This is an older article. Today, the coalition decided on a measure with 'urgent advice' to not be allowed smartphones, tablets and smartwatches in the classroom [1]. Starting Jan 1st 2024, and so far only for secondary education, though they're deciding on primary education today.Schools are free in how they implement it, could be in the entire building or just classrooms. I don't expect any hard rules any time soon, with the coalition being so divided on the topic.
There's been interesting debates in parlement preceding this measure, with several interesting position papers on the topic from researchers, and even student associations [2].
The researchers emphasize that adolescents are much more susceptible to the bad effects of smartphones, due to inexperience with dopamine and its effects on dopamine production, being easier to condition, FOMO.
The main adverse effect they name is what they call a 'crumbling brain', with a short attention span unable to focus on one thing for a longer time. An often-repeated soundbyte is that students using smartphones often score in average 1-1.5 points less on tests, on a scale of 1 to 10.
I dunno what to think about it. As noted by the student association, it seems like children won't get the chance to learn how to handle the traps smartphones pose. Then again, I was free to use mine in high school and I'm still addicted to the thing :/
> due to inexperience with dopamine and its effects on dopamine production, being easier to condition, FOMO.
I don't understand the reasoning in performing this type of deep analysis. If the purpose of the device is to enhance education, it can be in the classroom. If it it's not, it's essentially a toy, and it has no place in the classroom. Why even bring dopamine in to it?
Perhaps schools should simply have an extra set of mobile phones that are specifically designed for education only.
That way, every student has access to the device, and every student will have the same device, and there is no risk that the device is used for e.g. watching tiktok.
Mobile phones are cheap enough for this to be a reality.
A device made with the best of intentions and with many helpful features for enhancing education may turn out to have harmful consequences in practice. Those harmful consequences typically include temptations to have fun instead of productivity and learning. And that's where all those concepts you quote come in.
outcomes matter, intentions don't really. if a device leads to bad outcomes, then it's by definition not a good tool for education in the typical classroom setting.
of course it might make sense to then have a very different class that deals with the whole problem of supercharged dependence forming devices and activities.
A program designed to be fun while also being somewhat educational will never outcompete a game designed to be as fun as possible without regard for educational value.
Because they are a bunch of willful ignorants following buzzword-infused neo-puritanism? Not only is anything pleasurable bad for you so is pleasure itself!
> inexperience with dopamine and its effects on dopamine production, being easier to condition, FOMO
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but this is entirely in the hands of the parents and far from new. You build their mental toughness by taking them under your wing and introducing them to the offline world beyond the walls of home and school.
I’m not sure what’s worse, the damage done to your child by letting them use a smartphone, or the damage done by not letting them use a smartphone while of their friends use one.
I didn't say to take away the smartphone. I'm saying that if all they know is home, school, and the internet then they're basically living under a rock. That's not how you should raise a person.
I don’t know if this is the case, but I’ve noticed questionable news outlets reposting their own old articles, possibly to game google news search or something
> it seems like children won't get the chance to learn how to handle the traps smartphones pose.
No one learns. The bitter fact no one even wants to think about: Almost everyone in the modern society is an addict of digital screens as much as their real life obligations allow them to be.
I don't have a kid in school yet, but I see no reason to even give them a phone until they're 12 or so. Reading these messages makes it seem like that no parents do this: these kids always already have phones.
How realistic is my intention, parents with schoolgoing kids?
Make it until 18. Or even better, until someone finally makes a smartphone that runs necessary apps and opens necessary websites (think Whatsapp, govt websites) but no other app or website (games, social media).
I have a hard time believing such researchers. It's just way too politically convenient that they can pull such explanations and numbers out. It always feels as though that these policy advisors can support any position and if it eventually goes wrong then nobody will blame them anyway.
I personally think phones definitely shouldn't be used in a classroom. I don't even see what benefit you would get from it, but it definitely shouldn't be legislated over. If a teacher or school wants to ban it then they should be able to.
It's political because the people pushing for it usually are conservatives who don't like the modern ways of life and/or education. It's questionable whether they actually want to help the society or just force people into their own ways. They might even think they're helping, but actually do the opposite.
Researchers often do research based on their world view. Did these people also try to research what happens if they integrate the technology into education and teach children about the possible dangers of it, or did they focus on just whatever could confirm their world view?
Thanks for your explanation. I am just suspicious of anyone disregarding a study for perceived political convenience without any explanation at all. But I get it now.
That's preposterous. I'm as left-wing as can be and I think that smartphones and social media are a plague. Anecdotally, in my experience my left-leaming acquaintances are the ones more likely to be aware of the dangers of social media.
Then you and your acquaintances are unusual. In my experience, the left-leaning people are pushing for more digital learning. In my country, every left-leaning political party has it as a part of their program. In EU, there's an entire left-wing party based around digital stuff (Pirate).
The Establishment wants to be the only channel into young minds, that way theirs is the only ideology to get into their minds.. with phones and social media, young people can get other ideas, Ideas that the establishment considers the wrong ideas
This is just about school hours... Kids can do whatever they want outside of the classroom. They didn't allow me to play my gameboy in class either, but I still played that thing for many many hours.
Independent of any judgement of the particular research at hand: everything about this is political. Lots of people, in particular parents but also others, dislike and fear that young people are losing their life on "screens", i.e. mostly smartphones, gaming.
Note the "dislike and fear", which is fully subjective and fundamentally not based on evidence. This is regardless of whether there actually is data to support this position; the fear exists nonetheless, and data can only back it up or contradict their intuition.
Most politicians have children, and most of the voting body has children.
No idea how things work in Europe, but over here if a teacher or school wants to ban (or heck, even allow: see “banned” books) something — even if it’s for good reasons, the loudest local parents that disagree will show up to school board meetings screaming at them, and challenge them at the next election. Perhaps the local officials would rather have the cover of a law than look like they’re being capricious.
Belgian perspective, but what they use in various nations around Europe/the world is likely closer to our system than to the American one:
We do not have school board meetings the way you do. We do have parents' councils, and parents' councils have delegates that represent all parents at school councils, and school councils additionally have delegates representing the local government, the school employees, and the students. The school council then negotiates with the school leadership (which is not elected, but appointed by national organisations). This is a lot more reflective of the "indirect democracy" principles that are common here in Europe.
What this means, practically, is that unless you've got broad support for your initiatives you can go pound sand if you disagree with how your kid's school is run.
I can't imagine myself graduating high school if I had a smartphone back then. Those things are so addictive, they just keep on giving. When I was studying all you could play on your phone was Snake. Going out with friends and making a campfire was way more fun than playing Snake. Nowadays people can spend 14hrs a day on their phone and still not be bored, it's crazy.
Deleting social media apps makes your phone _much_ less interesting though!
How many millions of children succesfully graduated already while having smartphones?
> Nowadays people can spend 14hrs a day on their phone and still not be bored, it's crazy.
How this can be crazy? You have unlimited library of people, photos, information, videos, absolutely anything in your hand. It would be crazy not use it.
I use my smartphone even now to write this comment.
> Deleting social media apps makes your phone _much_ less interesting though!
And also it will succesfully separate you from social information, trends. Which is good but also could become issue.
It's difficult to explain how the world was before 2007. Yes, yes, some of this is cranky old man shouts at cloud, but some of it is more objective.
Being bored was okay. It was part of life, and good for you. It not only got you to put in effort into not being bored (_eventually_), but just not being entertained is good for your mental well being. None of us realised this at the time of course.
Being bored is okey. But not when you force to be bored by someone else. You are bored in a prison, you are bored during doing repetitive work, is it good for you too?
I remember times "before internet", when there no internet, no mobile phones, only books, TV with 3 channels, gossips, newspapers and radio. And so? I remember when cranky old men shouts "enough books,enough TV,enough radio, enough music". I'm now cranky old man, so what?
I think it’s ok when students are forced to be bored by their tutors. I’ve taught bachelor students who spent the entire lecture on their phone. After the lecture they would seize a lot of my (unpaid) time for extra face to face, or they’d send me an email with questions. It’s fine for them to be bored and forced to take notes IMHO.
There’s enough time for smartphone use outside school hours. It’s a waste of time/energy for the tutor if no one is paying attention. Of course I’d try to make the lecture as interesting and ‘fun’ as possible, but winning their attention over Insta/TikTok/etc is challenging.
Good on you for putting in effort to make it fun, but I wouldn't. There's nothing wrong with students struggling to understand something they don't find fun. Either they want to learn it, or they don't. What are they even doing there, if not to learn what you're teaching?
> But not when you force to be bored by someone else. You are bored in a prison, you are bored during doing repetitive work, is it good for you too?
Arguably, yes. You learn to deal with discomfort, which is good for your mental health. Changing circumstances to avoid discomfort puts the power in externalities, whereas learning to deal with situations you don't like puts the power internally (you). The modern world trains us to run away from anything we don't like, and here we are.
