> If you're stuck in a room and the only thing you can do is read a math textbook you are going to do it.

I would literally doodle, stare out a window, zone out daydreaming, or anything else other than read a textbook I didn't want to read for one reason or another, or pay attention to a teacher for that matter.

Yes, it is anecdotal, but I'm sure we've all been children before, and even if you didn't do it, people around you surely did if you paid any attention. For god sake, I remember my classmates just using a lighter on small patches of whiteout ink during one specific class because of how bored they were. Extreme example? Yes. But passing papers, making paper planes, and other crafts, literally anything to pass the time.

This isn't exclusive to children either. If an adult doesn't want to do something, they might very well not unless forced to, and even then.

Btw, I'm not trying to argue about banning or not banning a phone, this is specifically about the statement above.

EDIT: I should probably mention that this isn't a 5min thing, I could easily zone a teacher out for 45min-90min blocks if I didn't care about what they had to say, much less a book I didn't want to read.

Yes, exactly right. And there are many students less likely than that to zone out, and many more likely to zone out.

But if you give them a tool to aid in being distracted, it will encourage all of them to not pay attention. It really is a question of likelihood

This. With a phone handy, it’s tempting them into not paying attention, at the very least. The best of intentions can be undone by poor or misaligned incentives. And a phone (and a computer to a lesser extent) provides us with the incentive (easy access) to procrastinate indefinitely. Those of us with a limited will power stand no chance.

I think it about probabilities.

A smartphone is a guaranteed distraction because of what you can do with it.

No smartphone doesn't guarantee you read the book, but the chances are higher.

> I would literally doodle, stare out a window, zone out daydreaming, or anything else other than read a textbook I didn't want to read for one reason or another, or pay attention to a teacher for that matter.

Being bored allows for creativity and problem-solving. You might not do well at that specific subject (eg, math if you never pay attention in math class). But you might do something with some other area of your life.

Constant distraction/consumption means never doing anything of value.

agree wholeheartedly. boredom is a catalyst for creativity and introspection yet we treat it as anathema - something to be artificially avoided at all cost.

> If you're stuck in a room and the only thing you can do is read a math textbook you are going to do it.

I'm not so sure if this is true. No clue about kids, but if I'm (personally) stuck at the office and I'm really not feeling like working, I can literally stare at a wall daydreaming rather than do something. And the contrary is also true - if I'm "stuck" at some fancy place with lots to do (like home, lol) but feel like working (and have means to do so), there's no stopping me.

I suspect the problem isn't the phones, the problem is lack of honest, genuine interest. Compliance can be enforced, but I'm not sure about efficiency of learning under duress. Compulsion brings aversion.

This, of course, is a purely idealistic view, assuming ideal high-skilled spherical educators in vacuum rather than actual real-world conditions. While there are always ways to captivate interest and steer it into productive learning, it requires some orders of magnitude more resources than what's available.

It’s more than that. You sitting in your living room watching Netflix instead of working is different than a classroom.

In a classroom environment, once one kid is futzing around on their phone, others follow. That creates issues for the teachers who end up policing behavior instead of their jobs. You also have the obvious issues with cheating.

When I was the president of a school board, a subset of active and vocal parents were against the ban, citing a desire say goodbye to their kids in the event of a school massacre. In some cases I had doubts with respect to the veracity of that argument. The parents are a problem too - many have an expectation to text or speak to kids throughout the day.

The school handled it well IMO, no phones until grade 5, then kids can have them in their locker and use them at specific times.

> citing a desire say goodbye to their kids in the event of a school massacre

Hah, let's play the "Guess the country this person lives in" game...

I bet it's the phone.

Even if you're interested a smartphone can distract you.

So no smartphone helps those people to focus on the remaining possibilities.

> I can literally stare at a wall daydreaming rather than do something. And the contrary is also true - if I'm "stuck" at some fancy place but feel like working (and have means to do so), there's no stopping me.

I mean there's a very broad spectrum here, and a slight distraction can be the difference between spending 5 minutes staring at a wall followed by three hours in flow state vs. spending three hours in mindless distractions.

And children don't have any experience in how to cultivate flow state in the presence of distraction. Removing distractions naturally provides more opportunities to find the flow.

