> Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time

Back then kids were not watching tv or playing video games in the middle of class.

I remember when I was in school people were texting on their flip phones, I can't imagine the extent of distractions in school today. I used to pay attention in class only because there was nothing more entertaining to do. If I had a phone and could play minecraft while my teacher lectured us on US history I would not have learned anything.

> playing video games in the middle of class.

Laughs in GameBoy.

Seriously, you have to be elder gen x or older to exist in a time where handheld consoles of some flavor were not available. And there’s always been other forms of entertainment, be it passing notes, talking, or daydreaming.

My teacher would have ripped the gameboy out of my hand and confiscated it for the rest of the school year. Teachers do not that have that kind of freedom today.

Also, if your argument is "gameboy existed". People just did not use it as much. Today smartphone usage in class is rampant. Also gameboy games were not anywhere near as addicting as games and social media are today.

> My teacher would have ripped the gameboy out of my hand and confiscated it for the rest of the school year. Teachers do not that have that kind of freedom today.

Well, how are teachers supposed to enforce a ban on smartphones, then?

The school system and public institutions need to protect them and give them back this power.

If they get this power, why do we need the global ban, then?

Because it’s an exhausting waste of my time to police cell phones on an individual basis. Of course, a lot of the teachers in my building require students to put their phones in a basket or in a numbered slot when they come into the room so they don’t even have to deal with it. If you have it with you in the room rather than depositing it like you should the teacher will take it and log it into the office, which means mommy or daddy has to come get little Johnny’s phone on Tuesday or Thursday between 7 and 8 am.

> Also gameboy games were not anywhere near as addicting as games and social media are today.

Have you never played Tetris? Any Gameboy game where you have to level up (like Final Fantasy) will also be a severe temptation as you have something productive to do while the teacher yammers about stuff you either already know, has nothing to do with you (e.g. talking to another student), or don't care about (like really I do not care about the difference between "predicate nominative" and "subject complement").

Also the original Game Boy was a bit too big to bring into a class and not get caught, but Game Boy Advance SP was perfect.

Those games were so fun but there were less FOMO. FOMO is a part of a reason for social media addict.

No, my argument is that it doesn't take a smartphone to be distracted in class. And that electronic entertainment devices have been available for many decades.

None of this is new. Children being distracted in classrooms is nothing new. If there's children, there's socializing, playing games, and ignoring adults for the much more interesting other children.'

Cell phones are just the new boogyman, like CD players and walkmen and gameboys etc. were back in the day.

> Teachers do not that have that kind of freedom today.

No, but we can take the electronic device and log it into the office so that a parent has to come retrieve it. And if I happen to forget a couple of days and only manage to log it in on Friday so that they don’t get it over the weekend, well, I’m a forgetful chap.

That threat alone, not having a phone over the weekend eliminates 90% of phone issues in my classroom.

> Laughs in GameBoy.

Gameboys just weren't very common. I grew up in a pretty well off area, and I only knew a couple of people with them.

Whereas, I wouldn't be surprised if more than 90% of teens have smart phones.

Nintendo sold 118 million Game Boys. Sure, not even close to the smart phone market, but not exactly rare birds.

I saw plenty of game boys confiscated. Cellphones are in a strange place because they have actual utility, while also letting people play games.

Teachers want to treat cell phones like gameboys, but parents won't let them. They throw an absolute fit.

Hell, parents call their kids in class just to chat.

Legislation doesn't exist in a vacuum. I imagine there are more smartphones in classroom today that the number of GameBoy ever sold.

FWIW, there were more gameboys sold than there are people under 18.

73M children, 118M gameboys.

There are more than 73M children in the world.

My thing was doodling in the notebook. In addition to abstract designs I came up with several characters, drew single-pane comics of them interacting with each other, and so on.

Gameboy was risky in class (never saw anyone do that), but several of us did bring our NDS to assemblies and used the wireless chat feature.

Guess which class I did worst in my senior year mid 2000s?

The one where I played NES emulator on the lab computer and blockdude on the ti83.

There is something to be said for focus.

Are you serious… as a kid pulling out a Gameboy in the middle of class and just sitting there playing a game would feel like a death sentence. The equivalent of walking into a bank with an assault rifle firing wildly in the air.

And yet children playing games on their phones and aren't the equivalent of your wildly inappropriate metaphor?

Because phones are treated way differently than gameboys were

Its a lot easier to use a phone one handed discretely than a gameboy

No one in my schools brought anything like that because they get confiscated forever. It was a big deal and also came with additional punishment. I am firmly a millennial. Passing notes was rare too and if caught they would go to principals office. Now kids whip phones out and play and assault teachers who take their phone or record teachers and mock them and other students. It’s horrible.

Soon you'll be shaking your fists at kids near your lawn and opposing affordable housing in your neighborhood

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

C'mon man.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Same here. I was in high school from 2004-2008 and kids were already distracted in class texting each other. It would have been much worse with smartphones and I would have been among those distracted with one and I'm certain I would have learned nothing.