Also, most people don't sit in a room voluntarily because they're looking to be bored (unless it's for meditation, but that's not the same thing). It's usually because of someone else.
Yes, I was one of those people :) I don't feel it was the same though. The best way I can describe the difference is in terms of control. Back then, I was in control, even if I was vegged out in front of the T.V. Now if I'm online, I feel like I'm being fed on a drip.
In 2007, people who didn't have Internet-connected desk jobs (or work from home arrangements) couldn't surf the web or check social throughout the day.
How it can be crazy is that they are ignoring the existence of 4K, 30 inch monitors, peering into a tiny screen that you have to dab at like an imbecile.
This is a sign of you being out of touch with the times. I can assure you that a phone wouldn't be the source of this problem. I would play Kerbal Space Program or any other game on the school computer. There weren't many options for them to stop it. We had http proxies, linux live CDs, you name it. The schools just simply couldn't lock them down properly. Even the students that weren't technically inclined didn't have difficulty, but there were plenty of people that did know what they were doing too.
How is computer usage remotely comparable? At my high school we had 2 hours of computer class per week. The rest of the time we spent in regular, computer-less classrooms. We had smartphones already in my days and I promise you they were a major source of distraction for the students even though they were banned.
I cannot imagine I would have bothered to pay attention at all if I could just be scrolling twitter or reddit all day. There's a reason why I block these apps on my own phone during work hours.
Maybe it’s a symptom of where I live, but many teenagers I know would simply say “try and take it away from me” and wait for enforcement. Very few teachers would engage, and they know that. Teenagers crave and seek out agency. A phone not only provides some of that to them, but resisting having it taken away does as well. It’s a battleground.
If students can’t use them, neither should adults.
I think this might work in a country like the Netherlands where school shootings aren't a constant fear and teachers are generally entrusted to ensure safety of children while they're in school. In America I think some parents would freak out because of the potential of the child being unable to reach out to a parent or vice versa during an emergency.
It should be more specific, they should not be allowed a smartphone in school at all. But a phone, yes definitely. In europe it's a lot more common to send your kids alone to school, so I definitely think they should have a simple phone.
But at the same time I want them to go to school without any smartphone, I want them to feel that freedom from social media at least during the school day. Not just that school locks them up, but that they eventually learn to not even bring it.
> It should be more specific, they should not be allowed a smartphone in school at all. But a phone, yes definitely. In europe it's a lot more common to send your kids alone to school, so I definitely think they should have a simple phone.
That’s the usual policy here in France. Smartphones are not allowed at all. Dumb phones are but they can’t be taken out of the bags in the classroom, which makes sense. I am much more comfortable giving my kid a dumb feature phone as well. It’s enough to send text messages and call in an emergency, but it makes him less of a target for mugging.
That sounds dumb. Smartphones are a part of everyday life. Expecting kids to not use them is either doomed to fail, or worse, it will make sure they learn less about how to use them.
They may well be a part of your everyday life, and likely of the everyday lives of everyone you know, but what makes you think that smartphones are a part of the everyday lives of French schoolchildren?
And even if they were, how is it in any way harmful for smartphones to not be a part of the time they spend in school?
If nobody can use it at school, then overall it makes it probably less likely they will be owned or used at all. Then your kids risk falling behind and becoming as adept with technology as "old people" today. Not saying that this trade-off means that everyone should use smart phones all the time, but let's not act like this isn't a potential downside when they are a part of everyday life for French adults.
This is that digital natives fallacy again. Being familiar with the latest tiktok trends is as important as being up to date on the latest Jersey Shore was 15 years ago; which is to say not important at all really. These kids are consumers of entertainment. They aren't automatically developing any skills just because the vehicle of consumption is the pinnacle of computing evolution.
Most people never understand technology, but most young people do understand the zeitgeist of their age because they have a lot of free time and a strong desire to fit in. It's just their social world and pop culture are on a phone now.
Fully with you. All these kids do is play games, scroll tiktok and chat on snapchat. What possible "skill" are we talking about?
If anything, they have very low tech skills. They are consumers of apps highly optimized for convenience. They're never challenged, need to fix anything, solve a problem.
Getting over the fear of using these kinds of devices. Look at old people. At least around here there are plenty of them that are incapable of using basically anything more complicated than a TV. Some might be able to use computers, but can't really operate smartphones etc. And it's largely because they don't have experience and constantly avoid it.
When you momentarily pause your Tiktok addiction for a few hours during school hours and then happily continue afterwards, no potential new learning was missed.
> then overall it makes it probably less likely they will be owned or used at all
Sorry, but this is ridiculous. If it is useful, they will pick it up. I mean, most people alive did not have a smartphone before growing up, and yet most of us are using one without issue right now. You’re setting a child up for failure if he does not learn things like how to handle frustration or behave with other people when he grows up. Not how to operate a trivial device.
> Then your kids risk falling behind and becoming as adept with technology as "old people" today.
By the time they’re old, they will be as useless with the new technologies of the time as elderly are with computers now. Not because they did not learn it at school, just because you lose mental agility and adaptability as you age. Smartphones most likely will be a prehistoric anachronism by the time they get old.
> but let's not act like this isn't a potential downside when they are a part of everyday life for French adults.
Most French adults right now did not have a smartphone before they turned 20. They are managing just fine.
>I mean, most people alive did not have a smartphone before growing up, and yet most of us are using one without issue right now.
I know plenty of people that do not. They have a smartphone and they use some of the features like taking pictures, text messaging apps and calling, but doing other things is unlikely. When my mom gets a new phone she has someone else set it up for her, because she can't. My grandparents have probably never used a computer either.
Don’t worry, kids are not stupid. They’re perfectly able to learn once they’re in high school. Besides, I never said he never uses one. But not his own and certainly not at school. Operating a smartphone is something you can learn without trying. He’s got more important things to learn at school, which will be much more of a problem if he does not.
To my ears this sound about as sane as worrying that my kid will fall behind if he doesn't have the same access to opiates and stimulants as the other kids do.
At my primary school, we were encouraged to bring computers to the classroom. The school also had many classes full of computers, and laptops too - all older second-hand models, but that didn't matter. We used them during most "normal" classes - not just the IT class. My last year of school we also utilized smartphones since that became the next big thing around 2010. Today they hand out tablets instead of laptops.
Almost every one of my classmates works in tech now, or at least makes heavy use of computers/programming in their out-of-tech careers. Practically all of them make many times more than the national average wage.
No, this wasn't a school for gifted students - in my country we go to the school we're assigned based on our residence. Incredible luck I got where I was. I'm sure half of the kids would live a very shitty life had they lived few streets away, but luckily thanks to the computerized education they got, they were able to overcome their bad upbringing (alcoholic parents, etc).
It's very sad that someone thinks a global ban is in any way good. Sure, if they can't handle it - let the schools ban it. But a global ban that would prevent innovative schools and teachers from teaching about/with it? That sucks big time.
And I just don't get why the governments aren't rather thinking about how to integrate the tech into the class on national scale. This whole thing seems political to me - there are many conservatives that just hate modern tech pushing for this. The porn argument is stupid - porn is part of modern life, teach children about the dangers of it, or they will overdose on it once the leash is gone; and it's not like the kids don't have a phone after school, who the hell would masturbate in school anyways. Same with social media.
I do not believe that anyone, even a young child, can't "learn to use" a touchscreen device during the many hours of the day that he or she is not in school.
And I do think that children should be taught to use online resources wisely, almost certainly as part of a course on critical thinking.
To answer your question, NONE of my classmates did. It would be weird to lug your Apple II or Atari 800 to class with a monitor and extension cord! And our schools (USA) work the same way: Their quality is highly dependent on the neighborhood they're in.
Smartphones are very useful, but the effect that the constant flow of information stemming from smartphones has on children, and the distraction they cause in an educational setting, are absolutely not a natural part of humanity, and should be scrutinized more than it is.
One can argue about this until the cows come home, for example I didn't even finish school and some of the smartest people I know learned very little in school aside from social skills.
But schools have the difficult job of catering to at least a majority of children.
I went to school 2007-2012 so the laws might have changed since then, or this might have been illegal. In PE class one day, we all got changed and left our clothes and bags in the changing room, then while we were on the field doing sport the deputy headteacher went to the changing room and went through everyone's bags and blazers to find phones and valuables. He took them all and made everyone think they had been stolen.
He revealed it after five minutes of the class noticing things were missing, and said it was supposed to be a lesson about safety. How theft happens and we shouldn't have valuable items on us at school, and if we do then they should be locked away somewhere secure when we leave our bags somewhere.
I doubt that was actually the case, I think he was just trying to get an idea of how many people have smartphones, and who those people were. This was right when they were invented so it was very rare for a kid to have one when I was a first year, but every year more and more kids got them handed down from their parents.
