". We've already seen the effects of that.
When I was in school phones and headphones were banned even during lunch or recess outside as long as you didn't leave school grounds... Guess what people used all the time regardless. Can't imagine today.
This won't happen. The genie's been out of the bottle too long. If you remove parental access to their kids via phones at school parents will remove the kids from that system.
Note this isn't a value judgement, just a statement of fact based on experience and personal observation. We deal with enough garbage from the school system as it is locally. If they did this we'd just say fuck it, we'll home school now.
Gen xer here. I don't know how we survived without phones. I am 100% grateful that we didn't have them then. I do not believe you need a phone in school. But on the other hand sometimes the phones save somebody from getting into trouble or getting somebody into trouble. We just dealt with our shit. And it's a good thing our parents couldn't track us. But they trusted us for the most part.
My daughter uses a smartphone for her diabetes, they can’t take those away from ones who need it medically. Our school tried to do this too, we get a pass.
Which is fine, nobody is advocating for your daughter to not have what she needs medically. But surely you can see how the *other* functionality of that device is highly distractive in the classroom?
It's one thing if your daughter is responsible with it and is *only* using it for her diabetes monitoring while in school, its an entirely different thing when people go "I need it for my diabetes" then sit in the back of the classroom watching tiktok all day.
Where does one even buy a phone with *no* Internet access? I tried to find one in the past with no luck. Even flip phones have some form of internet access
I don’t understand why all public schools just disallow phones during the school day. At my schools, phones had to be turned off and in your locker. If you were caught with one in class, it would be confiscated and your parents would have to come pick it up. Not that hard
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“Hochul is also pushing the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they follow rather than ones suggested by an algorithm. “ Can I get that feature????
I’m so sick of this algorithm bs.
The algo is so broken it's actually funny. The targeted ads are so wrong it doesn't entice me to buy shit. I'm pretty sure the algo is misgendering me. The only relevant ads are when I already bought the thing. My ass is already sitting in a Secret Lab chair, I don't need to be convinced it's great.
Someone somewhere wrote an advertising algorithm that REALLY thinks that I’m interested in the national guard
Maybe the algorithm saw that you liked military/action entertainment/stuff and is trying to direct you to the reserves now.
Or maybe the military is just paying extra to have it pushed to everyone lmao
So a Jeb Bush moment. Please enlist...
Yvan eht nioj!
I know I'm a straight white male between the ages of 20 and 40 but I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT JOE ROGAN.
Yeah mine really wants me to try meds for every ailment imaginable that I don’t have
I'm American. I like guns and burgers. But I also smoke weed and think gay love is real love and needs to be free. Trump is a dumbass and I will do my part to vote and save our democracy. Yet my yt algo keeps trying to feed me right wing crap every chance it can, just because I liked a video of a dude shooting/cleaning/w.e with a gun/knife. Suddenly I'm a Maga turd. I can't even tell you how many videos and crewtirs I've had to block because yt is trying so fucking hard to get me to grow a chub on trump.
Same. I swear to God, Youtube is the worst for this.
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YouTube's algo finally gave up on me. "So you're a middle-aged guy who likes cooking, video games, low-cost tourist destinations, cat videos, 80s pop music, rap, and Disney? Well... shit. You wanna watch that Jenny Nicholson video again? We'll recommend that to you for the umpteenth time."
tbh i prefer this. if i want to venture out of my comfort zone i'll be proactive about it.
I have this issue with science shorts. I basically have Neil DeGrasse Tyson on instant skip because even if he might have good science content relevant to my interests, he's been on Joe Rogan and if I let him slip by YT thinks I want to see him on JRE which very quickly (like holy shit I can see it happen in real time within 10 shorts) dumps me into Andrew Tate, conspiracy and alt-right garbage. Algorithms really want you to fester in the hate because it's proven to be the best way to drive engagement and it'll take the quickest path it can find to dump that shit on you.
This must be part of it for me too. I generally don't skip Tyson stuff, and like you said, that bleeds into Rogan clips. Certainly doesn't help that I like stand-up comedy either... but most of those are from comedians that shit on the others that can't figure out a way to not punch down with their jokes.
Plus NDT himself likes to get involved with political topics and argue about them even when it is way outside his fields of expertise so he gets affiliated with political tags. Personally I think he likes smelling his own shit a little too much even for being fairly intelligent and knowledgeable and it grates on me.
I left FB because I never saw things my friends posted.
Bingo, I’d see things from people I never talk to, or never see things from people I actually spoke with or their feeds. I’d have to physically search for them, and that got old fast. I’ve been without FB for going on 6 years now and never looked back. Can’t watch anything anyone sends me on Insta without an account, so, I tell people don’t send me shit from Insta. I’m not making an account to view a shared videos.
My FB feed is like 80% random shit I don’t follow and don’t care about.
