The phone ban has had a big impact on school work
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If you're stuck in a room and the only thing you can do is read a math textbook you are going to do it. If you are stuck in a room and you have a math textbook and a novel you now have a choice.
A phone? A phone is everything else. You're putting "the thing we are supposed to be doing" and "everything else" in the same place. I can't even do it as an adult, I need to put my phone on the other side of the room if I want to read something proper.
And in 'my day' I spent a lot of time at the library which was full of thrillers and comics. And spent most of my time learning about computers and electronics.
It's not an unprecedented problem and offers new offers new opportunities too.
It's like the people who have worked in IT for 20 years but 'never used Windows'.
I simply have no use for twitter. if the information is important, it'll turn up on bbc.co.uk, otherwise it's not really worth the effort.
I never said you did. In fact, I never said anything about you using Windows at all, yet twice now you seem to have taken what I wrote as though I did.
yes, I've clicked on Twitter links the same way I've clicked on ads, by accident.
So you're definitely not in the amp of people who never claimed to use Windows, which is the group I was comparing you to.
> Yes, I've clicked on Twitter links the same way I've clicked on ads, by accident.
That's what I'm skeptical of. Twitter sucks, but sometimes it's literally the only place the source of a story is, like if Elon makes a newesworthy post or something. I'm not saying you had an account or anything, but literally never clicking on a link, hundreds of which have been submitted as HN stories alone, beggars belief.
hahahaha! thank you! starting my day with a belly laugh is a great privilege!
but seriously, just because most of the tech bros admire him, doesn't mean I need to hear every idiocy that comes out of his deranged mind.
even when it's something truly interesting - I watched the space x double landing on YouTube a few hours after it happened several years ago - I don't need to be informed of every single thing the instant it happens.
That's a really weird reaction. Like, yeah, he's a clown, but he has still made tweets that get discussed in thew news and here on HN.
> doesn't mean I need to hear every idiocy that comes out of his deranged mind.
Elon was just one example. Plenty of other tech people, hackers, politicians etc post important stuff on twitter. I mean, juts search HN for submissions with twitter or x.com as the domain. There is no shortage of submissions, and it beggars belief you have never clicked on one.
$x has achieved $y. well good for them.
I really don't understand the obsession with the idea that I must somehow be interested in something just because somebody else said it. I've been offered free newspapers before - I told them thanks, but I don't have a cat.
That's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is Twitter has been too ubiquitous and important for you to have never clicked a submission at this site or a link to it somewhere, and not just accidentally.
But I guess I'm an outlier like most people on this site that promotes learning new things though text-heavy presentation.
Bold to assume this is what most people on this site are like!
I'd hypothesize you're still an outlier in that group in these regards. And that's great! But lots of the data points to people like HN's general demographic still being pulled away from long form text content and towards synthesized/aggregated content served via mixed media. There's still just such strong cultural elitism in the notion of reading a book to learn something, it's not super sexy to claim on a messageboard.
Really, look at the front page of this site. If you're not interested in dense textual content you would have closed the tab within 1 second. I really love this site but most people won't even see the story titles, their brain just registers "a confusing jumble of text" and doesn't even try to engage.
> But lots of the data points to people like HN's general demographic still being pulled away from long form text content and towards synthesized/aggregated content served via mixed media.
And what data is that?
> There's still just such strong cultural elitism in the notion of reading a book to learn something, it's not super sexy to claim on a messageboard.
I don't think I'm elitist or sexy. Just different. I hate video content because I can't consume it at my own pace (usually much faster than the content offers because video is tailored for the slowest possible denominator). And it's difficult to build context ("where am I within the story") when skipping forward or backwards. In text this is pretty seamless.
I don't tend to consume textual content in a start to end sequential manner. But I jump around. Because some stuff I already know, some i really want to deeper dive on, some I need to refer back to later. This is much harder with video.
And your theory is that all commenters have read those posts in their entirety? I'd suspect far far more readers jump to discussion rather than fixating on the post, as is evidenced by the amount of people that comment on and respond to topics irrelevant to the posts in question.
> And what data is that?
The slow death of academic and long form text medium in general? And the boom in mixed media aggregation happening? Or just the last 20 years of long form text as a whole?
But also, the work that's gone into building my company and its product.
> I don't think I'm elitist or sexy.
That's good. But I again think that your perception of this topic does not match society. Which isn't bad! But I think it's important to note our own biases and perceptions.
> I don't tend to consume textual content in a start to end sequential manner. But I jump around. Because some stuff I already know, some i really want to deeper dive on, some I need to refer back to later. This is much harder with video.
