My school went cellphone-free after Christmas a year ago! What a revelation! I never thought I’d be the one to say this, but smartphones/social media needs to be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes. Children should not have access!
Yes! Completely agree! It breaks my heart to see how addicted we are as a society to our phones. Iowa has new legislation regarding phone use and several schools near me have made changes. We need to help our kids deal with this addiction!
It's been a blessing. It's also been a lot of trial and error. We really thought the yondr pouches would work. As long as the kids felt the vibration we stood no chance. - Perhaps use this article as evidence for convincing admin this is a big deal.
Thank you for confirming my families decision to not give cell phones or iPads to kids.
We’re doing what we did growing up, there’s a dumb phone in a drawer at home. You need to be go somewhere and reach us after, you can borrow the family phone.
I didn’t get a smartphone until after I graduated college. Can’t recommend it enough.
It's going to be part of the lives in some capacity no matter what...eventually. But it's been a simple rule our society has held forever, you wait until a certain age until kids are allowed to consume drugs. Social media is a new classification of drug, but it functions the same way as all other drugs. You consume it for enjoyment, at the expense of other things you can do with your time. The earlier you get hooked, the less opportunity you have experience all the amazing things the world has to offer in place of social media.
Btw, despite my venomous posts against your cruel and draconian phone free policy, i never use social media and find it addictive and stupid. Same as i never used cigarettes. But you know as well as anyone, with you posting on the internet , expressing free and open journalism via the wonders of the internet, that phones allow you to exercise your first amendment rights, socialize, express yourself, and are much more then gateways into soulless corporate social media. The internet is what you make of it, just like any tool, but it’s a force for good. This is no different then banning books because you can read how to construct a bomb from one. Any tools can be misused.
And yet I am sure that you would say that allowing cartels to pay people to introduce eight and ten year olds to cocaine should be regulated. Even highly regulated. Given that, maybe you should consider whether youth focused social media are actually the addictive thing that the social engineers are paid to design.
Gotta agree with Ron here. I've got nothing against 21 year olds drinking booze, and buying their first pack of cigarettes. (I even think the drinking age should probably be lowered to 18.) But, generally speaking, most kids don't know how to control their addictions all that well. I buy Johnathon Heidt's argument in Anxious Generation that we have a responsibility to protect the youth against digital addictions. After you're out of school, have at it...even if I think anyone's life would probably improve with less social media in it. Probably same the same as alcohol. Less of it, probably good. but when you're an adult you get to make that choice.
Agreed. And the whole "it's just a tool" argument makes me crazy. Does a Swiss Army knife PING YOU INCESSANTLY to pick it up and use it? And once you use it to pry open that stuck cabinet, do you feel like USING IT NON-STOP FOR THE REST OF THE DAY? No and no.
A Swiss Army knife just lies there inert, for days, months even, waiting in your junk drawer or toolbox or wherever you forgot you put it, for the one instance you actually NEED it, because it IS a tool, and tools are not, by their definition, addictive.
Smart phones are NOT "just tools." Yes, they're handheld devices that extend your human abilities to accomplish a particular task... but that doesn't make them "just tools." We don't have a word yet to classify what they are.
Say what? It ain't the same as banning books. In fact, allowing brainwashing devices into schools is the same as banning books, and independent thought, and discernment. Jesus Christ! And good for you that you, personally, don't have any use for "social media" and are wise enough, tough enough, discerning enough, to see through the bullshit. Get in touch with your village or city and get the ball rolling on a statue of yourself in the town square, to celebrate the greatness that is yourself. But you're not in grade school, or high school, are you? You're wildly naive if you think this is some kind of choice that young people must be allowed to make. Here's a better analogy: schools don't allow handguns and knives into the classroom, and the phone and it's adjuncts are just as deadly. There's plenty of evidence for this, so there's no point in getting worked up into a libertarian lather over some child's Right to be propagandized.
What you have done here at your school will most likely even save lives. There is a strong correlation (so strong that it is highly likely it’s a causation) between the rise of internet and smartphone usage around 2007 and teen suicide rates rising. It’s not just because of bullying and social media pushing unrealistic standards. It’s because a person’s brain doesn’t stop developing until 25. And when a kid is using internet instead of playing outside, the brain isn’t getting what it needs for development. Read up on Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s work, it’s very illuminating. Huberman Lab has interviewed him about it.
Fully up to speed on the Anxious Generation, and I'm a huge fan of his substack, After Babel. The second unit in my health class is all about social media. The first unit is mental health.