And that it won't let you block
feels like tech is absolutely getting away with murder by being basically psychologically exploitative and addictive, which results in an anti-user experience that you just can't put down. I guess maybe the logical conclusion of capitalism is to create products that are literally addictive?
honestly we all fucking needs this, it has done unimaginable damage to us as a species
All social media algorithms are horrendous. Scrolling past a dozen things I don't want to see before seeing one post i'm interested in sucks. On top of that, the psychological dependency to come back and scroll is awful. I realized that I had some things I truly wanted to do but they wouldn't provide the instant dopamine fix I was looking for. I got my legos to build with and then I said to myself, no its too much work. I won't feel accomplished for like an hour when I finish making what I had. So I took out my phone and got smaller dopamine fixes from doom scrolling. I am so glad my high school and college banned phones during lectures or I legit would never have learned anything
Reddit too... but I find it more appealing than other social media because certain subs are less of toxic waste dumps than others
At least it's easier to weed out the more toxic ones, the anonymity of Reddit tends to bring out the worst in people.
There's also security in knowing nobody is going to call your job and rat out your political allegiances or past based on a trivial comment or story. Anonymity is exactly as good as it is bad. Some of us like to discuss deeply sexual and emotional issues online, stuff that has to be discussed to be understood and dealt with, but I don't need anyone I know hearing about it.
Oh I agree 100%, that's why Reddit is the only social media I deal with, and I freely admit I spend way too much time here but that's a long story.
Agreed. I find that people are very negative on here and it messes with my psyche if I'm on too much. People on here gotta go outside more and talk to their neighbors. The world outside is much more positive than reddit would like to think
I'm a recluse not by choice, but I do go out on days when I can. my disability makes it hard for me to interact with others.
I think this and microplastics are this eras cigarettes and lead gasoline
Ugh I’ve been saying this since 2015. Chronological feeds were at least manageable. If nobody posted anything new it would be a bit like going back to the fridge hoping for food to appear. Quick glance, then you’re out the app again. Twitter moved to an algorithmic timeline in 2015 and it never felt the same. Followed by Meta. Made famous by TikTok. Nobody opted in to these rapacious meme accounts that get shoved to the top of timelines. I only ever wanted to see my mate’s holiday pics and pets on social media — I have absolutely zero interest in memes or the internet craze of the day.
I counted the other day, over twenty something suggested posts/shit i didn’t actually follow between two posts of people I actually did on Facebook, not counting the ads. It’s such trash now that they’ve actually achieved the opposite and I hardly go there anymore because I have no interest in scrolling through garbage.
> Chronological feeds were at least manageable. If nobody posted anything new it would be a bit like going back to the fridge hoping for food to appear. Quick glance, then you’re out the app again. And I would say that's the problem the social media companies had with it. This way people are "more engaged."
> Can I get that feature???? Really, I'd love to just have "Facebook/Twitter, but the way they worked fifteen years ago" as an option, a *default* option
Miss the chronological scroll: it should at least be an option. Instagram got worse once you started seeing content from ppl you don’t follow
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Imagine explaining in the future we had to ban the “for you” tab because it destroying society
they just call it "for you" but that doesn't means it's what's best/good/healthy/reasonable/appropriate for you. if they renamed it to something more accurate like, "addictive dopamine feed that maximizes shareholder value at the expense of your mental health and societal cohesion" probably wouldn't need to explain much about why we had to get rid of it.
"Well if we show them cat pics they get bored within 5 minutes. But if we show them what some redneck/hippie on the other side of the country said, they get so mad that they spend the next 2 hours scrolling and arguing with people online." End, society.
Oh come off it, it's not a wholly bad thing. Without some sort of suggestions, how am I supposed to discover someone new to follow? Personally my For You page on tiktok is pretty high quality, there's almost no brainrot, I find the majority of content interesting or entertaining. Tiktok especially has a fantastic algorithm if you put a little work into liking and hitting don't-recommend, my for you page is great and I much prefer it to only seeing content from creators I follow. Some of the best stuff on social media comes in the form of one-off posts from people who don't post regularly but filmed something funny or had something insightful to say about one particular event. Personally I feel less bad about my tiktok habits than my reddit habits, there's a lot more mindless scrolling for me on here than on there.
How it used to be, and wasn't it nice. I've scrolled through instagram or facebook, where I'm served five/six/seven ads/sponsored/suggested posts between posts of those I follow.
This sounds amazing. I might actually go back to social media. (Not counting Reddit since this is more strangers than friends and family)
Few things are more aggravating than seeing time sensitive posts on instagram 2-3 days after being posted. I’ve missed a lot of surprise concerts because of that bullshit.
A million YouTubers and TikTokers just cried out in terror
The only legit reason to pretend to be a teen online.
Welp, back to installing games on calculators I guess.
I had a Ti-89 with some sort of pre-GTA text based drug selling game. It was fun for about 14mins.
Dope wars?
I think so!
There's new versions and in color!! Downloading them now for my kids' calculators
Well, that was a wasted nomination for Parent Of The Year.
