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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

There's more to life than homework, even when you're in school. If I have my work done and want to read Slashdot or Ars Technica, or if I'm between classes and want to check the news, that's really not something that should be banned at the national level.

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You don't need to read the news every day, let alone every hour of the day.

It's an addiction to the way news is currently produced.

It's entirely reasonable to spend an evening a week reading up on tech news. It's not reasonable to have a compulsion to check the news whenever you have a down minute.

I'm guilty of that myself, I'm currently writing this while a program compiles but I wouldn't wish this on a developing mind.

Besides, there are other places where news and the internet is available, why shouldn't places legislate away having that 24/7 on smartphones during school.

The older I get the more I realize that just because something is good for the average person doesn't mean it should be the law for everyone. There are billions of ways to go through life, and sometimes the freedom to make and learn from mistakes is just as important as a formal education.

I’m arriving at the opposite conclusion as I age. Exceptional people are so rare that it seems to make more logistical sense to ignore them and let them bend the rules themselves. Kind of like a browser leaving advanced features to power users.

For example, the vast majority of kids in school are using their smartphones to do stuff like watch Ninja play Fortnite on Twitch, not whatever self-enriching bullshit we can point out they could be doing.

Also, when I was a kid, there was no greater injustice than my parents kicking me off the computer to go outside. Ugh, don’t they know how productive I’m being?! But boy do I understand as an adult. What better time to learn how to entertain yourself without a computer screen than in school?

> You don't need to read the news every day

As someone who votes, you should read the news on a very regular basis. Ideally that means reading a variety of news sources from a variety of political leanings.

Children don't get the vote either.

Probably why this law passed.

> As someone who votes, you should read the news on a very regular basis. Ideally that means reading a variety of news sources from a variety of political leanings.

Why? To poison your mind with lies and misrepresentations of reality? To get distracted from important issues and spend lots of time following irrelevant dramas?

Mainstream news has negative informational value these days.

Obviously you have the special truth from the only true source, and all news media is fake except for the ones who hawk gold pills and testosterone boosters - they know how it really is.

The news can do better, I'm sure we can all agree, but let's not go over the top on either side. I doubt GP is QAnon and doubt all news media makes brain juice drip out of your ears.

I don't have any special truth from a true source; I just believe that a typical news story is mostly misinformation intended to drive pageviews instead of presenting accurate picture of reality. I don't think adding more false information helps get a more true picture. I mean, you could try to tease out some true information by "averaging" news from multiple distinct sources, but that's pretty much a full-time job, and most news are just a waste of time.

(I mean, seriously. Doesn't everyone here know of Gell-Mann amnesia? Or are people just afraid to follow it to its logical conclusion?)

Under the age of 15?

That's halfway through highschool. I picked actual examples of sites I visited in highschool. I also played video games and learned how to hack the terminal server (a bit). But generally not in the middle of a lecture.

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