It is up to parents to teach kids to distrust and not use social media. Schools cannot control children’s lives. Schools are not babysitters or in charge of morality or responsibility, they are places of education, first and only (and they should be optional)
You're assuming all parents are engaged with their children. That's a big assumption. Meanwhile teachers have to teach and they can't do that with a built in distraction in the kids pockets.
Really? So a school is "babysitting" if they confiscate, for as long as a student is at school, a device or object that directly threatens learning or safety? Parents, don't you know, are actually terrible at teaching children to distrust things, whether it's drugs, or social media, or false friends. When every single child wants to go into the classroom with a device that will directly stop them from learning anything, waiting for parents to somehow stop this is very, very bad idea.
I’m shocked that the parents went along with it. I sub high school in several districts, and the situation is dire. Many kids get texts and CALLS from their parents randomly through the school day, and it seems those parents really don’t care(if they’re even aware of it) about the hellish situation that they are feeding. I place a lot of blame on the parents, who give the kids the damn things in the first place. The cigarette analogy is perfect, kids have no hope of seeing it, and parents must see it, if things are to change. Most of all, fuck Silicon Valley. Flip-phones, for god’s sake.
It's interesting. This is one of those rare cases where working in a Title one school actually benefits me. Most of the parents agreed with the movement. I work in an environment where there is less parent involvement, and parents expect their kids to fend for themselves sooner. They see it on the home front as well, kids ignoring their parents while they're on their phone.
Huxley saw this coming 80 years ago, but of course he was dismissed as a crank. Thirty years passed, and Christopher Lasch became the next Cassandra, followed by Bertrand Gross, Sheldon Wolin, and most recently Nancy MacLean. And here we are.
Why, then, are parents paying for their kids’ fentanyl? Phone plans aren’t cheap. Could it be that at least some parents share the same addiction? I can hardly tell my nephews off for checking their phones at the dinner table while my brother-in-law is busy checking sports scores on his.
I worked in international schools and we had a box that all students were required to drop phones into at the beginning of class. They could get them at the end of class. It was a non-issue.
Then I moved to N America and it’s been so puzzling as to why schools allow students to keep their phones in class. Something something about property…and? If a kid showed up with a knife, wouldn’t we confiscate it? Baffling.
The right to your property, even at the student level is pretty hardcore around here. This was a battle schools in the early days of cellphones when texting your friend during class was becoming a problem (what a cute almost negligible offense now a days.) Courts ruled you weren't allowed to confiscate kids cellphones back when they were plastic toys compared to what they are now. Unfortuntaly, the legislation continues to apply towards phones that carry the most addictive attention capturing apps in the world.
Why not just a school ban (I mean like 10 years ago)? There’s lots of things students can’t bring from home…of course, parents need to also be willing to give their kids that independence. Funny how we grew up without phones and now they’re considered an essential “safety” device!
Yes, exactly. A sane society that imagines it has some kind of future would never allow utterly destructive propaganda devices or any other kind of weapon into schools. I know teachers; I've been a substitute teacher (a few years before the current phone/brainwashing catastrophe really took hold), and I can tell you that it utterly is beating teachers into the ground, to say nothing of the young minds being delivered, permanently, into the grasp of anti-democratic forces. It is war on civil society, and all that entails.
Hyenas aren’t just scavengers. They hunt just as much if not more than lions in many cases. In fact lions are more likely to steal a hyena kill than the other way round. The Lion King lied to you.
As you said, you can simply bring more phones. Sure they can punish you, but schools can’t use corporal punishment, and you can ignore detention. Test scores? Really? No one cares about your GPA. College is all that matters for a job, not your high school grades. And you can get into the most cost-efficient colleges even if you don’t even graduate. If your parents support you, you can simply ignore any punishment, or just not show up to school. Why would you?
That is one of the reasons I pulled my kids out of school 14 years ago. They're both in college now. I miss teaching and all our homeschool friends. Funny story... my daughter wants to be a teacher.
Ofc it won't change everything for Gen Z (or gen alpha tbh) but I do wonder how much of a difference it would make for kids if their whole pre-college schooling was like this.
I think it would be for the best. Or at least, your school time is phone free. College professors are starting to chime in on the internet. They are assigning shorter books, or no books at all because students can't stay focused for long enough to read them.
That bothers me too! But there is no respect for proper writing anymore. We can blame cell phones for that too. Or should I say to? or two? or 2? Nobody knows and nobody cares!