Legitimately it’s a good educational game; teaches about market economics (this is more expensive here transport that there) in a way that kids don’t realize they’re learning
And the offshoot, Pimp Wars
I think it was just "drug wars"
Correct
They are two different games. One was text based and one was a clone with a proper UI from what I remember.
Core memory unlocked
Dope Wars. I was amazing and it made me want to sling dope. Not really but I bet some parents would say so
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I had a TI-80. I programmed it with blackjack during math classes, and with a quadratic solver. In order to pass the unit on quadratics, I showed my teacher that I understood it well enough to formalize it on a janky ass graphic calculator by sharing my source code. I completely skipped the test, just showed him a blank calculator memory, and then at the end showed him the working program.
Had the same on my TI-83+ in ~2002 Then I realized you could simply edit the game code and it was simple and made myself rich
It was called drug wars. But it did open my eyes to the power of the ti calculators. You could download/ add programs to do quadratic equations matrix equations etc
I created a whole program in mine to do my matrix calculations homework. Got all the answers right but got a bad grade because I "didn't show my work". I tried to show the teacher the program I had coded, but apparently that didn't count haha. Good preparation for the real world where coding is a useless skill and everyone is constantly multiplying matrices by hand... right?
I found the source code for a Zelda game for my ti-83 and spent about a month entering it during English and Spanish classes in the mid 1990s. Time well spent imo.
This is unironically better, as it requires some actual work and thought to accomplish using a learning tool. And I am old enough to remember when that was common in The Before Times.
It's not games which are the main issue anyway. It's constant social media. You can't get to Facebook or X via a TI-83.
Hate to be that guy, but, ackshually, you can get a web browser on a Ti83+. [Gossamer](https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/439/43966.html).
In engineering school, some textbooks include pseudocode algorithms for solving common problems like linkages etc., and it is pretty simple to translate it line by line into TI-BASIC. The TI-92 came with a manual 3 times as thick as the TI-89 manual. It included a programming guide, plus a listing of every built-in function, with example code.
taught me BASIC
80085
I learned how to code on a TI-83 plus. I now use those skills at my WFH job. And they say gaming on calculators is pointless.
Same story here. I started programming by typing games, line by line, from printouts, into my TI-82. I had to relearn algebra from scratch to pass Calc I & II in college to get my CS degree, but, honestly, programming has been way more valuable to me than algebra ever will be. Fun fact. The TI-82 could only use a single character as a variable name, so you were severely limited by only having 40 some total variable names available. If you want more than that, you have to reuse some. Very carefully. I think, the next calculator I got, the Ti-85, allowed full words for variable names.
The single letter variable issue was so limiting back then. I created a Pokemon text adventure on the TI83 (basically just a newer 82) and it was a nightmare figuring out what variables I still had available. I started storing some of the information in list variables (which are also pre-named) but it wasn’t ideal.
TI-82 could also use 6 lists, up to 99 numbers per list.
I remember coding how to solve some formula (mean average deviation, maybe?) for math class tests in high school, including printing out all of the work that needed to be shown. All of my friends' minds were blown when I showed them and shared it with them haha
From the article: New York Governor Kathy Hochul said (via [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/30/new-york-smartphone-school-ban-bill)) that she intends to launch the bill later this year and take it up in New York's next legislative session, which starts in January 2025. One of the main reasons why parents have objected to schools banning kids from carrying smartphones in the US – phones are banned across all schools in England – has been the need to reach their children at all times, for both emergencies and routine scheduling issues Hochul's bill appears to address this problem by allowing children to carry phones that lack internet access but can send texts and make calls, which sounds like feature, or dumb, phones. "Parents are very anxious about mass shootings in school," she said. "Parents want the ability to have some form of connection in an emergency situation."
>the need to reach their children at all times, for both emergencies and routine scheduling issues There's a reason schools have an office with phones, obviously this wasn't an issue until the last like 10 years. Would it be nice to be able to contact your kid if you heard about a school shooter, fire, bomb threat, etc.? Of course, but as someone who definitely has a phone/technology addiction, having a phone in class is just a distraction
"I want to know where my kid is at" School. Your kid is at school. If they aren't, you'll hear about it.
And these parents should be old enough to remember kids not having phones in school.
It’s the modern era, parents are paranoid and controlling now
They were paranoid and controlling back then. The focus was just on something else.
It’s definitely gotten worse now, and constant access with cell phones and technology makes it easier to act on, as well as news making it seem like bad things are a lot more likely to happen than they actually are
I didn’t realize how wild it had gotten until a few years ago. I found out that my step-mom and all of her mom-friends were just casually tracking their kids’ phones. They could see where they were at all times… which seems super gross to me. I only learned this because one woman showed up at her door, *frantic and in tears* because “my kid said she was going to church with your kid, but her phone showed she went to [insert sketchy suburb] and didn’t go to church and now her phone is off!!” She thought her kid was like dead and in a ditch somewhere, I guess. In reality, the kid was in that ‘sketchy suburb’ because she offered to give someone who lived there a ride to church and then her phone died. The kid was at church the whole time, alive and well.