I agree. An adult can ask themselves what they're doing and why and how it aligns with their interests so on (aka have that midlife crisis, haha), a kid probably doesn't yet have enough self-reflection capacity yet.

In my perception, distractions are ideally managed through interest management. Make the desired task actually truly desired - and you're guaranteed to not get distracted. And in an ideal environment, there should be an educator overseeing a kid and asking what went wrong if kid decides they wanna play with their phone instead of working.

When you don't have someone to help with "why am I doing this and not that?", I guess it's true that next best option is to eliminate potential of distraction. It's not great, but is probably better than not doing anything about it.

So, as always, there is an ideal approach (that doesn't work because it requires ideal environment), and a working approach that's very contrary to the ideal way of doing things.

Hm... Maybe teaching kids (and adults) about the modern attention/spam economy actually works can help to lower the distractions. After you see through attention-grabbing tricks, scrolling through online feed wastewaters (or watching junk on streaming platforms, or playing "games" whose entire raison d'être is to make money on players) becomes much less interesting or rewarding. Just a thought.

> And in an ideal environment, there should be an educator overseeing a kid and asking what went wrong if kid decides they wanna play with their phone instead of working.

The reason primary education is mandatory is because the average kid doesn’t want to sit there learning things. Even some parents barely care. We have collectively decided to force these children to sit through school because we want the population to have at least some basic skills.

Catering to the outliers would not be efficient, sometimes people need to be coerced to set a minimum standard.

I don't argue against compulsory education and minimum standards. I strongly agree that they are an absolute necessity.

I was an outlier. Used to study well while it was interesting - just because I had access to the books and I loved reading. But around 9th grade I lost track of some courses, things stopped making sense, everything started to fall apart - and at some point I just optimized away, starting to solve for working around the compulsion rather than necessity to learn. I still learned things I cared about, but subjects where I had a gap in understanding went sideways.

The compulsion haven't made me learn anything much, but the means to game the system enough to pass through the hurdles. I worked on some skills like writing tiniest cheat sheets (fine motor skill training haha), basic networking to have someone to copy homework from, composing essays without even opening the source material, confidence tricks, breaking into storage rooms, hacking into computer systems and so on.

A valuable social skill set, but probably only for a failing simulacra of a society. (Well, I lived in exactly such a society - one under a post-Soviet curse, so it all fits.)

And while those were some fun times, I hate how I had totally lost a lot of opportunities to learn many useful things when I had all the time in the world for it - and way more capable brains than I have in my thirties or forties. I didn't do it because I just didn't knew that I cared about it. I don't blame anyone, of course - things just happened that way.

So, I strongly disagree with the "doesn't want" bit. Kids do want to learn things. I wanted to. I believe we all normally do - curiosity and desire to learn is humanity's signature trait. But kids cannot steer themselves, so they need guidance. And compulsion does a poor job as such.

But I agree that catering to the outliers is not efficient in present day real-life conditions. Probably not just inefficient, but outright impossible until(if) we ever reach post-scarcity. I even wrote a regret: "[approach] that doesn't work because it requires ideal environment". The compulsion is basically all we realistically have. I just made a note how it's a shame that it's a poor man's solution to a problem that ideally should be solved very differently.

I tried leaving a stack of programming books beside my pc while I'm working and putting my phone in another room. It does work. But I keep forgetting to do it.

I was considering trying a month of no I internet browsing unless it is required for my job or learning.

I did something like this for a couple of weeks recently. I call it 'no idle screen time'. Any activity that involved using a screen (phone, computer, or television) had to have a purpose. The purpose could be simple such as messaging friends, finding an answer to something I was curious about, or simply looking at the weather forecast. Usually it would be work related.

Benefits became clear almost immediately. I got more actual work done. I suddenly had way more free time than I imagined. I renewed my library card and started reading again. My focus improved. I actually started actively listening to music again (rather than just having it on in the background). I got more exercise. I took the time to prepare better food. A certain low-level sense of anxiety that had become all too familiar simply disappeared.

I did slowly regress. It started with watching a movie or show in the evening, that sort of thing. Now, here I am writing this comment. Probably time to give it another go.

Reminds me of my time in boarding school, my grades were awesome there and I read alot cause I can't play video games, unfortunately it didn't make me wiser so I struggled a lot with self discipline later on.

