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Comment by zarzavat | Hacker News Reader

Confiscating phones from children for an entire week is an unhinged idea. Confiscating for the rest of the school day I can understand, but not giving them the phone back when they go home is dangerous.

At some point a child will get abducted on their way home from school, or be unable to contact emergency services, because the school confiscated their phone.

They seem to want parents to buy dumb phones instead for their children. Can you imagine trying to text “I’m being followed by someone on XYZ road” on a Nokia-style keyboard? Do dumb phones support sending GPS coordinates to emergency services like smartphones do?

Even mundane things like what if a child’s train gets cancelled and they need to check Google Maps to find an alternative way home.

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I don’t buy this argument at all, if someone is abducting children taking their phone away will be an absolutely trivial first step. I know this might shock you be there was a time before phones and everything was totally okay.

Can you provide data that grounds these claims? How often are children saved from abduction by an iPhone or similar?

The schools posit that the social and educational benefits of no smartphones outweigh the (purported) risks of an un-nannied childhood.

How on earth did any child survive pre 2000..

The damage done to kids by smartphones greatly exceeds the safety benefits you describe IMHO. Your use of hyperbolic language like "unhinged" suggests you're addicted to your smartphone or at least you're in denial about the damage it did to you.

In the winter it’s common for kids to walk home from school after dark, if there are after-school activities. I did that many times as a kid and it was scary. I would have felt a lot better with a smartphone.

I’m a grown adult and I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking around London in the dark without a smartphone.

Taking a phone away from an 11 year old before they walk back home in the dark is unhinged, it’s not hyperbolic to say that or a sign of addiction.

>I’m a grown adult and I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking around London in the dark without a smartphone.

Can we talk about this for a minute? Suppose a big guy or a group of guys see you walking in London in the dark and decide to do you violence. What is the main way a smartphone can help you in your opinion? By giving you a chance to get photos of them? By helping you get emergency medical help after they beat you up?

I'm genuinely curious, not just trying to score points.

Is there some danger other than violence from strangers that you think the smartphone will help you with?

The phone doesn't do anything against abduction. It doesn't make the public transports work better either.

Also, there is a thing about developing social skills to be able to do small things like asking for directions/help.

> Can you imagine trying to text “I’m being followed by someone on XYZ road” on a Nokia-style keyboard? Do dumb phones support sending GPS coordinates to emergency services like smartphones do?

what do you think the world looked like 15 years ago? the 1-week is a punitive punishment. you know you can't have this. you deliberately chose to use it. if you get it back at the end of the day, so what? you've lost nothing. you wouldn't have been able to use it during school anyway.

Taking people's property is not acceptable. Parents can confiscate phones if they want. Schools can suspend disruptive pupils.

The UK has no sense of personal autonomy. Culturally no limits on controlling people to suit authority preference.

if taking a student's phone breaches your idea of autonomy, it's not just the UK you will have a problem with.

why does a student have the right to bring a banned object to a class and keep it? you would instead suspend the student? who do you think prefers that to confiscation? the student? the parent? teacher?

Typical fear mongering that got phones all over the schools in the first place. Kids aren't getting abducted or even using their phones in an emergency capacity.

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