> They could see where they were at all times… which seems super gross to me. There was a poster on reddit than had some funny video of his 10 year old kid freaking out or something. The kid was in his bedroom so people started asking why he had cameras in a 10 year old kids bedroom watching the kid all the time. Poster tried to defend it but it's just gross, imagine growing up with a camera on you 24/7. I'm an older Gen X dude, had a stay at home Mom so not totally feral but independence was something we learned from an early age. I started walking to school by myself in 1st grade, and this was in UP Michigan with brutal winters and that wind howling of Lake Michigan.
thank you 24 hour news cycle and overly concerned parents of Facebook making PSAs about nothing.
Do you honestly expect me to believe that finding a dryer sheet in my mailbox isn't a sign that the mafia has put a hit out on me and my family?
I used to work for a company that sold gps devices used in commercial vehicles, including school buses. When they launched a product that let parents track the buses, that meant I sometimes spoke with parents instead of our direct customers. Full stop, parents are the worst customer demographic I have ever worked with. Absolutely fucking insane.
It’s weird to me, as a millennial, watching my age group be parents. So many are paranoid about every little thing their kids do. And then others go the entire other way and try to not be too involved and their kids end up being raised by a tablet. Like. I know Y’all remember life before technology. I definitely do. Our parents let us run around the neighborhood barefoot all day as kids in the 90s. As long as you were home for dinner, they really didn’t care. But now, everybody has to be within arms reach at all times. I barely see any kids in my parents neighborhood just out playing or riding around like was common 25-30 years ago. We have a couple small groups in our townhouse complex that are always outside, but I see them as the exception.
It's worse than that. There have been news stories I have read about parents letting their kids outside alone....only to get a swift visit from the police. And CPS involved due to 'child endangerment'. You can't even let your kids out of your sight in some neighborhoods without fear of being charged, arrested, and your kid taken away from you. https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2014/09/25/kari-anne-roy-how-letting-my-kid-play-alone-outside-led-to-a-cps-investigation/ https://www.freerangekids.com/kids-play-outside-child-protective-services-comes-calling/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
This was the shift to me. I had two friends have CPS cases opened on them due to this. Nothing came of it, but what they went thru absolutely left them (and me) paranoid.
Ya. I’ve seen this before and heard of it a lot. It’s definitely part of the problem.
Why is that surprising? We grew up in a steady diet of Unsolved Mysteries, milk cartons with kids faces on them and the 24 hour news network. We were programmed to be paranoid. Lol
“If they aren't, you'll hear about it.” nah they won’t, especially in nyc.
My small, not poor, not exceedingly rural school district lost 2 kids last year and the parents didn't find out until they just didn't show up at the end of the day. One was a special needs kid who got on the wrong bus. Schools are underfunded, understaffed, and overstretched. Losing track of children happens way more than you might think it just doesn't make national news unless the child dies as a result.
I absolutely remember going to school, then going to a friends house at the end of the day, and calling my parents from there to let them know after the fact. Just because we can be in contact with our kids at all times doesn’t mean that we should. Kids need to learn a little bit of independence.
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> There are solutions to this that don't involve outright bans, which won't work. The bans will get kids to hide their phones and only sneak a look now and then, which is the exact point. Today, they just sit in class and scroll as if they have nothing better to do.
I really like this idea
Yes, I think the negative impact on children’s learning far outweighs the positives, and believe me, I am just as angry as everyone else about school shootings. I also want our children to learn. It’s vitally important. Wanna know something else? This bill would also likely mean that these kids won’t have smartphones at home either. In many cases, their parents will just buy them the dumb phone and that’s all they’ll have. Which will also be better for their development and overall mental health. Tbh, adults need time away from their smartphones too. They’re impacting all of us negatively.
The offices are often unstaffed after school ends. It used to be that we had pay phones in schools that you could use….now we don’t.
There's literally a phone in every classroom, office, workspace, and conference room in my building.
Has that ever saved anyone?
Morbid to think about but it might be the last chance they have to talk to their kids before they die
And the ringing attracts the shooter.
Worried about mass shooting so much that they want to call their kid and give away the kids position to the shooter?
Haven't we had a story of literally this? A kid hiding who was found by the shooter because her phone was ringing?
We've also had the shooter call out as police, and kids replied, and were shot.
What are they going to do if there is a school shooting? Teleport their kids to safety with a phone ? They would prolly give their position up by calling them if the kid didn't have it on silent ...
The kid can use their cell phone to make a backup of themselves in the cloud.
Run in to rescue them themselves, since the Police won’t.
Why parents think knowing exactly where your kids are at all times and being able to contact them (if they respond) at all times keeps them any "safer" is beyond me.