I’m now going to a Third Place to get about half of my reading done. It’s silly to go somewhere and sit on my phone. I can sit on my phone anywhere.

Managing distraction in an age where everything is at our fingertips is a hard task

It's not only distraction though. The phone is a window to the internet which offers all the knowledge of the world.

And in 'my day' I spent a lot of time at the library which was full of thrillers and comics. And spent most of my time learning about computers and electronics.

It's not an unprecedented problem and offers new offers new opportunities too.

Sure, but the quick dopamine fix that you can get from scrolling TikTok or Twitter is way more corrosive than reading long form content in a library.

Yeah still I'm much more drawn to long form content.

But I guess I'm an outlier like most people on this site that promotes learning new things though text-heavy presentation.

> But I guess I'm an outlier like most people on this site that promotes learning new things though text-heavy presentation.

Bold to assume this is what most people on this site are like!

I'd hypothesize you're still an outlier in that group in these regards. And that's great! But lots of the data points to people like HN's general demographic still being pulled away from long form text content and towards synthesized/aggregated content served via mixed media. There's still just such strong cultural elitism in the notion of reading a book to learn something, it's not super sexy to claim on a messageboard.

> Bold to assume this is what most people on this site are like!

Really, look at the front page of this site. If you're not interested in dense textual content you would have closed the tab within 1 second. I really love this site but most people won't even see the story titles, their brain just registers "a confusing jumble of text" and doesn't even try to engage.

> But lots of the data points to people like HN's general demographic still being pulled away from long form text content and towards synthesized/aggregated content served via mixed media.

And what data is that?

> There's still just such strong cultural elitism in the notion of reading a book to learn something, it's not super sexy to claim on a messageboard.

I don't think I'm elitist or sexy. Just different. I hate video content because I can't consume it at my own pace (usually much faster than the content offers because video is tailored for the slowest possible denominator). And it's difficult to build context ("where am I within the story") when skipping forward or backwards. In text this is pretty seamless.

I don't tend to consume textual content in a start to end sequential manner. But I jump around. Because some stuff I already know, some i really want to deeper dive on, some I need to refer back to later. This is much harder with video.

> If you're not interested in dense textual content you would have closed the tab within 1 second.

And your theory is that all commenters have read those posts in their entirety? I'd suspect far far more readers jump to discussion rather than fixating on the post, as is evidenced by the amount of people that comment on and respond to topics irrelevant to the posts in question.

> And what data is that?

The slow death of academic and long form text medium in general? And the boom in mixed media aggregation happening? Or just the last 20 years of long form text as a whole?

But also, the work that's gone into building my company and its product.

> I don't think I'm elitist or sexy.

That's good. But I again think that your perception of this topic does not match society. Which isn't bad! But I think it's important to note our own biases and perceptions.

> I don't tend to consume textual content in a start to end sequential manner. But I jump around. Because some stuff I already know, some i really want to deeper dive on, some I need to refer back to later. This is much harder with video.

Yes, one might suggest that mixed media suffers from a lack of tooling for these types of challenges (aforementioned company)

I simply don't use either. never have, never will. they do not serve my purpose, so they are irrelevant to my life.

You've definitely used Twitter, even if just to see an announcement or something. Too much important information has been posted there over the last decade for anyone online a lot to have been able to avoid it.

I've seen screenshots of Elon acting like a loser, that's about it.

So you've never clicked on Twitter links, even when they have been submitted to HN?

I've clicked them by accident, does that count as using? I also "use" adverts then.

You've only clicked them by accident? No that doesn't count as using, it's just hard to believe.

It's like the people who have worked in IT for 20 years but 'never used Windows'.

I only use windows as a dumb terminal to access my Linux system remotely. I'd require a significant payrise to consider using windows as a daily driver.

Not talking about using it as a daily driver, just contrasting your claim that you have never used twitter with the people who claim to have never used windows over a 20 year period of working or hobbying in IT.

I have definitely not used Windows for a hobby for 19 years. Linux (and for a short time OS X) fill my needs.

I simply have no use for twitter. if the information is important, it'll turn up on bbc.co.uk, otherwise it's not really worth the effort.

> I have definitely not used Windows for a hobby for 19 years

I never said you did. In fact, I never said anything about you using Windows at all, yet twice now you seem to have taken what I wrote as though I did.