As to the deputy head's given reason (a lesson about safety and guarding against theft), I'd tend to think that was his genuine reason. Theft of valuable personal items in a school is a major headache for the school. The police may get involved. The school doesn't want weaker-minded students being constantly exposed to the temptation, some succumbing to that temptation, and some getting caught and having to be expelled, etc. Better to make students aware of the risk and to have rules against students bringing valuable items to school.
Not without a reason, but suspecting you have a smartphone, or any other forbidden or dangerous item, is one. So in practice you’re fine if you don’t use it, show it, or brag about it.
Your use of highscool makes me think you're american, because you don't seem to understand the concept of kids going to school on their own. It doesn't matter if the school has the number to the parents if the kid is taking a 30 minute bus ride, or a 30 minute bicycle ride, to and from school themselves.
I'm French, I think lycée map highschool 1:1, so I used that term to not have to explain just that. Clearly it was a mistake, as I had to explain it in the end.
I, my parents, my cousins and my nephew and nieces all went/are going to school by ourselves by age 6-7. I do not think this change anything?
What on earth does their comment have to do with kids going to school on their own? And...using "highschool" makes them American? What, you want them to say lycée?
Lots of american high schoolers drive themselves, or walk, or bike, or take the school bus.
Yes many get driven by their parents. I used to drive mine before they were old enough to do it themselves because it was only a short detour off my way to work anyway, and if they had to take the bus they'd have to wake up nearly an hour earlier, and I thought the extra sleep for them was worth it.
Kids going to school on their own was the norm for generations in the USA, and until recently I thought it still was.
Now I see every child being DRIVEN to school in a separate vehicle by a parent, blockading entire neighborhoods around the school. It's pathetic and irritating as hell.
And we're talking about L.A., where you can't blame the weather. These kids are going to be helpless dweebs.
Really? Why? I drove my kid to school up until the point that he got his driver's license this year and could drive himself. He's not a helpless dweeb. In fact, he just caught a plane to DC to attend a high school summer program at Georgetown University. He didn't have any trouble navigating himself there. I didn't hear a word from the time he left the house until he called me to let me know he'd checked into the dorm five states away.
NYC had a similar ban until 2015[1]. The problem was always enforcement: you can "prevent" students from having phones, but this means nothing unless (1) you're actively preventing them from bringing them onto schoolgrounds, and (2) taking phones away from students who do bring them into school.
Part of why NYC lifted their ban was because neither (1) nor (2) was practical: schools ended up adopting an "out of sight, out of mind" policy around phones, and actual confiscations led to larger concerns (e.g., students who were unable to contact their caretakers after school). It will be interesting to see if the Dutch can overcome either (or both) of these problems.
> schools ended up adopting an "out of sight, out of mind" policy around phones
This was how it worked in my schools two decades ago. As long as you didn't use your phone there was no problem, but otherwise it was the teacher's discretion on how to handle it (within limits). Usually that meant confiscation until the end of that class, on rare occasion they'd allow calls/texts as long as it was shared with the class (to embarrass them into not doing it again).
> It will be interesting to see if the Dutch can overcome either (or both) of these problems.
Having recently toured about 20 secondary schools in the Netherlands I can say that most of them had a system for this. In each classroom, near the door, was a kind of cloth rack with 30 pouches where the kids would leave their phones as they entered.
"If you have a phone in class then _you_ leave the class."
Why is the school treating these children like clients? They aren't. If they can conform to the rules, they can come, if they can't, they don't. You don't have a natural right to be in the classroom.
I’m pretty sure that, as a matter of law, school attendance is compulsory in most western countries. Whether or not students are “clients” is immaterial; the school has an obligation to teach them, and the students are compelled to attend.
I think the one place that I used my phone the most in high school was in suspension!
(More broadly: I don't think it's remotely practical to remove students from classrooms like this. To a first approximation, every single student in school has a smartphone.)
Again: the problem was enforcement. It turns out that making 1000+ teenagers put their phones into bags (and ensuring that they don’t open them) is not trivial.
The problem with contact is when the student leaves the school: the phone was typically confiscated for multiple days, meaning that students would be left without their phones when they left the grounds. Many parents give their children phones so they can reach them if they’re lost or similar.
Notably, the city tore up all of the payphones around the same time.
Edit: as a piece of trivia: prior to the end of the ban, there was an entire thriving industry of phone escrow vans parked outside of schools[1].
Why not confiscate the phones for only the length of the school day and give them back when the student leaves? If you need a harsher punishment as escalation, use something unrelated to the phone like a detention or suspension.
At my son's school they have to put their phones in the 'phone hotel' at the beginning of the school day and pick them up at the end. The kids just bring two phones and put a junk one in the hotel. If they were to enforce it with detention or suspension, 75% of the student body would permanently be on detention/suspension.
School has breaks too. What are you doing if a teacher is absent or you have something like a 3h lunch break?
Growing up you were simply not allowed to actively use your phone during class, outrightly banning phones from school makes no sense. We'd also use them for some class activity at least once a week.
Even when I was in high school 20 years ago, we longer had a normal phone at school. I was the only odd one out, trying to call home using a perpetually broken phone booth while all my classmates had mobile phones.
I have been thinking and... well... what about a smartphone in the principal's office :] ? Or a VOIP soft (with pre-encoded emergency contact) ?
After all, if the roof fell on the kid and the smartphone is locked how can the teachers or anyone call his parents to inform they are being taken to the hospital ?
To be frank many people don't remember phone numbers these days, and just enter them into their phone-books to use. I know as a kid decades ago it took me a while to learn my home phone number. Sure a refresher index card could be used but that just isn't the norm.
I think it probably makes sense to give up. After all, we fought World War 2 without computers or cell phones, but people were different in those days. Now we take care of people more and prioritize how to stay in touch with caretakers, so we have to allow kids to bring their smartphones into the classroom.
How could actual confiscations possibly lead to larger concerns? Cellphones didn't even exit until I was an adult and I'm still in my 40s. Sheesh. How the hell did anything happen before the year 2005?
Realized 10+ years ago that the only way I could have my kids grow up addiction-free was if they didn't have a smartphone/tablet and the only credible way I could ask this from them was if I also didn't have one.
In hindsight one of the best decisions of my life, sadly becoming more and more difficult to maintain as banking, public transportation, restaurants, and all other parts of life increasingly assume you carry a smartphone.
I’m rather disturbed by the discompassion society has towards people without smartphones. Be it menus at restaurants, banking apps (as you mention), or even map availability. We just assume everyone is connected all the time and that phones never break or have issues. I feel crazy, because my phone is constantly misbehaving.
Industrial society is coercive towards people that want to live more primitive life than one deem normal, that's essentially main thesis of anarcho-primitivists. Still, I don't think Luddites should ban for other people their technology. Why not ban electricity and cars too?
I'm not asking others to give up smartphones, just like I'm not asking others to give up stairs or cars. I only want the world to remain accessible to those without. Keep paper menus, build a ramp, and maintain cycling or public transit infrastructure.
I have an elderly relative with dementia who is unable to use a smartphone but the local grocery chains provide discounts for their weekly sales through smartphone based digital coupons. The open irritation and verbal abuse they get from cashiers who have to go through their alternate manual process for entering those digital coupon discounts is depressing.
I think this is overstated. I can't think of anything essential I cannot do without a smartphone or computer. You have to do it like it's 1985, which is foreign to the last generation or two, but it's still doable.
> I can't think of anything essential I cannot do without a smartphone or computer [..] it's still doable
Q: Have you never been to a restaurant which has done away with physical menus ("because Covid") and has a QR code which you're supposed to scan with your device?
> I’ve never been to one that wouldn’t dig up a physical menu on request.
Well, we have been to one (in Switzerland, as it happens) despite having been seated we got up and walked out once it was clear they expected us to get on the Internet to look at their menu. Their loss.
And then you ask the waiter what the price is, too? And then, when that seems a bit much, you ask him what else is good and what the price of that is? But if that doesn't strike your fancy, then you ask him what a third good thing is and how much it costs? Or do you always just eat the first thing anyone tells you to eat and then pay whatever they demand?
It's even worse in Asia, lots of things require an app tied to local phone number. It's at the point where you literally can't pay for things, call a cab, etc. as a tourist
Lots of respect for this - I’d guess your kids have it too. I often felt frustrated as a kid that adults took power and control over you and didn’t adhere to the same demands themselves.
"1996: The Israeli secret service finds that a cell phone can be used for things other than chatting with friends. It also makes a pretty nifty little bomb for disposing of an enemy, which is what happens to Yahya Ayyash on Jan. 5, 1996 when he tries talking on a booby-trapped phone " https://www.wired.com/2007/01/introducing-the-cell-phone-bom...