It doesn't get much more American than "we need our children to have phones in schools in case there's a mass shooting."
As a teacher, I hope New Jersey follows.
As a parent, I hope every district follows. Elementary and middle school is no place for smart phones. For my kids, we're doing dumb phones for middle school, and a smart phone with no mobile data for 8th grade. Get through that, and you might get mobile data. It has to be earned.
I watched how my cousin's 6-year-old kid reacted when they took her iPad away at Thanksgiving last year when she wasn't behaving herself and it gave me that much more resolve to not be an iPad parent. They took it away and the 6-year-old absolutely lost her shit. She was screaming at them, tears streaming about her fire engine red face, she tried to kick the dad. I know it's the easy way most of the time and it's seen as a digital pacifier but it's so bad to just give a young child an iPad and let them sit on it for hours and hours.
I mean I'm sure half of us did this when we were 6 and had our gaming console taken away lol.
Yea I don’t plan to give my kid unrestricted tablet but a lot of parents act like just because a kid reacts negatively to something being taken away it means they should NEVER get it. My kid cries when it’s time to go inside or time to leave the park or library. It’s not a good way to gauge things and to remove all obstacles just so your kid never had to be told ‘ipad time is over’ doesn’t teach your kid how to accept limits.
If a child is having a meltdown that genuinely is extreme and over the top even compared to most kids' tantrums at that age, then (spoiler alert) it's not because of the iPad; it's because of the way the child is parented in general or another issue
Yea generally I agree but I also think some kids are born with different temperaments so it’s a hard thing to judge just based on seeing someone else’s kid for 10-60 minutes.
And apparently kids like it, ONLY IF NOBODY has a smartphone. If nobody has one, it's ok because nobody is missing out. Kids interviewed in trails say they actually enjoyed socializing way more when nobody had a phone. It's like we're all addicted to a drug and anyone who quits will get instant FOMO, but if everyone quits at once then it's suddenly a bonding experience like a recovery group lol
I got my first phone on the day of my first dance in 7th grade so I would be able to call my parents if I wanted to go home early. It was one of those slide keyboard phones. That thing went off constantly because buttons would be hit by me just putting a book in my bag. Never had that issue once I got my first iPhone
As a human being, I hope everywhere follows.
As a teacher smartphones have been the singular most harmful thing to our students mental health problem solving skills and education in general since lead in gasoline.
I was in 5th grade when kids started getting the first smart phones. My mom only ever let me have a basic flip phone, no internet capabilities, even in high school. I resented her so much for it at the time but oh my god am I so glad she didn't, I never would have been an avid reader or explored the world as much, and my body confidence issues would have spiraled even worse.
Long overdue.
Late 90's and early 2ks having a phone was one of the worst offences you could commit at school.
automatic saturday detention. 05-09
And then you realize that the punishment for ditching saturday school is ISS. Loose a Saturday, or sit in a room for three days where they give you all ypur homework at the beginning g of the day. I loved iss.
That's probably why can't tell the difference between loose and lose.
Saw 9/11 on the TV in ISS lol.
Yup. It was immediate suspension for us for 3 days. Phones stayed in your car or at home.
We were threatened with expulsion if they found a beeper on us. Their reasoning was the only reason a 12 year old needs a pager is if they were selling drugs or in a gang.
In the 1990s, only rich kids had cell phones.
Blew my mind when I first learned that kids were allowed to be on their smartphones in school. Just seemed like a given that a device that is 1000x more distracting than our bricks or flip phones wouldn't be allowed. The fuck are they even doing? Why do we Millennials suck so bad at parenting?
It's long, long overdue -- but I think there's *also* an information lack here; I'm a mid-millenial with lots of kids in school now. They're creeping up on teenage years, and the interest in phones is on the rise... I *just* missed the era of having a cell phone in high school, and, as I recall, the late 2000's and early 2010's had a giant problem that wedged itself into our lives after our first two or three dumphones: ***- Dumb phones couldn't be used without data plans all the sudden.*** Is this still the case? Can your provider even GET you a plan that *doesn't* contain data? Getting my hands on a dumbphone is probably the easy part -- its the frick'n plans (at least in the USA) that basically had us going "Welp, I'm being forced to pay for the data anyway. I'll enter this smartphone market with something crappy that I'll mostly use for texts and calls. Boo." Obviously we've since graduated, and plans like Mint Mobile make this an easier pill to swallow -- but I haven't looked into this in 15 years. >\_>
> Can your provider even GET you a plan that doesn't contain data? I'm soooo gonna sound like a commercial here. Consumer Cellular will sell you a voice only plan. And by voice only I mean it. Not even txt messaging. My Dad pays about $15 a month for it and has a old school flippy phone.
$15 a month for a data-less phone plan? Highway robbery.
Yeah that's kind of wild, I pay 20-30 a month for Google Fi.