I did not take it as you saying that I did, both times I was trying to make the point that those people that you don't believe exist include me as one of them.

Fair enough. I guess I'm just incredibly skeptical of your claims. Certainly I can get you've never used Windows as your primary OS, but that's quite a different claim from never having used it, which is the specific claim I was saying some people make. And it strains incredulity to believe you've never clicked on any Twitter links because of how prevalent the platform is.

oh I did use windows as my primary OS, it was Windows 95/98/XP on desktops, which started my hatred of it, and then I was stuck on a very poor laptop and windows mistake edition for 3 months before I switched to Linux for good.

yes, I've clicked on Twitter links the same way I've clicked on ads, by accident.

> oh I did use windows as my primary OS, it was Windows 95/98/XP on desktops,

So you're definitely not in the amp of people who never claimed to use Windows, which is the group I was comparing you to.

> Yes, I've clicked on Twitter links the same way I've clicked on ads, by accident.

That's what I'm skeptical of. Twitter sucks, but sometimes it's literally the only place the source of a story is, like if Elon makes a newesworthy post or something. I'm not saying you had an account or anything, but literally never clicking on a link, hundreds of which have been submitted as HN stories alone, beggars belief.

> like if Elon makes a newesworthy post or something

hahahaha! thank you! starting my day with a belly laugh is a great privilege!

but seriously, just because most of the tech bros admire him, doesn't mean I need to hear every idiocy that comes out of his deranged mind.

even when it's something truly interesting - I watched the space x double landing on YouTube a few hours after it happened several years ago - I don't need to be informed of every single thing the instant it happens.

> hahahaha! thank you! starting my day with a belly laugh is a great privilege!

That's a really weird reaction. Like, yeah, he's a clown, but he has still made tweets that get discussed in thew news and here on HN.

> doesn't mean I need to hear every idiocy that comes out of his deranged mind.

Elon was just one example. Plenty of other tech people, hackers, politicians etc post important stuff on twitter. I mean, juts search HN for submissions with twitter or x.com as the domain. There is no shortage of submissions, and it beggars belief you have never clicked on one.

$x has released llm $y: I google for the gguf.

$x has achieved $y. well good for them.

I really don't understand the obsession with the idea that I must somehow be interested in something just because somebody else said it. I've been offered free newspapers before - I told them thanks, but I don't have a cat.

> I really don't understand the obsession with the idea that I must somehow be interested in something just because somebody else said it. I

That's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is Twitter has been too ubiquitous and important for you to have never clicked a submission at this site or a link to it somewhere, and not just accidentally.

Then it is important for you to recognize that you are a unicorn.

I think that’s only the case if you only meet people through TikTok and Twitter

Your comment is totally irrelevant to the conversation regarding schools, though. Smartphones are massively corroding kids' brains these days, and YES, this is much worse than TV or video games back in the day.

That's not a fact, it's a point being debated.

Even before that, it was books! instead of quietly contemplating the lord, they were getting blasphemous ideas all day long!

my friends do say "you're so special".

And yet, you’re still on here posting along with the rest of us.

says a lot about the company I keep, doesn't it.

Having instant access from your pocket to an infinite source of entertainment is literally an unprecedented problem.

Is it really very entertaining though?

I use instagram as a tool to follow certain parties and tattoo shops (for announcements of visiting artists). Since about a year they've spammed their 'reels' on me and make it much harder to avoid them. But every time I look at them it's the same brainless crap as the tiktok-branded videos that people send on to me via whatsapp or telegram.

I don't really understand how people are being captivated by this. It's all so hollow, shallow and brainless.

Youtube is no better. Only full of corporate marketing drones like marcus brownlee and linus tech tips. All very hollow, sponsor-ridden and glossy. The only one I appreciate is dave from eevblog but he posts pretty rarely these days so I never really watch youtube anymore.

It's not all the knowledge. Frequently I have searched for something and not found it

Or we are at the fingertips of everything else..

This is why I think managing notifications is so important.

I personally balk at the idea that everything is at our fingertips. Yes, a lot of information is readily available, but it is mostly very shallow, poorly referenced, and in short form. It is actually very hard to find in-depth, long form content on the Internet these days. You have to look very hard. Almost the only way to find it is by crawling dedicated forums and getting links that way. It's still much easier to find information in books.