It's more akin to an adult lecturing you about the harms of junk food and controlling everything you eat while they themselves eat nothing but cheetos. It creates an adversarial relationship. You can rule as a tyrant, but it's not that pleasant for those that have to suffer through it. Obviously there are outlier exceptions (drinking, driving, very young children etc.) but even those are mostly for societal consequence reasons vs. individual capability.
Autonomy is really important - being empowered to actually make the good decision.
It's a matter of respect imo, adults often have too little of it. The best teachers I had, had a lot of it.
Kids observe, if you tell a kid to be generous but you behave selfishly the kid will assume you're full of shit and ignore what you're saying. The opposite is also true. Talk is cheap, what you actually do is what matters.
Nah, driving is also stressful and traffic is not fun.
I’ve seen recently a fair amount of car enthusiasts start buying into the walkable cities/public transit mantra, because a car enthusiast does not find city/suburban stop and go traffic to be the thing they’re enthusiastic about.
Right but that didn't change in last 20 years. Cities that suck driving (and walking) in now sucked as much and more 20 years ago. It's not that that changed how much people want to have driving license.
The amount of delay has increased over the last 20 years with a blip when everybody was locked down. Lane miles have not kept up with population growth or increasing sprawl, and investment in alternatives to traffic is quite poor.
My college student still won't take a cell phone. His uni gave him an iPad but he leaves it home most of the time. It can happen. And since he doesn't have a cellphone, I don't pick mine up so much when we're hanging out together. Win-win.
As a software eng something that bothers me is that every single employer that I have worked for has assumed that you would have no problem installing work-related software on your phone.
The most common offender is MFA related software.
I run GrapheneOS on my phone and don't have the Google Play stuff installed. And kind of the entire point of this is that I don't want to run proprietary, closed-source stuff on my phone at all. I also like not having a ton of bloatware/spyware installed by the manufacturer that I can't remove. So anyway, I usually protest and say that I can't, and that if I'm required to use a mobile device for work purposes then I need the company to provide me with one.
Often arrangements can be made by requesting a device that can double for other work related functions. For example, I currently have a work-issued iPad with Okta Verify installed on it that also let's me reach for Safari and do iOS specific dev & testing when needed.
But it does show the creep. Companies just assume that they can request that you use your mobile device for things that you otherwise wouldn't, and that you will have no problem complying. IMO saying either "I don't own a smartphone" or "I refuse to use my personal devices for work related purposes" should be a no-questions-asked accepted position. And while I've yet to be met with hostility by saying that, it is unfortunately such a minority position that it is almost always the first time they've heard an objection.
> IMO saying either "I don't own a smartphone" or "I refuse to use my personal devices for work related purposes" should be a no-questions-asked accepted position. And while I've yet to be met with hostility by saying that, it is unfortunately such a minority position that it is almost always the first time they've heard an objection.
Being at a more security-conscious (or paranoid) company can help in that case: they also don't want you to have work related things (other than MFA related software) on your personal devices, so the incentives align.
Definitely. It's just so much easier to have a policy of 'no company data on personal devices' and just hand out the devices people need for their work. Easy to explain to auditors too (think ISO 27001).
For devs and support this means a laptop, and for ops and management a smartphone is usually needed too.
The only reason I have a phone on me when I'm at the office is for school to reach me in case my kid is taken ill or something like that.
I would never put work stuff on my personal phone. Keep those lives separate. I seem to remember a story here a few years ago where someone's company got sued, and they demanded her personal phone (full of nudes and other personal info) for legal discovery because she used it for both personal and work stuff. Don't cross the streams, people!
If [company] needs me to do work on a phone, they need to provide the phone. Then they are welcome to remote-wipe it, install whatever Spyware and LockdownWare they need to, and have it back whenever they want it. I don't care.
I spent a few years as an okta engineer implementing MFA. Sometimes they buy you an MFA device, but most companies just degrade their security by letting you use phone mfa (even using your work desk phone for mfa).
This, of course, is not the fault/problem of the people who refuse to install mfa on their personal device. Good for them.
I agree with where you're coming from, but half the problem is caused by this needless bundling, putting everything on a single device. A cheap used tablet is like $100. Get one just for work junk. Use it when you need it, otherwise forget about it. Having to spend that money yourself to help corporate check some compliance box is certainly over the line of what should be, but depending on how much you'd otherwise have to argue it's perhaps a better use of your time.
In general I find segmenting things across devices a great way of mitigating overstimulation hell. Like most people I've got some trash toilet game I've become habituated to, but I only do so on a particular device that otherwise stays home. If I'm out and about and have to wait for a few minutes, there's zero temptation to pull it out and check in. Also it's simply unable to surveil my movements, as opposed to say trusting the OS permission system plus having to work around its shortcomings with something like an always-on VPN.
Installing an MFA token in your phone is just using a convenient place to keep tokens, not an imposition on you.
Objecting to being asked to keep MFA tokens on your phone is like saying 'where am I supposed to keep this keycard to get into the building? In my own personal WALLET?'
2FA tokens these days broadly follow TOTP and HOTP standards, meaning you can use any token manager you like to handle them. The iOS password manager even has inbuilt 2FA token support now. You shouldn’t have to install software just for managing corporate 2FA tokens any more than you need to buy a proprietary keyring to hold your desk drawer key.
> This question is fascinating to me! What form of work requires using a smart phone?
A common one I've seen around is food delivery workers.
Another common one, at least around here, is taxis (we used to call them "radio-taxi" since you called a taxi by dialing to a central and talking with a dispatcher, who talked to the drivers through radio; it's been a while since the bulky radios with long external whip antennas have been replaced with a smartphone app).
Another one I've occasionally seen is power company repair workers, who seemed to use their smartphones both to communicate with their central and to fill service order forms. The same for communication network repair workers (though now I'm thinking, how do the cell phone network repair workers do it? I'm guessing they must have a traditional handheld radio as a fallback).
Wow, I always knew HN was mainly used by programmers and this thread seems to add further anecdotal evidence for it.
For me, as an agency founder, most of my work is communicating with my team and clients. With clients: sharing progress updates, discussing possible new directions or new features, and replying to any questions they have. With team: exploring the solution space for new features, asking for updates, and managing and overseeing work done by developers on a day to day or week to week basis.
My team works remotely on hours of their choosing and their working times span ~14h of a day. Much of the work for me is intermittent and is discontinuous.
I do around ~50-60% of such work using my phone. I find it more convenient and faster than having to go to my workstation.
Most FAANG-level software engineering jobs will require being on-call with something like PagerDuty [0]. Though I guess you could get by with using just text message notifications and not necessarily the app.
In the US that is. Over here on the old continent they thankfully can't pull that stuff because most countries have banned work calls outside of regular work hours.
Definitely not legal in many of the large economies any more. France, Spain, Italy, Portual, Belgium and Ireland have have all adopted so called "Right to disconnect" laws. In Germany it's not categorically outlawed but employees have no obligation to respond off-hours.
To some degree you can be contactable when traveling or otherwise away from your desk with a feature phone but only partially. You’d certainly be that quirky person with the odd anti-smartphone habit.
As someone said, MFA related stuff mostly. I also requested a smart phone from work so I could attend meetings while I'm driving to places and so I have a hotspot if I'm in the pager rotation, which I get paid for.
I have most of my best ideas, both work and personal, while running, so I like having a phone on me in order to reference stuff and take good notes before the thought is lost in the ether.
Any development work where uptime is important? Especially if SLA is involved. If your product has issues, the client bothers management and management will certainly want to bother you.
Not sure which typical workplaces require smartphone use (I'm sure there are many), but indeed, in my case, I work either at the computer or in front of people or walking up and down while thinking :)
You can have TOTP as a browser extension. Not saying you should, just that there is a possibility. A bonus is easier backup of secrets so loosing your phone does not lock you out.
I haven't yet encountered situations with mandatory 2FA, but indeed, this is the kind of thing I expect to become widespread, making it more and more difficult to those without a smartphone.
Company TFA is less of a problem than other things as they’ll use a token rather than SMS and you can always use a hardware token. I have a soft token on my phone but it’s not required.
But I grew up in central California and surroundings in the 90's and rode my bike everywhere. And it was horrible. I nearly died multiple times, and drivers were sometimes furious at someone biking on the road. I rode from Sac to Folsom once over a narrow bridge with no shoulder and can't believe I lived.
I thought it might be better in cities, but Berkeley, while better, was still mediocre, and Santa Monica was bad. Really, everywhere in the US is somewhere on the spectrum from "merely horrible" to "dire hellscape".
Ten years ago my wife and I moved to Ireland. Ireland is also bad, but still massively better than anywhere I've lived in the US. But now we have young kids, and we don't want "better than the US", we want "good enough your child can bike to school, and when people kill children with their cars the people are angry with the driver, not sympathetic towards them". Which means the Netherlands, or perhaps Denmark. So that's where we're going. Ireland being wildly incompetent bureaucratically it took 4 years just to process mine and my wife's naturalisation applications.