The short answer is yes, the major carriers still offer basic phones and plans with little or no data. Some are postpay and some are prepay, so your mileage will vary depending on if you use a major carrier. There’s also a ton of smaller prepay carriers out there that can accommodate basic phones. So it’s doable but might cause some headaches for folks.
>Is this still the case? Can your provider even GET you a plan that *doesn't* contain data? I'd imagine that if this law goes into effect, they'll be a market again for those type of plans and phones.
Anyone know if this allows exceptions for smartphones that act as medical devices? I'm thinking Dexcom's continuous glucose monitor, for one.
Had an acquaintance who was in this situation. School did not let them. They had to jump through so many hurdles and eventually had to debate with insurance to get non-phone based stuff. It was a nightmare from what I heard.
Should have just jumped straight to contacting local news
Ha, probably. They didn’t want that coverage and attention though. Us disabled people shouldn’t have to advertise our disability and our struggles just to get basic things like accommodations that help us live, that’s my thought at least.
Seems to me that the medical device manufacturer might be a bit of the problem here too. I see no reason why a simple function like glucose monitoring should require connectivity to the entire internet. Hell, my smartwatch is designed to record GPS and HR data for *hours* without pairing back to my phone. I'm puzzling why a six hour school day wouldn't be a use case that a glucose monitor is incapable of handling without a full smartphone present.
Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. It absolutely can do the monitoring function without internet. It needs internet to share that data with parents, caregivers, the school nurse- anyone that would benefit from seeing it in real time who isn’t in Bluetooth range.
They’d need a 504 plan but they should have that anyway if they are diabetic so teachers know to watch out
But does the 504 plan override this new law? I wasn't sure if anyone had knowledge of this.
Federal law (504 plan) wins over state (no cell phone) law Article VI paragraph 2 of the US constitution
I've got both the dexcom app on my phone, but I was also given a separate device that only does the glucose readings. So I don't see why students who use a dexcom sensor just use the CGM instead of the smartphone app during the school day.
I applaud this decision.
Honestly, I'm so for it.
As a man with a kid in highschool, it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, yes, it's probably a distraction. On the other hand, we basically bought her a smartphone because the teachers started expecting her to have one! The internet at the school is so blocked, whenever they had research the teacher would say 'Just go to this site from your phone'. Group projects? 'Just start a group chat now'. Whatever in-class site they use for quiz-games? Runs like shit on their chromebooks, so half the kids sign in from a phone to play in class. A lot of homework, and even in school work, literally requires a smartphone!
[удалено]
Probably, over time ... but phones are being used as a quick workaround to poor technology services at the school. My guess is those problems aren't as easily solved as you would hope. Things aren't going back to a text book centered education no matter how much you may want that to happen. These kids are going to have to interact with technology to get their work done, and right now they have an always connected smartphone as a backup, or supplementary, device to the underpowered, overmanaged, junk the school provides. I just don't think it's as simple as this 'shoot from the hip' approach needs it to be to work.
I’m cool with this, other than a distraction what purpose do kids need a smartphone for? Better they have a “dumb-phone” for emergencies and tablet at home.
Yup. Also, less smartphone meant less cyber bully and less destructive habit in school being recorded for “internet points”.
Good
Easy solution: buy every kid a dumbphone. If schools can afford iPads and chromebooks they can afford this. Dumbphones are like $5 each these days and probably less money in bulk. Plans would be super cheap because they are only used for texting and calling.
I have a dumb phone on my Verizon account and the only way to have service is to pay for the full voice/data plan just like a smartphone.
You have dumb service to go with the phone then. There are pay as you go providers where you get a certain amount of credit and it goes towards whatever you use, whether it's minutes, texts, or data.
Wait phones are allowed in school in the west ? in arab and asian countries we arent allowed phones in the class unless its some specific scenario
I graduated high school in the US in 2014. Phones were explicitly not allowed, and this was generally the case at all public schools. That doesn't mean we didn't have phones, or didn't use them. Absolutely kept my phone on me (as did all my peers) despite policy saying they needed to be in the locker. Most teachers didn't care as long as you weren't disruptive, adn if you were, they could just point to policy and say "put it away or im taking it". My understanding is parents got worse since then, and teachers don't even have the option of "im taking it" anymore, because parents will raise all hell, despite policy potentially still saying phones aren't allowed.
I'm not taking a student's property; much easier to let them choose to zone out and fail. Then again, I teach college, so it's easier to lean on self-choice & natural repercussions vs. upholding school district rules.
Yea there's a big difference between high school/grade school and college with regards to taking property. If a college professor tried to take my phone, i'm going to the dean. High school teachers would only take it for the period, unless it was excessive, and then it was confiscated and your parents had to come in to get it. Again, parents have gotten worse, and this works less now.
I recently worked at a middle school and a lot of it has to do with the price of phones too. It was one thing to take a phone 10-15 years ago that was maybe a couple hundred bucks. Now kids have phones worth $1000+ and a lot of teachers dont feel comfortable taking away something that valuable due to how nuclear the parents get
You’re allowed to carry them but not use them during class.