A small number of kids having the ability to restrain themselves and not stare at their phone all day is not a great reason to keep phones in the classroom.

> Outright bans on smartphones in schools are no different from the video game, TV screen time

The distinction is that tvs and video games are indeed banned in school. Banning smart phone usage outright is different from banning smart phones in school.

That's not a meaningful argument, the excuse for having parents place absurd limits on screen time and video games was the same as with smartphones in schools, that they're distracting and addictive, would affect academic performance, and would affect kids in the classroom because they'd be talking about their TV shows and video games or thinking about watching/playing them during class.

It only feels different to you because you have the benefit of hindsight on one of them but not the other.

They are pointing out the more correct analogy. The analogy to banning smartphones in school, would be banning videogames and tv in school, not banning those things altogether. Teachers I've heard speak on the topic, largely seem to want to limit smartphones in class as they have observed student use of smartphones during class to interfere with their teaching and their students learning. This is the same reason why video games are banned in class. Not as you say due to students simply speaking about video games, but because students playing video games during class is distracting for the student playing the game, for other students, and for the teacher.

The problem with your argument is that even if you understand your child and know that smartphone use in school is distracting them from education, you can't really ban them from using a smartphone of everyone else is allowed, or you risk them becoming a social pariah.

School-wide and broader bans actually fix this problem of social needs, by leveling the playing field.

you most likely worked alone on your PC , learning stuff. Phones are validation addiction machines now. If they take away attention from the classroom then it makes sense to ban them ?

Perhaps you have not experienced how tech-illiterate smartphone kids are today? They d most likely struggle to navigate HN because it lacks notifications and likes.

I think we should be making a distinction between phones and computers always

Zoomer Here, Born in 2006, here on a smartphone.

Stop making teachers jobs harder. They are overworked and underpaid as is, and now asking them to fight for attention with a kids smartphone in class just creates a hostile adversarial relationship with their students, that harms the learning process.

An outright ban will make their job easier.

Yes, please just listen to teachers and make their jobs easier. I know passionate driven teachers who have walked away from teaching because of smartphones in the classroom. Its such a stupid exhausting never ending battle. Teaching is hard enough.

If I was a teacher, it would be inconceivable that I could not confiscate anything that is distracting my student's attention. They could have their items back after class, but there is simply no place for such distractions in the classroom. That said, I'm opposed to federal level involvement.

Reads like you’re extrapolating your own experiences, if I do the same you get the opposite answer, my school in the early 2000s had computer rooms you were free to use for coding or other projects at lunchtime. It’s not either/or. A school can provide smart devices for use on school premises locked down with appropriate apps. Your parents were coming from a position of ignorance whereas now parents have first hand experience of the negative effects of smart phone use.

yeah, the irony now is my parents are glued to their phones. or at least were until recently. i think they have made a conscious effort to put them down.

i think no outright ban in classrooms will ever exist in the US because a large % of parents will insist that their child have uninterrupted access to their phones for all sorts of valid reasons.

What are you talking about? When was it that kids brought TVs to school? Also, when I grew up every kid (well, every boy) had at least one video game console at home but I don't remember anyone ever bringing a console to school. They didn't because it would get confiscated immediately.

The excuse for having parents place absurd limits on screen time and video games (at home) was the same as with smartphones in schools is now, that they're going to distract kids in school.

With TV and video games, the fear being pushed was that kids would talk about them in school instead of about studying and that they would be distracted by thinking about watching TV or playing games instead of paying attention to class.

I think this would be incredibly dumb, because global bans are incredibly dumb.

If individual schools (or even individual counties etc) want to try a ban like that, they can experiment. I don't know whether it's a good idea or not.

But I do know that a global ban is beyond silly.

There is no one authority that can enforce a "global ban" anyway.

I believe this is just an appeal to school authorities worldwide - asking them to recognize the downsides and take concrete measures in their own way to keep smartphones away from learners in the classroom setting.

If enough school boards agree and take such a stand -- others are likely to emulate / follow, parents and kids will come to accept it and adapt, and it becomes a defacto global ban.

I guess, somewhat similar to how public smoking has now become near universally "banned" or at least shunned.

My oldest goes to a top, selective public school. They barely enforce any phone rules at all and for some classes just tell the kids to use them. Sometimes is just for research, but also you can do things like run a scientific calculator app instead of paying TI hundreds of dollars. And even normal kid stuff like playing video games during open periods is allowed. Doesn't seem to be hurting performance. We have never limited her screen time, she watches loads of stupid youtube and yet she's still going to be at least in the running for a top tier engineering school when she start applying.

Sorry this was just bragging, but from what I've seen this applies equally to all the kids at her school.

> As with most things, the decision of smartphone access for kids should come down to having parents actually understand their child, his/her needs and ability to handle the associated responsibility.

Except that far too many parents don't do this. I don't think its because they don't care, but rather they care more about their child "fitting in". This is why our local middle school is full of 12-year-olds with iPhones. The thing is a status symbol and a Pandora's box that you cannot shut once its open.