Hope you enjoy your stay. I'm going on 8 years in the Netherlands (originally from the USA). The freedom my kids have here is a major reason we are still here. Biking everywhere is amazing. Work life balance and the ability to work part time is also a huge benefit over the US.
I live in a relatively (for the US) bike-friendly city (Tucson AZ). There's a lot of cycling infrastructure, but sometimes you have to ride on a 7-lane stroad with distracted/aggressive/inebriated drivers, many of them in vehicle types that are especially dangerous to get hit by. I'm envious of places that don't have the USA's car culture.
I'm curious how you'll find living in Netherlands as an American.
Thanks, I'm curious too. Incidentally it's not near Tucson but https://culdesac.com/ is in Tempe and looks really interesting for a car-free development.
Not sure I agree. Looks like upmarket rentals all owned by a single company. If everyone is a renter, it limits the amount of community that will develop. There's a light rail station but otherwise you're in lawless Phoenix traffic.
It looks like stick-built / Type V / combustible construction, and they're giving everyone an e-bike, which is mildly scary given the trouble NYC is having with structure fires started by bike and scooter batteries.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, and new housing without included parking is major progress in Arizona. Thanks for sharing in any case!
I grew up riding bikes every damned day (including to and from school) in the Chicago suburbs and don't recall ever having an incident with a car. I also didn't tend to ride in busy streets.
I walked to work daily for the past 9 months and approximately twice/week someone would blow through the marked crosswalk while I had a signal because they didn’t check for pedestrians. In multiple cases I was less than 3 feet from their car.
The problem isn’t people walking or cycling- it’s people driving and car manufacturers who make cars so big you can’t adequately see the space around them.
It's disgusting. If cities would even enforce the existing, feeble laws, they'd be awash in revenues. Every intersection. Every block. All you have to do is turn your head 90 degrees and see three people dicking around with phones while driving.
Your comment made me curious what the penalties for this were in my own country, Britain. It seems as if one can lose one's driving licence for both offences, but with drink-driving, there is an additional possibility of incarceration. With texting, if one has been driving for more than two years, that person cannot lose their driving licence from just that one offence.
In the U.S. it varies by region, but I've never seen a penalty more than $120... whereas red-light cameras and speed cameras are used to impose $400 fines or more.
It's a disgrace. I really wonder why we must tolerate this, and who or what is behind the refusal to address it.
I have no idea why this has to be a government-based rule (law? ... assuming they won't fix it until oct. 1st). Although I'm older, and phones were not as common as now, our schools had "school-rules" forbidding the use during classes, and if you got caught with a phone, the teacher would take it, and parents would have to come to school and pick it up. Are schools unable to implement simple rules and need the government to do it now?
I'm bothered mostly, because school rules are school rules. Need to adapt? Need some "modification" of the rules? A teacher can do it. If it's government rules, there are pretty sure to be some edge cases, where someone will have to break those rules to achieve something positive.
> I have no idea why this has to be a government-based rule
You clearly have not met today's parents. Enough of them revolt at the idea of a teacher taking - even temporarily - the $1000 device they bought for their child and which they need to monitor/contact/supervise their child 24/7.
A rule like that might help teachers and schools to get overbearing parents off their backs.
I'm from NL but haven't been in school for some time so maybe this has changed. So far I thought helicopter parenting was mainly a USA phenomenon. Not that it doesn't exist here at all, just not the norm, at least ten years ago
I live in slovenia, helicopter parenting is not that much of a thing, but parents coming to school to defend their kids (who did stupid stuff) sadly is becoming more common.
A friend was a cop, and same thing... kid would get drunk, vomit in the middle of the city, the cops would pick him up and take him home, and the parents (instead of thanking the cop and punishing the kid) would blame others, say that someone planted alcohol in secret (since the kid is covered in red wine vomit, that would mean planting a liter of red wine in a glass of soda), etc.
But i still think that such rules (cell phones) should be in-school rules, without the need of the governments to interfere.
It's a thing everywhere, including Netherlands. I've seen it plenty of times over the years unfortunately.
As for this specific issue, difficult parents has been mentioned a few times, e.g. in [1]: "But a smartphone ban leads to resistance from some parents who always want to be able to contact their children, including creative forms of sabotage and frustrating conflicts in the classroom".
With hundreds or even thousands of kids and parents, you only need a few to be unreasonable to cause a world of frustration and hurt.
I've seen this solved here in slovenia in (at least) one school, where they have a "classroom phone" (a dumbfone, calls only). All the parents know the number, all the kids can use it in an emergency. They are usually not used in class, but on a field trip (especially multi-day one), the kids use it to call their parents and vice-versa.
I'm not even going to bother to read those "common" BS stories, but technically you're not quite right. You can have a separate Apple ID for some of the stuff on your Apple devices (like App Store or Apple Music purchases), and another for iCloud.
In fact, Apple forces you to do this if your original Apple ID is not an E-mail address. After they instituted that idiotic requirement, they refused to let you use a non-E-mail-address ID for iCloud.
My parents would intentionally delay picking up the phone as a punishment, but back then, it was a monochrome display three line phone, and I was in highschool when I first got it :) But it had both clock and alarm, which some of my classmates didn't have on their older-model phones :) (ericsson a1018 vs ga628)
I think this is probably a good thing. Even in the early 2000s, having phones in the classroom was mostly a distraction (texting, or having the ringer on and distracting others) or vehicle for cheating (also texting in those days). The only downside is in emergency situations where children should have some agency to contact family. If children could be trusted to turn their phones off at the start of class and leave them in their bags, that would be great, but I get the impression from teachers that that isn't the case.
Bad source, no sources are cited in the article. Dutch sources [1] [2] (reputable newspapers, both articles published today) mostly agree with this article, but the starting date is wrong.
Schools will now start discussing how to implement such measures; the rule starts being in force starting January 1st, 2024. Even then there will not be a law yet, though a law may come, depending on cooperation from schools and I guess political climate.
There is no mention of anything happening on October 1st. Now if NLTimes would have given us their sources, we might have known where they got that from.
I remember when cell phones first started becoming a thing parents would get for their kids, especially those who took school trips for sports or debate etc. Even though this was pre-smartphone days, our school had a strict policy of no phones outside of lockers during the school day. If you were caught with one in a classroom, it was taken away and sent to the principal's office, where you would have to get it at the end of the day (typically after a stern talking to).
What changed that teachers started letting kids have phones in classrooms? It is utterly mind boggling to me that it was ever allowed in the first place.
Edit: To clarify, I'm in the US and phones in classrooms seem to be a common complaint among teachers. Something seems to have changed, just not sure what.
I have to imagine this is already pretty common. Here in the US, my kids' schools are pretty restrictive on smartphones. At least through middle school, they'll confiscate it if you take it out during class or it rings. The elementary schools of course don't allow them at all on campus, though they're kind of okay with the cellular apple watch as long as the kid doesn't use it during class.
Sure, but if that happens how do you think they will feel about the teacher that did that? Do you think that kid will see eye to eye with the teacher after that?
That's a very silly question. "No phones in school" is no different from any other rule the teachers have to enforce in class.
Let's try the same question, with another rule, to make the point;
"Imagine a teacher stops some kids from beating up another kid; if that happens how do you think they will feel about the teacher that did that? Do you think that kid will see eye to eye with the teacher after that?"
At some point there will be a need to set boundaries. That's the essence of socialization and necessarily a part of education. Teachers will have to set boundaries and enforce rules, that doesn't have anything to do with phones.
>That's a very silly question. "No phones in school" is no different from any other rule the teachers have to enforce in class.
Few school rules come with the deprivation of your property though. Taking away a phone "for a week" as you suggested would be that. We had a kid who reported a computer crime to the police (a threat of violence). The police took his computer as evidence I believe. I don't think he's ever reporting something like that to the police again.
>"Imagine a teacher stops some kids from beating up another kid; if that happens how do you think they will feel about the teacher that did that? Do you think that kid will see eye to eye with the teacher after that?"
This point is ridiculous though. This rule protects other children, whereas the phone rule, especially the confiscation rule only affects the kid in question. Ie you're saying it's for their own good, but I bet that in 20 years the evidence will be a wash - that there really was no huge drop off in ability linked to phones in that generation.
>At some point there will be a need to set boundaries. That's the essence of socialization and necessarily a part of education. Teachers will have to set boundaries and enforce rules, that doesn't have anything to do with phones.
Sure, how about boundaries where the government doesn't make such insanely stupid laws? They're eventually going to use phones anyway in their daily life. It will be a constant thing next to them.