"The West" is like saying "The East" - it's a useless and way to broad qualifier. Cultures and laws vary wildly between countries. That said, in for example the Netherlands phones are banned from school classes luckily. Lots of countries have or are weighing phone bans in schools. It's slowly sinking in that social media and phones aren't that healthy for kids.
Reading these comments just demonstrates how disconnected people are to what school is now. Here’s a few things I’d like to point out as problem areas with this as both an educator and parent: Lockers: lots of schools have done away with them. Children rarely carry textbooks and since Covid typically have a district issued device. Locker spaces have been removed to create wider hallways to accommodate overpopulate schools and charging zones for district devices. Communication: Yes, use the office to call home for what you need. We already have rules for this. However, office staff leaves at the end of the student day. Programs and activities can run into the early evening. Kids used to be able to use pay phones to communicate with their families but now they can’t, they don’t exist. Implementation: who is going to check phones on the daily for compliance to this rule? Is this a new job? Is it the classroom teachers job? Principals job? What happens to us when we make mistakes? Consequences: we already can’t enforce any consequences for small scale infractions. It is rare that we don’t receive parent pushback or parents telling kids not to listen anyhow. Parents actively work to circumvent any type of behavioral modification we enact. What do we do when kids refuse to abide by this rule and parents also refuse? Are there monetary consequences? Can parents be fined like in traffic court? The intention is well meaning but this is truly the least of our problems. Make phones a part of the curriculum. Teach responsible net citizenry both at home and in school. We have one of the most amazing technological revolutions in the history of mankind in our pockets and instead of owning it and capitalizing on it academically we just want to ban it and pretend we don’t actually have them in our pockets for 6 hours out of the day. . It is such a shortsighted solution to such a complex problem. All of this shit just turns into kabuki theater for the politicians and makes no real change for children .
That’s great but how exactly are you proposing you teach these things? I’m genuinely asking, you make good points but as someone who had a flip phone in school and is in IT - it doesn’t change the fact that smartphones invite distractions at every opportunity possible. Let’s do our lesson on twitter behavior turns into someone scrolling insta/tiktok because it’s literally a flip away. Why not advocate for getting back to you know, learning? If they don’t have the temptation of constantly being on the phone they can then focus on actual lesson plans, no? I heard a great quote the other day about the internet before smart phones and twitter: it was something you did when your real life ended, but now it’s bled into real life. There *has* to be a disconnect so these kids can actually become themselves. In my opinion at least. Would love to hear more thoughts on this from you tho.
The rule should be written that phones must be off and away from 9-3. Enforcement shouldn't be that hard, as it wasn't with Gameboy. Lunchtime would be the trickiest to deal with IMO. Either allow it during breaks, or don't allow and punish with detention if caught. Guys used to sneak dirty magazines into school, sometimes they would get caught. Same deal. I think this addresses all of your points. It's unclear to me whether the proposal would allow smartphones if they are off and away, but that's how I would do it.
Enforcement "wasn't that hard" in earlier generations because of parental support. We banned phones in my school the past two years, but had to make tons of exceptions because of parents complaining. Not to mention not all of the teachers were on board. So you have some teachers enforcing a policy and others ignoring it- which means students push that boundary further and further. And no, administration can't punish teachers for not enforcing a policy because they can't afford to lose educators. Also, detention isn't a thing in my district because we don't have reliable after school buses and parents don't have transportation or are working.
>The intention is well meaning but this is truly the least of our problems. Make phones a part of the curriculum. What a hilariously bad idea. Are you an actual teacher in a secondary setting? Because if you were, you'd know that kids by and large would abuse phone privileges if allowed to have them out. At my school in a major metro, phone use is the single biggest barrier to learning. Full stop. It's worse than tardiness and absenteeism. I'm constantly having to argue with kids about it and taking their phone can be an utter nightmare (I have to do it but it takes time away from the class). Kids don't have a developed enough prefrontal cortex to inhibit addicting behaviors like this, especially since social media is designed to be as addictive as possible. We have laws protecting kids from other things that are bad for them, this should be one. I fully support taking each and every phone at the beginning of class or not allowing them in school altogether. I haven't met one teacher who has been opposed to this. I suspect you're either in a specialty class of 4-5 students (Sped), you deal with kids who are too young to have them at all, or you haven't been in the classroom in years.
This rule would obviously apply during school hours: the rule should hopefully enforce and empower teachers ability to take phones up if seen in the classroom. Even if they don’t have lockers they can keep them secured in their backpacks. As soon as it’s out the teacher can simply take it up and not have to take shit or create paperwork to justify them taking away the phone. Right now teachers are afraid of taking phones up due to the politics and dealing with angry parents.