My hope is that they realize how much better life is without the phones. My hope is that they realize that they feel so amazing that they learn to self-regulate. We exercise bc it feels amazing afterwards, we feel alive (it is what makes most of us go back for more). We eat healthy because our body feels better than it does after a big, greasy meal. Can we teach these kids to notice how they feel? The truth is that we are all drugged. However, the difference between a person who is mindful of their use and one that is not, is that the mindful person is choosing to control the addiction in order to feel healthy and human. Alive! We simply cannot get that feeling when holding and interacting with our screens. I am so happy for these kids who are being given the opportunity to experience real life again. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
I very much agree with your point here, teaching kids self regulation is an incredibly important skill, and comes along with learning how to be self aware. It's a key tenet of social emotional learning, and it's something I work hard to explicitly teach in my health, P.E., and Strength and conditioning classes.
I hope "electronic brain cocaine" catches on, not only because it sound right, but also because those of us not brought up on phones don't instinctively recognize the danger (just as those brought up before addictive drugs like cocaine were fully understood didn't instinctively recognize the danger of - to them - a little bit of liquid or powder).
My school went cellphone-free after Christmas a year ago! What a revelation! I never thought I’d be the one to say this, but smartphones/social media needs to be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes. Children should not have access!
Brain cocaine. And I don’t use that term lightly.
Neither should adults!
Yes! Completely agree! It breaks my heart to see how addicted we are as a society to our phones. Iowa has new legislation regarding phone use and several schools near me have made changes. We need to help our kids deal with this addiction!
I am beyond doubt that it should be categorized as addiction at this point
When you hear the stories about kids who kill their parents over phone confiscation I don’t know what else you could call it but an addiction.
Has this happened?
https://lawandcrime.com/crime/sheriff-says-tennessee-teen-confessed-to-fatally-shooting-his-sleeping-mother-in-the-head-she-reportedly-took-away-his-cell-phone/
People do kill each other in TN over some stupid shit sometimes https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/man-kills-another-man-after-not-receiving-pancakes-he-ordered-witness-tells-police/article_2b2b35bd-2772-424b-9ce6-16b6a0aad7c8.html
Ouch
It’s the American Way.
It’s pretty cool to hear how well admin supports you - a lot of schools would cave and push the enforcement onto the teachers
It's been a blessing. It's also been a lot of trial and error. We really thought the yondr pouches would work. As long as the kids felt the vibration we stood no chance. - Perhaps use this article as evidence for convincing admin this is a big deal.
Thank you for confirming my families decision to not give cell phones or iPads to kids.
We’re doing what we did growing up, there’s a dumb phone in a drawer at home. You need to be go somewhere and reach us after, you can borrow the family phone.
I didn’t get a smartphone until after I graduated college. Can’t recommend it enough.
It's going to be part of the lives in some capacity no matter what...eventually. But it's been a simple rule our society has held forever, you wait until a certain age until kids are allowed to consume drugs. Social media is a new classification of drug, but it functions the same way as all other drugs. You consume it for enjoyment, at the expense of other things you can do with your time. The earlier you get hooked, the less opportunity you have experience all the amazing things the world has to offer in place of social media.
Btw, despite my venomous posts against your cruel and draconian phone free policy, i never use social media and find it addictive and stupid. Same as i never used cigarettes. But you know as well as anyone, with you posting on the internet , expressing free and open journalism via the wonders of the internet, that phones allow you to exercise your first amendment rights, socialize, express yourself, and are much more then gateways into soulless corporate social media. The internet is what you make of it, just like any tool, but it’s a force for good. This is no different then banning books because you can read how to construct a bomb from one. Any tools can be misused.
And yet I am sure that you would say that allowing cartels to pay people to introduce eight and ten year olds to cocaine should be regulated. Even highly regulated. Given that, maybe you should consider whether youth focused social media are actually the addictive thing that the social engineers are paid to design.
Gotta agree with Ron here. I've got nothing against 21 year olds drinking booze, and buying their first pack of cigarettes. (I even think the drinking age should probably be lowered to 18.) But, generally speaking, most kids don't know how to control their addictions all that well. I buy Johnathon Heidt's argument in Anxious Generation that we have a responsibility to protect the youth against digital addictions. After you're out of school, have at it...even if I think anyone's life would probably improve with less social media in it. Probably same the same as alcohol. Less of it, probably good. but when you're an adult you get to make that choice.