> It really can't be underestimated either for children or adults how much we are dependent on ease of access.

nit: If you mean to say these groups are so dependent on ease of access it's impossible to estimate correctly to what degree, you mean it can't be overestimated, not underestimated.

I use my phone to look up words/concepts/references all the time while reading - I couldn't do without it, flipping through a dictionary or walking up to a computer to read a quick Wikipedia intro to a concept/person/place/etc would just get me far more distracted.

There’s always a reason why we “need” our phone at all times, isn’t there?

For the purposes of public policy (where schools are concerned), or even holding a meeting at work, what should be the best recourse?

Let the schools make rules, just like they do for a thousand other things.

If you make it a “public policy” issue, it will become another partisan football for the authoritarians among us to create drama about.

I find an eink tablet with no browser or a digitizing pen good for taking notes in this tech era.

Weelll....

I did that, and I use my Remarkable 2 mostly for reading epub novels and even leave the pen at home by now... :(

Okay, knowing myself I never thought I would use it much for creative work to begin with (and I was right).

I still think I did my best programming and learning about computers when I did not actually own one. East Germany, 1980s, I was in school. All programming happened with my head and paper,

oh no.

do you have a case so it's convenient to have the pen with you?

I got the cheap standard case of the very first iteration (I was an original pre-order customer for the RM 2), not expecting to carry it around much (I was working from home most of the time anyway). I have to stick the pen somewhere else in the bag.

I just looked, they don't even have that cheap model anymore.

yeah I have something like https://a.co/d/3JUuMjd so the pens harder to lose

I imagine when books became available, there were people who complained that people no longer take the time to just contemplate anymore, they always have an excuse for having a book in their hands.

> For the purposes of public policy (where schools are concerned), or even holding a meeting at work, what should be the best recourse?

teach them to use it. it's a tool. teach them how marketing works. teach them how susceptible to misinformation the human mind is. teach them how companies behave as if they are only beholden to shareholder profit and how said companies sell them fast food, sugar, porn and yes, engagement for profit.

the psychological weaknesses of the human mind have been well documented for over a hundred years, and yet the only people we teach that stuff to is marketing students. why is that?

Sometimes when I'm reading a paper book I miss the easy access to a dictionary that I get on my ebook reader, but I have found I can just keep reading and infer enough to not interrupt my reading. I keep notes on a post-it and I check those later.

I'm not suggesting you do the same, is just that I felt identified with your comment.

Yet somehow we all survived before smartphones. If you have a question and raise your hand to ask, everyone else benefits from getting the answer as well.

we also survived before books. plenty of books are useless or downright dangerous. would you support banning books in the classroom?

Do you think that's useful? The old school way would be to jot down notes about questions and followups. I'm curious if the old school way relates to better retention of both the questions and answers. My suspicion is yes. I should do this myself more.

Write those down on a list and look them up every 15 minutes.

Nonetheless I did it all the time as a kid and it was fine using a dictionary. Is it much easier on a phone? Absolutely, but then I also get caught up reading the etymology, looking up on Wikipedia the Greek roots of the word, ending up at some Greek wars' battle in 500BC and what's the current geopolitical situation of the region, how did they vote on the last Greek Parliamentary election, etc.

For my curiosity it's amazing, not so much for getting shit done.

outside of work, I read for entertainment about 70% of the time I'm not doing biological necessities. I don't see the problem with the scenario you've outlined.

I think you've missed what I meant... Read the parent and my response, not my response in a vacuum.

we are in violent agreement.

It's amazing to me that people argue about this, using weak personal anecdotes or just strange self-righteousness.

"If you're stuck in a room and the only thing you can do is read a math textbook you are going to do it. If you are stuck in a room and you have a math textbook and a novel you now have a choice."

Nope, even then it was easier for me to stare at walls or daydream. That never worked for me :(

It's not just smartphones, same thing can happen with any computer connected to the Internet, any computer NOT connected to the Internet (video games), a television, radio or even a Walkman (the last 3 typically not being an issue for the classroom for obvious reasons, but still potentially a tempting distraction to not do whatever you are supposed to be doing). Heck, even books / magazines can become that in some situations.

I sometimes wish I could be locked in a room until I get a master's degree in Math.