The issue is the daughter doesn't have time to be creative. I program, edit videos, etc., but all of that I have to save for the weekends. The daughter probably doesn't have the energy to be creative and just uses their phone during some downtime.

With my generation we are not always on our phones like many would believe. Pre-covid we would gather and talk after school, during lunch, in class. If I went with my friends to lunch it is acceptable to check your phone but we would never find it acceptable to be on your phone the whole time.

The issue is probably not the daughter, but the workload.

I'm 40.

This gives me hope for our species. I lost a very good, old friend several years ago because he was constantly on his phone. Several of us were home for Thanksgiving, which is a real rarity since we live all over the United States. We were all out to dinner and he just could not get off the phone, when I finally said, "Do you think its socially unacceptable to constantly be on your phone when we're all here together??"

He got extremely defensive, and very nasty. We haven't spoken since.

I can't tell you how great it is for me to see younger people realize how important it is to be in-the-moment with the people around you.

Imagine if you had a 12 hour work schedule every day. Now imagine what you would feel, if you didn't have a choice to be there. You had to be there whether you liked it or not. That's what school is like for a lot of kids. Making it extra long probably doesn't help. Many adults would probably turn to worse vices to cope with a schedule like that - alcohol, drugs etc. Extended phone use seems much more minor in comparison.

It's possible that the phone displaced her craft activities because it's a lower effort dopamine hit, but I think she'd probably spend all of her time sleeping without the phone.

What proportion, do you think? How would one firm up the estimate with hard data?

Those who had internet turned to sparks notes, got good grades, good grades meant scholarships and an easier time in college. Those without went further in the hole as they were most likely working after school and trying to bring in extra money to help the family.

Between all of this, it is easy to find yourself mentally exhausted where all you want to do is endlessly scroll things. I can even find myself being drawn to social media when I have had a particularly stressful day at work. Come home exhausted, sit down, scroll, scroll, scroll. Think about the stuff you want/need to do, realize scrolling just requires thumb movement and no thought. Put the phone down after an hour or two and wonder where your evening went.

Ultimately teaching youth responsible habits, whether they be a phone, computer, or anything, is on the parents, but, outside forces really don't make things easier.

I will point out though that, if one is inclined to argue that school should prepare children for adult life, it sounds like this system is a pretty good mimic of the working life any given child is likely to have after they eventually leave school. Just replace homework with non-work obligations (or a second job).

They can learn to get up early and commute when they have to do so. I don't think making kids spend 10 years waking up early is necessary to prepare them for getting up early as an adult.

Analogy: they may have to go without food at some point their life, that doesn't mean we have to starve them now so they're prepared. They can learn to do it when they need to do it.

As an aside, if school was preparation for adult life then it really should teach you to drive, cook, and an understanding of the law. There are few things that school teaches that end up being more important than those for adults.

With the alternative frequently being homelessness. It's a lucky few (relatively speaking) who can freely switch jobs and pursue passions.

Most people work simply so they can continue to have a home, food, water, heat...

I don't know about now, but when I was in school (in the US), we were taught all those things and more (a bit of carpentry, metal work, engine repair, simple accounting, etc) YMMV.

While I was not a good student in high school, and basically saw it as “doing time”, I was forced to get my act together academically when I became severely chronically ill my freshman year at university. My work ethic changed completely because not being a full time student meant no insurance. Also, if I did not have a job in the future with good benefits, it literally meant death (I require a blood product to survive). So, engineering school it was. But now I don’t live in the USA so this is less of a problem. It is nice not to have to worry constantly about healthcare and having to work a job just for the benefits—-as in to actually be free.

More generally, i don't think we should make kids lives suck to prepare them for the fact that the rest of their life is also going to suck. That's not the way to make happy people who appropriately prioritize work/life balance.

Everyone is different though. Some people have lower stress jobs where they work for a single company and have plenty of time to learn new stuff on the job (or never really need to acquire new skills). But I work in consulting, so acquiring new skills while maximizing my billable hours is part of the game.

I'm also not the owner or anything of the sort; I'm a mid-level IC with no direct reports.

The second job is closer to homework, so long as you are doing it most nights and it takes some mental effort. And gee, it seems that having two jobs will pretty much kill creativity also and cause folks to burn out. At least with a second job, you are probably older. Teens and pre-teens simply aren't there mentally.

I'll also add that it isn't just a couple hours after school: It is holidays that parents don't get off work. It is summers without school. It is 6-8 hours after school while parents work second shift. It, in general, doesn't matter if your child is mature enough to stay home during the summer or late into the evening, the child care isn't for them.

She got told no because she didn't have recent work experience. Childcare simply doesn't count unless you are getting paid to watch other people's children.

I agree that everyone should have access to better child-rearing opportunities than are offered by school, especially public school in North America. I'd love to see homework eliminated, more time in school devoted to play, more tracking & opportunities for everyone to develop their strengths (be they calculus or auto mechanics), and the elimination of compulsory secondary schooling (let the kids come who want to come & make it rewarding enough that they do, rather than threatening to jail their parents to bring them to heel).

I am ignoring the aspects of your comment directed towards me personally.

This is exactly the type of situation ttul seems unaware of. The "only rich white people homeschool" trope is a myth from people who are unfamiliar with the much more complex reality of the situation.

* For starters, school doesn't last until 6:30pm unless you let it. Extracurriculars are extra. If you need afternoon child care (and most of us do), there may be less directed, more creative options available.

* Schools can make changes, and you can encourage your teacher / school / district to do so. Less homework (an idea which has some science behind it iiuc) at least. Maybe a later start time (although this runs into tension with parents' schedules).

