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Comment by leggomylibro | Hacker News Reader

My Aunt has a child in early middle school - years 6 through 9 or so, for people outside the US.

Not only does the poor kid have a school-issued laptop with heavy monitoring tools installed on it, but they are also required to bring a smartphone to school! My Aunt had made them tape over the laptop's webcam and explained that everything the kid typed could probably be seen by the school, but she was still concerned about the microphone. And the kid is completely incapable of avoiding the more toxic aspects of social media and adtech, because the constant use of smartphones has become a central part of their education. At the age of what, 11-15?

I can only imagine what this is teaching the child. When we caught up over the holidays, they seemed to be more fed up and disgusted with technology than interested in it.

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This is absolutely horrible. I feel so bad for your family.

There's already a plethora of studies about the negative impacts screen time may have on early child development and the development of their brains in particular. But even from the observable social aspect, the interactions with our smart devices with notifications always vying for our attention and flashing widgets distracting us, I'm really worried for kids who already have struggles with focus and attention.

I know that we get tired of the "sky is falling" rhetoric, but I will just point out that many aspects of modern life that have become "normal" for us are still bad. Sedentary lifestyle, short attention spans, need for constant entertainment, less time spent outdoors, larger processed food consumption – the health and social problems associated with all of these are just accepted now, and a couple of generations ago we didn't have them (at least, not to the same degree).

Was everything perfect before? No, of course not. But let's not lose the forest for the trees. We can adopt technology and progress responsibly, rather than w=recklessly as we have for the past few decades.

Have they considered home schooling?

Often modern home schooling looks more like private school (because almost no one actually does it home, they send their kids to parent run “co-ops”) and you won’t have to deal with most of this stupidity.

The Co-op my sister went to banned smartphones inside the building. IMO that was a little extreme and made logistics more difficult than they needed to be but it meant they just focused on school work.

Absolutely fascinated by this -- my partner and I are projecting ahead a few years and I've wondered what this kind of home-schooling would be like. What do the financials look like?

The constant use of smartphones has become a pretty central part of US culture. Shouldn't school reflect the environment the student is being taught to live in?

Not to be flippant, but so is alcohol usage, should we encourage students to drink at school?

Smartphone applications are designed to be addictive and have demonstrably negative effects upon the mental health of adolescents. Their usage should be vigorously discouraged by anyone who cares about the mental health of school students.

I mean, since you bring it up, there's some evidence that the abstinence-until-21 system the US uses for alcohol does it no favors. It means that instead of being able to learn responsible drinking at home or while younger, America's youth may legally start drinking in college and sort of make up a responsible drinking culture as they go along.

You mention drinking at home. The law bans the purchase of alcohol by children, but does it ban parents giving alcohol to their children? I dont think so.

It's created a cultural stigma that results in most Americans refraining from exercising that freedom, but you're correct; it is not illegal to serve alcohol to minors at home (there are details there that I'm not going to go look up right now ;) ).

Doesn't even have to be in the home. In Wisconsin you can drink under 21 at a restaurant if you're accompanied by a legal guardian, parent, or spouse who is 21 or older.

As I recall, many divey bars would settle for "sibling." As a teenager in Illinois I heard tale of a mythical land to the North where we could drink in restaurants with our parents.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/125/I/07/...

That depends on the state. https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/10/legal-for-kid... Five states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire, and West Virginia -- have no exceptions to their underage alcohol consumption laws.

>but does it ban parents giving alcohol to their children? I dont think so.

It is quite illegal to furnish alcohol to minors

>All states also make it a crime to supply an underage person with alcohol even when there is no money involved.

https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-def...

And:

>Depending on the situation, one can be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for supplying alcohol to minors. Most often, supplying alcohol to a minor is considered a misdemeanor offense, but in some jurisdictions, it may be considered a felony depending on the circumstances. Felonies for supplying minors with alcohol are typically charged when there is some type of accident or injury involved with the use of alcohol or the person supplying the alcohol has been convicted of repeated offenses. Typical penalties are outlined below.

https://www.alcohol.org/laws/supplying-alcohol-to-a-minor/

Most states exempt parents from such laws. For example Massachusetts law says

> For the purpose of this section the word ''furnish'' shall mean to knowingly or intentionally supply, give, or provide to or allow a person under 21 years of age except for the children and grandchildren of the person being charged to possess alcoholic beverages on premises or property owned or controlled by the person charged.

https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXX/Cha...

> but so is alcohol usage, should we encourage students to drink at school?

Not a great analogy, since the effects on alcohol are quite different than the effects of using a smartphone.

In many contexts, e.g. while driving or attempting to think about abstract topics, the effects of one are difficult to distinguish from the effects of the other.

>The constant use of smartphones has become a pretty central part of US culture.

Only in the past several years, and in that time there's been a lot of pushback to it and a growing consensus that it is likely harmful when people don't moderate their usage. I was in high school less than 10 years ago, and phones of all kinds were banned. If a teacher saw an iPhone, it would be confiscated and your parent would have to pick it up.

The schools are optimizing for convenience and cost, not the cultural zeitgeist.

Yes, it's a good idea, but being forced to carry a device around with you that is used to track your movements is not okay. Parents need to be able to say no to that.

That’s somewhat akin to providing schoolchildren with a rum ration because drinking alcohol is a central part of culture.

Ahh yes. I remember back in my day I was sent home if I didn't show up to school with my rotary telephone and a fresh copy of the Times under my arm. Essential components of US culture, after all.

We were taught newspaper literacy at my school. We didn't have to provide our own copies though, since newspaper is easy to come by; the school provided it.

The comment isn't describing use of cell phones as a central part of US culture. It's describing tyrannical, invasive policies that happen to involve smart phones.

I don't own or use a smart-phone, why should my kid be forced to?

Hypothetically? For the same reason kids in high school are taught how to use graphing calculators whether or not their parents own or use one. Public education is supposed to work independent of the situation of the parents.

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