Ultimately you have to remember that the vast majority of students do NOT choose to be there. They're forced there by other laws. And while it is probably a good thing that they are there, it still feels akin to a prison for many of them. Pushing them down harder doesn't make them appreciate you more or necessarily improve the quality of their education.
> Few school rules come with the deprivation of your property though.
You obviously never used a super soaker in class. There's plenty of stuff that will get confiscated if you use it in class. For good reason.
> there really was no huge drop off in ability linked to phones in that generation.
I dare to disagree. See linked research. Smartphones are dangerous.
> Sure, how about boundaries where the government doesn't make such insanely stupid laws?
I don't think that a law (or more likely; a regulation or advisement) to disallow mobile phones in the class room is a "insanely stupid" idea. "Insanely stupid" is - it seems - in the eye of the beholder.
> Ultimately you have to remember that the vast majority of students do NOT choose to be there
Kids are not adult. Kids don't want to eat greens, kids don't want to go to bed, kids don't want to brush teeth. Kids don't want to go to school.
> Pushing them down harder doesn't make them appreciate you more or necessarily improve the quality of their education.
No, but getting mobile phones out of the class room will. There's plenty of evidence that links "display time" with depression and suicide[0], attention and literacy deficits[1] and addiction[2].
- There's supposed to be a computer in front of every kid since grade one. Schools are instead banning the little computers kids smuggle in.
- Hypocrisy. Smartphone bans are pushed by people who use them all the time themselves.
- This is the same thing as with corporations locking down employees' computers. It's a policy designed for the worst behaving kids to the detriment of the best behaving ones. Poor use of time and poor self-control become expected and even the best kids will slide towards these low expectations.
- Totalitarian policies like this get passed only because teens and tweens are disenfranchised. Democratic government trying to enforce similar population-wide ban wouldn't last long.
- It's not about games or social media. Those are actually tolerated far better than apps like Socratic, which are treated like criminal level of cheating. This is technophobia all the way through.
I could go on and on about this. Contrary to people nitpicking details (health, parent contact, practicality of enforcement), I think this is fundamentally wrong.
There's supposed to be a computer in front of every kid since grade one. Schools are instead banning the little computers kids smuggle in [A computer to use in the school as a means of education is not the same of letting kids use a cellphone in class]
- Hypocrisy. Smartphone bans are pushed by people who use them all the time themselves. [Because they are adults not kids]
- This is the same thing as with corporations locking down employees' computers. It's a policy designed for the worst behaving kids to the detriment of the best behaving ones. Poor use of time and poor self-control become expected and even the best kids will slide towards these low expectations. [employees are not kids, also employees are not in school they are in a job]
- Totalitarian policies like this get passed only because teens and tweens are disenfranchised. Democratic government trying to enforce similar population-wide ban wouldn't last long. [Totalitarian policies? This has to be a joke]
- It's not about games or social media. Those are actually tolerated far better than apps like Socratic, which are treated like criminal level of cheating. This is technophobia all the way through. [Of course. It's not about games and social media, it's a about kids not using a cell phone while in the classroom]
I know there’s a point to be made that they’re adults and not kids, but hear me out.
I’m 37 and discovered around age 32 that I used my phone too much. It had crept into my waking life over around 8 years and became a real problem. Today I use a lot of strategies to prevent this, and it’s still challenging to ensure I don’t use it too much.
Kids are surrounded by adults like me or even worse than I am. They use their phones so much, rarely to any useful effect, and they train kids to do the same thing. Adults reject advice or instruction to use their phone less, always certain that they don’t do it for any bad reasons and that they’re in control.
Yet they aren’t. It’s a widespread, chronic, and tragically influential problem. Kids are using their phones way too much, but they’re only mimicking what so many adults around them are doing.
Phones also help fill agency gaps in their lives by allowing them to entertain themselves and socialize without relying on an adult to make things happen. Taking that away is hard and genuinely removes something positive from their lives — especially from their perspective.
I know some adults are not hypocrites. These days I’d like to think I’m not, but I certainly was. I think we need to have a handle on that problem before we can ban phones for kids without reasonable pushback from them.
Yeah, I think I do. No one should be smoking. It makes no sense. Adults should be discouraged and it shouldn’t be condoned in common areas. Teens get this treatment, adults should too.
Edit: if people want to smoke privately or without sharing second hand smoke, I don’t think they should be stopped. I’m not trying to say it should be outlawed or something. I just don’t like being around it or having it normalized to kids (or even adults — we shouldn’t accept it as something people do so casually, especially in close proximity to non-smokers).
Correct parental examples are key to successfully training healthy habits, but phones are plenty addictive in their own right. It's not just a problem of bad parental examples. Why do you think the parents are addicted in the first place? Are children somehow immune? Hypocrisy is not the main thing here.
I don’t think children are somehow immune. I think the fact that the phones are evidently addictive warrants adults working harder to set a better example.
Expecting kids to abstain from using them in an area should mean adults don’t use them either, though I can imagine cases where it is warranted and makes sense. But, here I think the adult should be expected to only use the phone when warranted.
Perhaps this isn’t typical, but the teachers in my kid’s schools use their phones way too much. It sets such a terrible example. I can try all I want to make screen time intentional in my home, but they go to school and see people (including adults they’re supposed to trust) using their phones without much restraint. I went on a field trip with my youngest and was blown away by how much the teachers were disappearing into screens on a regular basis.
To me, that’s a complete failure to model good behaviour. If kids are growing up with that, who are we to arbitrarily tell them they have to do better?
> A computer to use in the school as a means of education is not the same of letting kids use a cellphone in class
It is the same thing if the computers are uncensored as they should be. Kids are supposed to be taught responsibility since early age. If it can be done for computers, it can be surely done for smartphones.
> Because they are adults not kids
As someone else detailed in comments, this is aimed at secondary education and up, i.e. young adults (teens and tweens) rather than children.
> Totalitarian policies? This has to be a joke
Think again what would happen if your government tried to enforce this against adults. Wouldn't you call it totalitarian?
> it's a about kids not using a cell phone while in the classroom
It's about kids not using any computing device in the classroom. 19th century education. As I have said, this is technophobia all the way through.
"Totalitarian policies" my man these are children in school. I am 100% confident from your reply that you are not a parent and have spent very little time around kids.
I am a very caring parent and I have an exceedingly well-behaved kid. I am always kind and I have very few rules. My kid has unrestricted phone time but still prefers other stuff like Scratch.
If you are thinking of children as prison inmates that deserve the totalitarian treatment, perhaps you are doing something wrong.
I disagree with the premise or conclusion of every point you made.
Computers as a tool for educational purposes is different than a TikTok stream.
Adults using smartphones is different than children using them during learning periods. And for what it's worth, adults should use them less during work hours. In any case, this bullet point is no justification for letting kids use social media in school.
Corporations locking down work terminals is legally permissible and morally correct. Unless you like the idea of a computer illiterate bank teller downloading zero days to the internal network because they have some fundamental freedom to browse the web on company resources.
It isn't totalitarian, I disagree completely with the use of that term and with the implication that teenagers should have franchise at any level above local. Yes, school for children has different expectations than adults in an open society.
> Computers as a tool for educational purposes is different than a TikTok stream.
But nobody is banning TikTok. All schools that do anything about smartphones are always banning smartphones as such. Nobody is showing the kids how to use computers properly nor is anyone expecting them to use them for anything but games and social. Schools are just giving up on the subject and closing themselves in 19th century world. The same TikTok justification would be used against school computers until they are locked down so much they cannot be considered universal computers anymore.
> Corporations locking down work terminals is legally permissible and morally correct.
And a reliable way to get rid of the best employees by optimizing the whole organization for the worst ones. This is schools we are talking about. Pulling everyone down to the lowest standard of behavior is clearly against schools' mission. Schools should be instead optimized for the best students and push everyone to be their best selves.
> It isn't totalitarian, I disagree completely with the use of that term and with the implication that teenagers should have franchise at any level above local.
This is a bit OT, but aren't teenagers smarter that pensioners in every way you can measure except vocabulary? Aren't teenagers emotionally, cognitively, and physically clearly closer to 18+ adults than prepubescent children? If so, what makes you think they aren't effectively adults? Anyways, prepubescent children don't get to vote for practical reasons, specifically because they don't care and because they are under strong influence of their parents. Neither reason applies to teenagers.
To the first point: If we assumed this is a dichotomy, which would you prefer? The government banning social media from all minors' devices? Some MDM that disabled it by force during certain hours, requiring intrusive software?
Or, that we remove the problem by removing the tool entirely and without inspecting the devices contents?
You talk about using computers properly, which is a noble goal, but the banning of phones in classrooms has multiple reasons behind it. One of which is the belief that social media and smartphone games are addictive. Should we teach kids how to smoke cigarettes responsibly during their lunch break?