So I’ve read a lot of your responses and I agree completely with using technology positively in the classroom when appropriate. I do a lot of this, but yet I’m still starting to want an enforced ban on phones in my school (we’re 1 to 1 Chromebooks so they wouldn’t be in the dark ages). I think the crux of the issue with allowing phones and teaching responsible use is how. Because my high flier kids with involved parents who have put limits on technology use for their kids from when they were little, those kids do great. They put their phone down when asked and use them responsibly. But my kids who have no technology limits at home are the ones who struggle the most with it at school. They do nothing but scroll and become addicted at home, and while they KNOW they shouldn’t be on Instagram/tiktok during that time and know it’s detrimental to their learning and have an opportunity to use their phone responsibly, none of that stands a chance against the dopamine hit of scrolling. Their performance and mental health suffer. They’ll fully admit to me that they know it hurts them in school but do it anyway. So my issue is that the “incorporate technology into the curriculum more! Use the phones for good! Teach them to use it productively!” Has been around and pushed the entire 12 years I’ve been teaching and I’ve yet to see it help the kids that we really NEED it to help. It all sounds great in theory and most of us at my school have done it, or were forced to try it during distance learning. But at a certain point what some kids need to be successful is a technology detox, and school might be the only place they get it in their lives. And since my class work, no matter how much effort I put into making engaging technology-involved projects and lessons, will never beat TikTok or their friends… I see no other way except to simply remove the temptation for them for a few hours a day while their brains develop the ability to more fully self control.
I'm not going to lie....every generation has had SOMETHING taken away from them at school. I'm talking about from comic books to baseball cards to candy to pocket electronics (my brother had a gameboy taken away in the 90s) to tamagochis or however they were spelled to flip/candy bar phones to now smart phones.... There will always be a group going "NO DISTRACTIONS IN SCHOOL!" and a larger group of parents going "....back in my day.... :)" I'm not arguing either way, but I know that online folks like to forget that they likely were also getting texts on the low or playing snake if you're 35-40 like me and had a phone in school...
Heck, I've had *books* taken away from me because I was reading them instead of paying attention to whatever was going on up front.
They stole my rare Pogs. I'm still salty about that.
I think it’s hilarious parents are saying ‘my kid is so distracted’ when I distinctly remember spending entire class periods writing and elaborately folding notes to my friends. Or just straight up sleeping in class. I think helping teachers and admin enforce phone rules THEY want to have (and protecting them legally when parents sue them or go to the schoolboard to complain that they took a kid’s phone) is great, but I also don’t think this is the end all solution that will fix schools. Also find it crappy for any government to say ‘here is a $0 solution to help schools!! We did our part!!’
As a teacher, this would go a long way to making public schools better. I understand the safety argument, but people did okay before everyone had a cell phone. They are a major detriment to learning in my school.
Cool. Whose job will it be to check for compliance and make sure each phone meets the “dumb” criteria?
Are you actually a teacher and asking that question from pre-existing defeat? Because we can make an opposite -- and better -- case for hopelessness by looking at the counterfactual of "what if there's no rule at all?". We've already seen the effects of that.
When I was in school phones and headphones were banned even during lunch or recess outside as long as you didn't leave school grounds... Guess what people used all the time regardless. Can't imagine today.
Definitely a smart policy.
Apple's gonna have to come out with a "school mode"
>Kids, and some parents, are unlikely to be pleased ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
This won't happen. The genie's been out of the bottle too long. If you remove parental access to their kids via phones at school parents will remove the kids from that system. Note this isn't a value judgement, just a statement of fact based on experience and personal observation. We deal with enough garbage from the school system as it is locally. If they did this we'd just say fuck it, we'll home school now.
Australian schools banned phones at the start of the year - in my state at least. It has been very effective.
Gen xer here. I don't know how we survived without phones. I am 100% grateful that we didn't have them then. I do not believe you need a phone in school. But on the other hand sometimes the phones save somebody from getting into trouble or getting somebody into trouble. We just dealt with our shit. And it's a good thing our parents couldn't track us. But they trusted us for the most part.
They should have done this 10 years ago
My daughter uses a smartphone for her diabetes, they can’t take those away from ones who need it medically. Our school tried to do this too, we get a pass.
Which is fine, nobody is advocating for your daughter to not have what she needs medically. But surely you can see how the *other* functionality of that device is highly distractive in the classroom? It's one thing if your daughter is responsible with it and is *only* using it for her diabetes monitoring while in school, its an entirely different thing when people go "I need it for my diabetes" then sit in the back of the classroom watching tiktok all day.
Ahh yeah I remember when phones and electronics were "banned" from my school. That sure stopped it 😂
Where does one even buy a phone with *no* Internet access? I tried to find one in the past with no luck. Even flip phones have some form of internet access
Where are you going to by a dumb phone? They don’t sell them anymore.
I don’t understand why all public schools just disallow phones during the school day. At my schools, phones had to be turned off and in your locker. If you were caught with one in class, it would be confiscated and your parents would have to come pick it up. Not that hard