Agreed. And the whole "it's just a tool" argument makes me crazy. Does a Swiss Army knife PING YOU INCESSANTLY to pick it up and use it? And once you use it to pry open that stuck cabinet, do you feel like USING IT NON-STOP FOR THE REST OF THE DAY? No and no.
A Swiss Army knife just lies there inert, for days, months even, waiting in your junk drawer or toolbox or wherever you forgot you put it, for the one instance you actually NEED it, because it IS a tool, and tools are not, by their definition, addictive.
Smart phones are NOT "just tools." Yes, they're handheld devices that extend your human abilities to accomplish a particular task... but that doesn't make them "just tools." We don't have a word yet to classify what they are.
Say what? It ain't the same as banning books. In fact, allowing brainwashing devices into schools is the same as banning books, and independent thought, and discernment. Jesus Christ! And good for you that you, personally, don't have any use for "social media" and are wise enough, tough enough, discerning enough, to see through the bullshit. Get in touch with your village or city and get the ball rolling on a statue of yourself in the town square, to celebrate the greatness that is yourself. But you're not in grade school, or high school, are you? You're wildly naive if you think this is some kind of choice that young people must be allowed to make. Here's a better analogy: schools don't allow handguns and knives into the classroom, and the phone and it's adjuncts are just as deadly. There's plenty of evidence for this, so there's no point in getting worked up into a libertarian lather over some child's Right to be propagandized.
What you have done here at your school will most likely even save lives. There is a strong correlation (so strong that it is highly likely it’s a causation) between the rise of internet and smartphone usage around 2007 and teen suicide rates rising. It’s not just because of bullying and social media pushing unrealistic standards. It’s because a person’s brain doesn’t stop developing until 25. And when a kid is using internet instead of playing outside, the brain isn’t getting what it needs for development. Read up on Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s work, it’s very illuminating. Huberman Lab has interviewed him about it.
Fully up to speed on the Anxious Generation, and I'm a huge fan of his substack, After Babel. The second unit in my health class is all about social media. The first unit is mental health.
Awesome! 🫶🏻 thank you for your important work!
It is up to parents to teach kids to distrust and not use social media. Schools cannot control children’s lives. Schools are not babysitters or in charge of morality or responsibility, they are places of education, first and only (and they should be optional)
You're assuming all parents are engaged with their children. That's a big assumption. Meanwhile teachers have to teach and they can't do that with a built in distraction in the kids pockets.
Well it certainly depends in which world or reality you live in. In an ideal world.....
Really? So a school is "babysitting" if they confiscate, for as long as a student is at school, a device or object that directly threatens learning or safety? Parents, don't you know, are actually terrible at teaching children to distrust things, whether it's drugs, or social media, or false friends. When every single child wants to go into the classroom with a device that will directly stop them from learning anything, waiting for parents to somehow stop this is very, very bad idea.
I’m shocked that the parents went along with it. I sub high school in several districts, and the situation is dire. Many kids get texts and CALLS from their parents randomly through the school day, and it seems those parents really don’t care(if they’re even aware of it) about the hellish situation that they are feeding. I place a lot of blame on the parents, who give the kids the damn things in the first place. The cigarette analogy is perfect, kids have no hope of seeing it, and parents must see it, if things are to change. Most of all, fuck Silicon Valley. Flip-phones, for god’s sake.
It's interesting. This is one of those rare cases where working in a Title one school actually benefits me. Most of the parents agreed with the movement. I work in an environment where there is less parent involvement, and parents expect their kids to fend for themselves sooner. They see it on the home front as well, kids ignoring their parents while they're on their phone.
It’s digital soma.
Ah, as soon as I read this I nodded in agreement. Might be the greatest comparison this generation has for the "drug that fixes all."
Huxley saw this coming 80 years ago, but of course he was dismissed as a crank. Thirty years passed, and Christopher Lasch became the next Cassandra, followed by Bertrand Gross, Sheldon Wolin, and most recently Nancy MacLean. And here we are.
Scary how accurate it is
Why, then, are parents paying for their kids’ fentanyl? Phone plans aren’t cheap. Could it be that at least some parents share the same addiction? I can hardly tell my nephews off for checking their phones at the dinner table while my brother-in-law is busy checking sports scores on his.
I worked in international schools and we had a box that all students were required to drop phones into at the beginning of class. They could get them at the end of class. It was a non-issue.
Then I moved to N America and it’s been so puzzling as to why schools allow students to keep their phones in class. Something something about property…and? If a kid showed up with a knife, wouldn’t we confiscate it? Baffling.