Children can be taught how to use computers in diverse and interesting ways since early age. I know, because I did it with my kid. And I did not exhaust the possibilities, so it can be certainly done much better if educational professionals invest themselves in the topic. As most parents aren't up to the task, schools are supposed to do it since kindergarten, but instead of offering positive and enjoyable examples, they choose to spread the sort of fear-inducing negative technophobic propaganda many people are repeating here.
As for what I mean by technophobic propaganda, just listen to yourself: "the belief that social media and smartphone games are addictive". People aren't stupid. Psychological trickery can get games and media only so far. People crave a variety of experiences. It's not that hard to keep students' attention either by offering an interesting subject, by listening and being honest (for a change), or just by being there as a parent or teacher.
Why do you need reasons to allow smartphones? Isn't allowing any kind of behavior the default in free societies? You need a good reason to disallow something and especially so in case of a sweeping mass measure like this. I haven't heard any arguments against smartphones that wouldn't be shallow BS about "addictiveness" (seems everything is "addictive" these days) or "distraction" (as if there weren't other opportunities for distraction).
PS: I did mention some reasons: computer for every pupil, Socratic app (and others), maintaining high expectations, resisting technological regress in schools that are already backwards. Not that this would be an exhaustive list.
> What exactly is so difficult to understand about a school being there for educational purposes, and the smartphone directly distracting from that?
Smartphone is a universal computer. You can use it for a variety of tasks, including education. Schools are supposed to teach that rather than throwing students back into the stone age.
Smartphones (and computers in general) aren't just any tool. If used properly, they are powerful cognitive multipliers. Removing them from schools is like giving every student a lobotomy, because they aren't using their brain the way they are supposed to.
"Stone age"? Your exaggerations are hardly fitting. What educational tasks is a phone necessary for? Sure, you can search things and have a calculator ready. Out of Excel, Python, math, English, history, art: what use is a smartphone in learning those subjects/skills? I think it can safely be said that most people with smartphones out during class aren't engaged with the content; certainly not while the teacher is actively talking. Students have plenty of time to use social media or whatever outside of school.
To make no bones about it: I'm currently a student. I've so far never seen a need to use my smartphone for an educational reason. I've often seen people who have phones out when the teacher is talking. There should be no debate about smartphone usage in class generally being distracting, potentially to people other than the users. You may not agree with the proposed rules, but you're vastly overstating your case.
> "Isn't allowing any kind of behavior the default in free societies?"
> No?
Err, are you living in a (relatively) free society? My country has this principle written in the constitution: people can do anything the law does not prohibit whereas the government can only do what the law expressly permits it to do. I would think that's the standard in democracies.
My Dutch school in the back-end of nowhere (insofar as the country has that) was very progressive with their phone ban in 2006, apparently. Per the article "Schools and teachers have been asking for rules to restrict the use of mobile phones in the classroom" I didn't know that they need permission to enact rules towards an orderly teaching environment. Sounds implausible but what do I know
A notable omission from the article is how many schools already have this rule, because I can't imagine that any of them just lets the kids be on their phone during lessons. You're also not allowed to talk while the teacher is explaining something, or aren't allowed to work on homework for another subject or so. So even learning is prohibited if it's not for the right subject you're allocated right now: that's already in place, but banning phones is a problem? Curious
My kids’ high school required kids have a smartphone. They wanted them using the calendar to track tests and assignments, they used the camera quite a bit both for assignments (make a short video about blah blah blah) and for quick notes (take a picture of the homework assignment on the white board). There was a twitter-like app for the teacher to broadcast information to the students and I believe students could message their teacher.
They have for a while now in my experience. I'm not sure if it's still a thing, but there used to be these like sacks at the door with numbered pockets in which you'd put your phone until the end of that specific class.
Based on visiting a lot of Dutch schools this year, that's still very much happening. I tried to google a photo but couldn't figure out what the word for that thing is.
So does life. I think we should lock the children in school from the beginning of the education period, without the access to the external, disctracting life. They can leave when they are 18.
> Smartphones may still be used if they are needed for class, or if there is a medical need. One example of the latter is if a student with diabetes needs to measure sugar levels.
This thread is filled with too much addicted FOMO people defending smarthphones. Turn on Screen Time, delete all social media, block news.ycombinator.com and touch grass.
Choosing children's mental health and focus on school work over allowing big biz to unload their addictive products upon us. Seems to be the good thing to do.
I fact-checked a lot of wrong information that my teachers were spewing by using the smartphone, I think this ban is bad. This should be a choice. These days even reading books can be more comfortable on a screen, and it is easier to have bigger catalogue (piracy cough cough). School is a horrible, authoritarian structure comparable to prison and mental ward already, there is no reason to make it more fucked up.
>What stops you from fact checking after you get out of the school?
First, you will forget about all the bs they mentioned. Second, you can't confront the teacher over it or to ask them to clarify in a way that other kids will hear it too.
There is one very simple reason. Fuck authoritarianism, especially when education is mandatory. Consider that a lot of people have public schooling with atrocious quality that is quite frankly quite useless, because it is mostly nationalistic, xenophobic, white-supremacists, elitist, classist, patriarchal etc. propaganda. It is actually not even useless a lot of the time, it is just harmful to a person to listen to these lies, so it's actually better if kids can drown out this propaganda by looking at a smartphone screen.
Every nation has a different education system and in many nations each region has its own education system. I don't know in what kind of a horror school you went to, but the schools I'm involved with my kids and the schools I went to teach anything but "nationalistic, xenophobic, white-supremacists, elitist, classist etc. propaganda". Quite the contrary indeed - public schools are a very important tool for integration of people from different background and cultures - it will give them a shared experience where they can learn to understand each other. By themselves, people tend to auto-segregate[0].
> Fuck authoritarianism, especially when education is mandatory.
I don't exactly know what you consider "authoritarianism". But rules in schools by themselves certainly aren't an example of authoritarianism[1].
Re; "patriarchal propaganda"; seems like you yourself got quite the bit of anti-socialist propaganda.
Remember tongue map? : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map , I had this at school told in authoritative manner even though it is complete bullshit. A lot of history lessons are just state propaganda, for example, Martin Luther King was much more radical than it is usually said at school. One can give a lot of these type of examples.
I was curious - apparently they still taught the tongue map and the food pyramid in 2014. I haven't been able to find more recent textbooks, but I suspect they still might teach at least the tongue map here, because I found some online teaching material about that.
I have bachelors degree in math. Basic algebra is useful, however it is thought very badly. There is a lot of rote memorization, which is not useful for university level math. Precalculus is trash, mindless computations and solving a lot of quadratic equations. That's a big problem with school math, thought well it could be compressed to maybe 4 years instead of 12. I would say basic physics is better. Evolution in my school was maybe one lesson, this could be an 1 hour video. I had geography lessons in primary school where you had to memorize types of soil and where are they on the map of Poland. Polish literature is pro aristocracy nationalist propaganda mostly, Poland has a lot of messianic themes there which are complete bullshit. Overall for me school was a complete waste of time and source of stress, without it I would know more things that interest me and would be in much better health. In Poland we have schools in so called prussian education system - it was created to create factory workers, not thinking people. In Poland even Nobel prize winners are omitted at schools, it is only said that only Prize winners from Poland were Poles, even though most of our Nobel prize winners are Jews. We even have a lot of catholic propaganda with catholicism lessons financed from state budget.
And just how do you capture teachers breaking the law at school? I've seen teachers hitting kids with metre long wooden rules around ankles, a teacher throwing a kid into some music stands and reportedly out of a window, and much more. Seeing is believing but authority figures in all walks of life abuse their positions because they are only human!
given the reduction in both actual police violence and police brutality reports once body cams were introduced, I suspect mankind did a lot of lying before smart phones.
This law is so good, almost perfect. The only thing that is missing is a segregation between FOSS and anything else. Computers w/ FOSS should be not only allowed but being a primary source of learning but proprietary software should be banned at schools.
Its sort of crazy that if I said we should ban computers or landline telephones or the internet from schools I'd be pilloried as a luddite. But everyone cheers banning smartphones. Because they are convinced (without evidence) that they are addictive. And of course, the best way to teach kids about addictive things is to give them zero exposure to them until they turn 18 (21 etc) then give them full, limitless, unsupervised access...
It's the same evidence that video games cause violence: no evidence, but the worried well really WANT to believe it, and somehow everyone just convinces themselves it is true.
To be clear, I am not saying kids SHOULD be on their phones in school or that no one has a bad relationship with their phone. Just that no one has actually bothered measuring this, they jumped straight to "it suits my prejudices so I believe it"...
National legislators should stay out of the classrooms. Let parents and the actual experts in teaching at each individual school organize themselves how they see fit. Politicians sadly love hands-on-management of issues instead of focusing on enabling and facilitating actual people controlling their own lives.
The whole idea of a school system is that the country government mandates a common denominator of education (including propaganda) to be delivered to all of its children (usually for free).
