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Comment by brigadier132 | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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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.

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