Look - the plain and simple of it is that mental health among teenagers is plummeting, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that smartphones are the culprit. Schools can't solve social problems. But they can at least not encourage them.

Good points. It's also difficult for parents (even the "techie" ones) to stay in control. Say what you want about screen time and monitoring apps, kids know enough (and will happily share tips) about TOR, DoH, VPNs, etc. It's kinda cool on the tech front, this whole cat-and-mouse game, but NOT as the expense of our children's mental health.

There's a reason the creators of these toys don't allow their own kids to play with them.

The evidence is piling in that internet crack is very harmful for developing minds.

Do you think it is dumb to have a global ban on cocaine in schools?

I'm with you on this. I can understand controlling the use of phones during class because it's disrespectful for the teachers work, but a complete ban is just dumb and seems like virtue signalling. If this is a problem for you as a parent, you have the choice of not buying your kid the phone in the first place, or not letting him take it to school. I thinks that any rule or law that takes away from the parents the responsibility of educating a child is probably not good for the kid.

Also specially in the US with all the school shootings, banning kids from having phones that allow them to call for help seems like a really bad idea.

> Also specially in the US with all the school shootings, banning kids from having phones that allow them to call for help seems like a really bad idea.

Run the numbers. This isn't a justification for much, really.

They're a shameful occurrence, but the odds of a kid being present during any kind of shooting at school (gang member standing in the parking lot and firing at someone not on school property, and not a student or faculty member; targeted jilted-lover killing of a teacher; targeted crime-related [think: beef over drug territory] killing of one student by another, with a gun; and yes, also mass shootings) at any point during their k-12 education, are low. Present, not killed or injured. Indiscriminate mass shootings are very far from being the most common kind of shooting at schools, so that's even less likely—being present at all, that is, not hurt or killed, that's vanishingly unlikely over all 13 years of school. Nb that's assuming even-odds of shootings at all schools, which isn't the case.

So you're harming all kids' educations and exposing them to some messed-up stuff (talk. to. some. teachers. What you think I meant by that? Shock images or something? Not as messed-up as I actually mean) in case they're in a mass shooting (rare) and also their having a phone makes a difference in the outcome (narrowing the slice of this-was-a-good-idea circumstances even more)

It's awful that they happen, absolutely, and they are one small but striking feature of our messed-up gun laws and culture and we really do need to fix all that, but perceptions of how common they are are completely out of phase with reality, which leads to bad decision-making.

> If this is a problem for you as a parent, you have the choice of not buying your kid the phone in the first place, or not letting him take it to school.

Whenever I see arguments like these, I always feel that the person likely isn’t a parent of a teen.

There is a real sense of isolation and exclusion that teens feel when they don’t have cell phones or aren’t allowed to use them. The consequences are likely (for some parents/teens) worse than letting them have them.

Only when phones are more widely seen as shameful or unhealthy to have before adulthood will that not be the case. Until then, some other form of banning seems to be the only way to level the playing field and make it less isolating.

I think the problem is more about social media than smartphones.

A recent study did a survey[1] of parents who had allowed their teenage kids to use social media. The results were pretty significant. Every parent in the survey said it was a big mistake in retrospect. Lots of problems, from addiction to depression.

[1] I don't recall what the N was.

That's a good distinction. I think however, in the case of phone use among schoolchildren, "smartphone" and "social media" are nearly synonymous. You just can't get a lot of the negative aspects of phone usage without tying it down to social media. (I'm thinking of your Likes, public shaming, low self esteem, distraction by notifications, photo filters, narcissism, addiction, short attention spans, difficulty concentrating, etc. It's hard(er?) to pull that off without the deep pockets of social media giants.)

Is it possible to disallow mobile internet (without blocking actual phone usage) and force students to use school WiFi that blocks social media?

Zoomer, born in 2002. I'd be in favour of something like this; it's important to note that the problem, 99% of the time, isn't "games." Nobody plays games. It mostly serves as a sort of "comfort-blanket" people turn to when they're anxious; distractions are generated passively, and often have a reassuring effect. Most people younger than me will acknowledge that "scrolling" is something that often has a hold on their life, and feels outside of their control. To a large extent, it's probably informed larger culture (short-form content has increased people's focus on "vibes" and "aesthetics").

Often times, the anxiety is the beginning of a cycle that inhibits learning (people turn to their devices for anxiety-relief in math class, causing them to learn less math, causing them to be more anxious about math, and suddenly there is an increase in "math anxiety" except for the small minority socialised into math from a young age)

If I had a gameboy (as some others in this thread mention) on me in middle/high school, I'd be at least engaging with something where the input informs the output, probably realise it's not worth the effort, and start paying attention to class.

It's also worth noting that social media platforms are expressly designed to not be understood; you don't actually learn anything about technology or gain an interest in computing by watching Reels; it's not like the teachers are the dumb ones and the kids are all discussing the merits of glibc vs musl on IRC or something

I understand that HN is mostly inhabited by those from a more techno-optimist era when most administrative positions were held by boomers who thought that the monitor was the computer, but this isn't that. This is qualitatively different.