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Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

So, are there any schools measured who already did ban smartphones? Did they fare better? Where's the control group?

I can accept the assertions about smartphones, being massive attention grabbing devices. I know before I neuter all the "engagements", it chimes every minute.

However, we're also seeing massive inflation for quite some time. Food costs are up, stability of living has been down for some time. How much of other variables are also contributing or overriding smartphone usage?

(And blocking cell signals is a quick meeting with the FCC, if using active methods.)

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Smartphone usage was banned in almost all schools until around 2013.

Thanks for that 'fact', but that is nearly a generation old.

I guess it could be used as a longitudinal study... But the speed of technology is speeding up (technology is accelerating technology). I can't see this being that useful.

Again, where's the current schools that ban smartphones? That would be much more useful than something 11 years ago. (Yeah, 11 years...)

I'm not sure if the 2013 comment is true or not but I think it's in relation to this (from the article):

>For the past few years, parents, researchers, and the news media have paid closer attention to the relationship between teenagers’ phone use and their mental health. Researchers such as Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge have shown that various measures of student well-being began a sharp decline around 2012 throughout the West, just as smartphones and social media emerged as the attentional centerpiece of teenage life. Some have even suggested that smartphone use is so corrosive, it’s systematically reducing student achievement.

But of course it was already dropping quite consistently at that point. Perhaps smartphones made it worse, but clearly, concluding that they caused it seems very far fetched.

I went to school in South Korea, it's basically illegal to ban smartphones in schools, but even now, top high schools ban smartphones. parents prefer it, and students get good grades. But I'm not sure about the causality

It's weird that people point to this recent episode of inflation like it's been relatively severe. Historically speaking, it wasn't very high, and it didn't last very long. It would make more sense to blame COVID or the great recession--both of which were much more disruptive to day-to-day life.

I wonder if it's mainly younger people who believe this inflation is traumatic, because they haven't experienced a real economic crisis.

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