Also, middle school that is from morning till 18:30 is definitely not the norm here. There is also this part where every single flaw of every educational system is assumed to be unchangeable and universal.

So it is not even like the argument would made sense.

Isn't watching educational videos on YouTube exactly the thing most of us ( parents ) would want?

Or at least that's what I would have said, if I'd been articulate enough to know how.

The child in this article doesn't sound "addicted" to her phone. It sounds like the wealth of social, creative and interesting activities available through it are just far more interesting than playing dolls with her mum. Maybe it's tough for her mum to accept that her daughter is growing up, but she had to grow out of that at some point - it was inevitable that something would replace it. Would she prefer if it had been TV, like it was for prior generations?

Kids are curious. Kids learn. They want to learn. You don't have to force them to do it.

Example: grade 1-5 can have children of that age range in that section for five years. Ditto for grade 6-9 etc. this way, children can learn at their own pace and time. And from their peers. Gives them more flexibility.

Schools should be for social education too and learning how to become adults. Parents should be more involved in forming peer groups rather than schools.

School buildings should be the only tax payers funded capital expense. And a skeleton crew of teachers with something like khan academy. Schools are where they can congregate for group studies or games or swimming pools or sports or music rooms or robotics meetups or shop work or fill in the blank etc.

Parents should raise children and make decisions. Not school unions. Also..why should those without kids in school pay taxes for everyone and sundry forever? There should be a base minimum towards public contribution for public education(the capital cost of neighborhood school buildings etc), but cost of raising and educating children should be shared amongst those whose children are studying. This will also help people make financially responsibly decisions as well location preferences when they want to grow and raise a family.

I am appalled that the govt..at least in the USA..has the responsibility of child care, child rearing and the other education. What are the parents doing? Parenting doesn’t end with just birthing your progeny.

In many cases, the purpose of education depends on socioeconomic class or what you, your parents, and/or your social groups decide to take for yourselves.

Nearly everybody promotes widespread basic literacy for social cohesion and basic employment functionality, but higher skills are more of a battle ground. Many people do not want others to progress past the basics for a variety of reasons. One is a fear of "overproduction of elites", another is fear of competition from fully developed people with nice critical thinking skills (cue up George Carlin and his comments on critical thinking).

I'm interested in all time estimates for educational programs, know about Finland's general time frames for youth education, don't know about other national norms, and am happy to hear any suggested readings or other ideas.

As far as socioeconomic class, overproduction of elites and critical thinking skills, I think it is plainly obvious that education systems do not help. I did not learn critical thinking in school, I learned it in life. In fact, what I'm doing right now is critically thinking about the role and effectiveness of rigorous education. They don't do that in rigorous education.

Overproduction of elites cannot happen through rigorous and standard education, it underproduces capable people. I should note that I do not think you can overproduce elites, I want everyone to be one.

I'm not saying that a person doesn't need an education. What I'm saying is that a child doesn't need 13 years of full time schooling and I'm saying that a classroom is not an effective place to learn most things we need to learn.

When we fund schools with property taxes as we do in the USA, then we make education a speculative activity. Disastrous outcome guaranteed.

Your society might work in the 23rd century with Jean-Luc Picard. It doesn't work in the 21st century with Tim Cook and the quarterly report.

Why do we need the money of someone else to educate our children? Why do we go to work to pay the taxes that keep our kids in what amounts to a prison? Maybe part of how you get that 23rd century society is by stopping with this long and drawn out compulsory education charade. Teach people what they have to know to function in an advanced society, let them find their own interests and learn the things they need to learn to do the things they want. What about our current society precludes that from working? Tim Cook's existence?

Our obsession with packing children’s lives with empty calorie activities to “prepare the for the real world” is destructive - to their potential, their mental health, and our ability to level up as a species.

Is there any time when he actually studies?

This was the problem for me when I was a kid. I had limited time to play my favorite video games. So I spend whole days in school imagining and planning what to do in the game in order to trade school time for the game time in a very inefficient way, and all my life was optimized to make full use of my game time - even though I was not playing. Separating kids from their favorite activities don't usually work as expected.

The question about energy and motivation is in my opinion also related to tools and methods and not just long hours and early wake up. At OrgPad.com we learn about new approaches to education in conversations with our users and friends all the time since our 2000+ users are mostly students at elementary schools, high schools and universities. We also have a small but very active community of academics using OrgPad to pursue research and personal development. E.g. a teacher created a large OrgPage with many topics related to chocolate. These are roughly: activities, knowledge gathering tasks or experiments and information. Using this approach you can motivate children and their due to COVID-19 involuntary home schooling parents to discover e.g. whether chocolatey burns: https://www.orgpad.com/s/9l8igw The teacher who made all that shares her experiences (in Czech) on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyM6l4FHtb0&list=PLs5kSDmhaz... It seems, the children (and their parents hopefully too) like her approach to digital education a lot. I sincerely think OrgPad.com can help many people with organizing their thoughts and other information and related materials while not sucking their mental energy as other tools and methods do. If you want a short (< 3 minute, in English) taste of what is possible with OrgPad, please have a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtqFWSJT9yw

At the same time, he has an actual school that he can go back to next week, and he can catch up with friends again.

This sort of flexible schooling could be the thing for the future.

So, I guess that is the price of being in a top tier highschool taking AP classes. When I was in a similar situation I probably only spent on average an hour a day on homework.

Yes, one of the defining symptoms of addiction (to anything) is that it interferes with your normal relationships with others. Addicts see these relationships as hurdles to getting their fix and tend to withdraw from them as they get more and more addicted.

It is hard when they come home and their evenings are packed, but I wouldn't make it out as all bad or all exhausting.