The right to your property, even at the student level is pretty hardcore around here. This was a battle schools in the early days of cellphones when texting your friend during class was becoming a problem (what a cute almost negligible offense now a days.) Courts ruled you weren't allowed to confiscate kids cellphones back when they were plastic toys compared to what they are now. Unfortuntaly, the legislation continues to apply towards phones that carry the most addictive attention capturing apps in the world.
Why not just a school ban (I mean like 10 years ago)? There’s lots of things students can’t bring from home…of course, parents need to also be willing to give their kids that independence. Funny how we grew up without phones and now they’re considered an essential “safety” device!
There are probably a lot of high paid lobbyists behind these actions and resistance to enforcing these bans. Paid for by......????
Also I just remembered how there’s school shootings in the US, which would make parents want their kids to have phones as well.
Yes, exactly. A sane society that imagines it has some kind of future would never allow utterly destructive propaganda devices or any other kind of weapon into schools. I know teachers; I've been a substitute teacher (a few years before the current phone/brainwashing catastrophe really took hold), and I can tell you that it utterly is beating teachers into the ground, to say nothing of the young minds being delivered, permanently, into the grasp of anti-democratic forces. It is war on civil society, and all that entails.
I'm only 36, I graduated high school in 2007. I remember lunches being loud AF. High school lunches had become silent? The heck? O_O
The phone addiction sounds terrifying. Good on your school for successfully banning phones.
I wouldn't call it silent per se....but quiet and docile for sure. Conversation mostly dead.
That's just sad
Hyenas aren’t just scavengers. They hunt just as much if not more than lions in many cases. In fact lions are more likely to steal a hyena kill than the other way round. The Lion King lied to you.
Are you saying that lions can't talk either!?!
I have unfortunate news.
Dude...DUDE...
We did this as well. It’s great, but like playing whack-a-mole. All day every day.
We stop them at entry. So it's been a lot less whack a mole than other years. This year I really haven't had to deal with it.
As you said, you can simply bring more phones. Sure they can punish you, but schools can’t use corporal punishment, and you can ignore detention. Test scores? Really? No one cares about your GPA. College is all that matters for a job, not your high school grades. And you can get into the most cost-efficient colleges even if you don’t even graduate. If your parents support you, you can simply ignore any punishment, or just not show up to school. Why would you?
I agree!
That is one of the reasons I pulled my kids out of school 14 years ago. They're both in college now. I miss teaching and all our homeschool friends. Funny story... my daughter wants to be a teacher.
i wish her the best of luck. Its a world of frustration and joy.
Ofc it won't change everything for Gen Z (or gen alpha tbh) but I do wonder how much of a difference it would make for kids if their whole pre-college schooling was like this.
Thank you for sharing this experience!
I think it would be for the best. Or at least, your school time is phone free. College professors are starting to chime in on the internet. They are assigning shorter books, or no books at all because students can't stay focused for long enough to read them.
I’m with you in this. But if you are a teacher, why don’t you know how to use apostrophes correctly?
Those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.
Harsh🤣
That bothers me too! But there is no respect for proper writing anymore. We can blame cell phones for that too. Or should I say to? or two? or 2? Nobody knows and nobody cares!
I'm somebody, I care...
Me tooooo🙃
My hope is that they realize how much better life is without the phones. My hope is that they realize that they feel so amazing that they learn to self-regulate. We exercise bc it feels amazing afterwards, we feel alive (it is what makes most of us go back for more). We eat healthy because our body feels better than it does after a big, greasy meal. Can we teach these kids to notice how they feel? The truth is that we are all drugged. However, the difference between a person who is mindful of their use and one that is not, is that the mindful person is choosing to control the addiction in order to feel healthy and human. Alive! We simply cannot get that feeling when holding and interacting with our screens. I am so happy for these kids who are being given the opportunity to experience real life again. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
I very much agree with your point here, teaching kids self regulation is an incredibly important skill, and comes along with learning how to be self aware. It's a key tenet of social emotional learning, and it's something I work hard to explicitly teach in my health, P.E., and Strength and conditioning classes.
I hope "electronic brain cocaine" catches on, not only because it sound right, but also because those of us not brought up on phones don't instinctively recognize the danger (just as those brought up before addictive drugs like cocaine were fully understood didn't instinctively recognize the danger of - to them - a little bit of liquid or powder).
Call it my first attempt at branding a problem