Of course it may be more granular than the whole country, but schools organizing themselves as they see fit is an exception.
What a load of short-sighted nonsense. Instead of revising curricula to be actually attractive and modernizing teaching instead of a drone blathering at the front of the classroom, ban phones.
The problem at the core is that education has ossified. A toxic combination of parents unable to accept that their children can have a better school experience than they had ("we had to hike two hours even during storms to go to school, stop complaining!!!"), privileged parents wanting to keep classist privileges for their children (this is a huge problem here in Germany where we separate between useless Hauptschule, just as useless Realschule and Gymnasium after 4th/6th year), politicians intimidated by the huge influence the well-networked classist parents have, underpaid staff and underfunded schools, burnt-out teachers who long since have given up on changing anything because of the lack of time, funds, respect for their work and backing by superiors...
There's an untold number of modern, engaging, attractive learning resources and hobbies available to adults. They still lose to smartphones. Not because those activities are boring, but because picking a smartphone and browsing is so effortless and habit-forming.
Careful with generalizations. I have a kid with unlimited game time on the phone and he will prefer Scratch or book reader nearly all of the time anyway. He has been doing coding games since he was 4. Most kids don't do this only because nobody has shown them how to use computers for anything other than games and social media.
He deleted Socratic app soon after I have shown it to him though, but not because he needed space for games, but rather because "the teacher must not see this". You should have seen the panic in his eyes.
Also, the only social media he is using is classroom Whatsapp, which is effectively required by the school, because there is no other reliable source of information about missed classes and other school matters.
All those kids playing games and scrolling through social media might be just fulfilling teachers' expectations after all.
If kids rather want their phones than to listen to school, maybe it's time to change how school works.
30 kids having to sit still 6 hours a day and do nothing more than listen and take notes? That's boring as fuck. Even worse as a lot of the stuff they learn is something they'll literally never even think about once in their life and they'll have to forget again after the test to make room for more useless crap. And every attempt to innovate gets shot down somewhere, so the teachers aren't really willing to adapt either - when I went to school a decade ago we had more than one teacher who used the same transparent sheets on an overhead projector that he made (and copied) decades ago, written on a typewriter.
Smaller class sizes, more teachers, interactive and engaging lessons... that's all stuff that only the private schools (Waldorf and friends) provide and it actually works out even with conventional metrics, but these are expensive and have issues on their own (e.g. the tendency to attract pedos and weirdos, of which there have been a fair share of scandals).
Yes, I'm fed up with the sorry state of our education system.
> If kids rather want their phones than to listen to school, maybe it's time to change how school works.
Once you start to demand that schools become more entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of lost sight of the mission of a school.
> 30 kids having to sit still 6 hours a day and do nothing more than listen and take notes? That's boring as fuck.
Also not how school works, at least not in the Netherlands. There are lots of group projects and multidisciplinary lesson arcs and so on. Maybe in China?
> that's all stuff that only the private schools (Waldorf and friends) provide
Waldorf is an available option for public education in the Netherlands. Likewise Montessori, at the secondary level as well.
> Once you start to demand that schools become more entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of lost sight of the mission of a school.
Maybe it's time to put the world's best entertainment technologies to use for our educational systems instead of fucking Candy Crush.
> Also not how school works, at least not in the Netherlands. There are lots of group projects and multidisciplinary lesson arcs and so on. Maybe in China?
I did my Abitur in Bavaria, Germany in 2010. My 13 years of school life and ~60% of my 2-year stint in academia were precisely what I described, and the generation after me that profited from the infamous "G8" reforms for Bavarian Gymnasium schools reported just the same. New books, finally (one of mine still had the fucking Soviet Union...), but same old teaching methods. Something like smaller classes would have been impossible due to a lack of teachers.
> Waldorf is an available option for public education in the Netherlands. Likewise Montessori, at the secondary level as well.
Kids shouldn't have to hope their parents know that this is an option or have the money for that to receive good education. Education is a human right and the only chance societies have for a survivable future.
> Once you start to demand that schools become more entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of lost sight of the mission of a school.
People aren't idiots. Kids aren't idiots either. They want more than mindless entertainment. A school computer with Scratch can easily compete with a platformer on the phone. School in general is in a good position to be empowering, but the system prefers to be oppressive instead.
??? My kid loves it to this day. It's a major hobby. Never heard about anyone who would hate Scratch. Maybe it was a really poor presentation by the teacher.
You seem to be working from an incomplete model of the world. I can tell you for certain that small private schools with engaging lessons still have children who'd prefer to be on their phone. But I also went to school multiple decades ago and we weren't sitting quietly listening to the teacher all day, or working off typewritten transparencies...
I'm coming from the political side: all metrics indicate that quality of school has gone downhill or stagnated among most Western countries (e.g. PISA study or the #/% of students leaving school without a degree), businesses in Germany (legitimately IMHO) claim the same, investment into schools has gone down as well (particularly in the USA, but also in Germany - the usually dilapidated state of toilets is a meme on its own). Education scientists regularly come forward with appeals to improve the situation. On top of that, employment opportunities for low qualified people have been shrinking for decades as these jobs either went to China, to automation or need better qualification (half of the work of an household electrician these days is planning smart home stuff).
Meanwhile, Asian countries continue to excel... but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of broken young souls, of families going into absurd debt, and of suicide.
At the same time, Western politicians rarely seem to listen to the scientists and instead prefer to do nothing at all - this is extremely dangerous for the future of our economies.
To me, the most important thing is to give schools and teachers the resources (staff, funding, proper and maintained buildings) they need to give every single child the best education they can without falling victim to the horrors of Asian education culture, because otherwise our economy is getting fucked.
This is beyond hysterical. Children have managed to survive in classrooms for a long time without phones. They were not at great risk of dying in them before cell phones are not at great risk of dying in them today, even in the United States with all the school shootings and whatnot.
They don't seem to have medical emergencies that can't be solved by one of the surviving kids running out of the mysteriously unattended classroom and fetching an adult to triage.
I would bet that the number of in-classroom emergencies with fatal outcome that are prevented by kids having a phone is far outweighed by the number of social-media induced suicides and general loss of quality of life from mental health effects.
Smartphone is essential tool for normal life today. One can not even pay or use public transport without smartphone! Owning it should be basic human right, like wearing clothes!
Large number of students in Nederlands do not speak local language. Smartphone is essential for translation and communication with them. It also allows calling 911, and video/audio recording evidence, if there are any misunderstandings.
This rule feels like teachers are solving their problems at expense of students!
> Owning it should be basic human right, like wearing clothes!
NOT having to own an abusive manipulation tool should be a basic human right.
And let's be very clear about this: almost all apps are intentionally designed to be manipulative. Try disabling notifications for example, and most apps will whine and whinge and bully you until you enable it. The design of these things is thoroughly and profoundly abusive.
Never mind of course that "smartphone" in practicality means "Android and iOS", and "must give monies to this huge duopoly" is something I have a bone or two to pick with as well.
> Large number of students in Nederlands do not speak local language
I'm a parent. We're moving to the Netherlands next month. I just sent emails to the local taalschool in Hilversum (and two basisschools) to ensure that my daughters learn Dutch as fast as possible upon our arrival because learning the local language is critical for living a full life. Any parent who doesn't do this, except _perhaps_ for those who know they're on a short-term stint for work or similar, is being negligent.
There are people who do not want to learn Dutch. I sincerely wish all best to you and your kid. Please stay on her side, and not on side of some imagininary ideology.
> One can not even pay or use public transport without smartphone!
Children are not allowed to ride the bus inside the classroom either. So I guess we're okay.
> Large number of students in Nederlands do not speak local language. Smartphone is essential for translation and communication with them.
Nobody is doing this on a regular basis, except maybe during an intake session. If something exceptional comes up then the teacher can use their phone to translate.
> It also allows calling 911
Not going to try, but I'm not sure 911 works here. 112 is the emergency number (and that's an actual worldwide standard, works in the USA as well).
There's been interesting debates in parlement preceding this measure, with several interesting position papers on the topic from researchers, and even student associations [2]. The researchers emphasize that adolescents are much more susceptible to the bad effects of smartphones, due to inexperience with dopamine and its effects on dopamine production, being easier to condition, FOMO. The main adverse effect they name is what they call a 'crumbling brain', with a short attention span unable to focus on one thing for a longer time. An often-repeated soundbyte is that students using smartphones often score in average 1-1.5 points less on tests, on a scale of 1 to 10.
I dunno what to think about it. As noted by the student association, it seems like children won't get the chance to learn how to handle the traps smartphones pose. Then again, I was free to use mine in high school and I'm still addicted to the thing :/
[1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2481424-kabinet-geeft-dringend-advies...
[2] https://www.tweedekamer.nl/debat_en_vergadering/commissiever...