Yes, one might suggest that mixed media suffers from a lack of tooling for these types of challenges (aforementioned company)
I use instagram as a tool to follow certain parties and tattoo shops (for announcements of visiting artists). Since about a year they've spammed their 'reels' on me and make it much harder to avoid them. But every time I look at them it's the same brainless crap as the tiktok-branded videos that people send on to me via whatsapp or telegram.
I don't really understand how people are being captivated by this. It's all so hollow, shallow and brainless.
Youtube is no better. Only full of corporate marketing drones like marcus brownlee and linus tech tips. All very hollow, sponsor-ridden and glossy. The only one I appreciate is dave from eevblog but he posts pretty rarely these days so I never really watch youtube anymore.
For the purposes of public policy (where schools are concerned), or even holding a meeting at work, what should be the best recourse?
I did that, and I use my Remarkable 2 mostly for reading epub novels and even leave the pen at home by now... :(
Okay, knowing myself I never thought I would use it much for creative work to begin with (and I was right).
I still think I did my best programming and learning about computers when I did not actually own one. East Germany, 1980s, I was in school. All programming happened with my head and paper,
do you have a case so it's convenient to have the pen with you?
I just looked, they don't even have that cheap model anymore.
If you make it a “public policy” issue, it will become another partisan football for the authoritarians among us to create drama about.
> For the purposes of public policy (where schools are concerned), or even holding a meeting at work, what should be the best recourse?
teach them to use it. it's a tool. teach them how marketing works. teach them how susceptible to misinformation the human mind is. teach them how companies behave as if they are only beholden to shareholder profit and how said companies sell them fast food, sugar, porn and yes, engagement for profit.
the psychological weaknesses of the human mind have been well documented for over a hundred years, and yet the only people we teach that stuff to is marketing students. why is that?
For my curiosity it's amazing, not so much for getting shit done.
I'm not suggesting you do the same, is just that I felt identified with your comment.
I'm not so sure if this is true. No clue about kids, but if I'm (personally) stuck at the office and I'm really not feeling like working, I can literally stare at a wall daydreaming rather than do something. And the contrary is also true - if I'm "stuck" at some fancy place with lots to do (like home, lol) but feel like working (and have means to do so), there's no stopping me.
I suspect the problem isn't the phones, the problem is lack of honest, genuine interest. Compliance can be enforced, but I'm not sure about efficiency of learning under duress. Compulsion brings aversion.
This, of course, is a purely idealistic view, assuming ideal high-skilled spherical educators in vacuum rather than actual real-world conditions. While there are always ways to captivate interest and steer it into productive learning, it requires some orders of magnitude more resources than what's available.
I mean there's a very broad spectrum here, and a slight distraction can be the difference between spending 5 minutes staring at a wall followed by three hours in flow state vs. spending three hours in mindless distractions.
And children don't have any experience in how to cultivate flow state in the presence of distraction. Removing distractions naturally provides more opportunities to find the flow.
In my perception, distractions are ideally managed through interest management. Make the desired task actually truly desired - and you're guaranteed to not get distracted. And in an ideal environment, there should be an educator overseeing a kid and asking what went wrong if kid decides they wanna play with their phone instead of working.
When you don't have someone to help with "why am I doing this and not that?", I guess it's true that next best option is to eliminate potential of distraction. It's not great, but is probably better than not doing anything about it.
So, as always, there is an ideal approach (that doesn't work because it requires ideal environment), and a working approach that's very contrary to the ideal way of doing things.
Hm... Maybe teaching kids (and adults) about the modern attention/spam economy actually works can help to lower the distractions. After you see through attention-grabbing tricks, scrolling through online feed wastewaters (or watching junk on streaming platforms, or playing "games" whose entire raison d'être is to make money on players) becomes much less interesting or rewarding. Just a thought.
The reason primary education is mandatory is because the average kid doesn’t want to sit there learning things. Even some parents barely care. We have collectively decided to force these children to sit through school because we want the population to have at least some basic skills.
Catering to the outliers would not be efficient, sometimes people need to be coerced to set a minimum standard.
I was an outlier. Used to study well while it was interesting - just because I had access to the books and I loved reading. But around 9th grade I lost track of some courses, things stopped making sense, everything started to fall apart - and at some point I just optimized away, starting to solve for working around the compulsion rather than necessity to learn. I still learned things I cared about, but subjects where I had a gap in understanding went sideways.
The compulsion haven't made me learn anything much, but the means to game the system enough to pass through the hurdles. I worked on some skills like writing tiniest cheat sheets (fine motor skill training haha), basic networking to have someone to copy homework from, composing essays without even opening the source material, confidence tricks, breaking into storage rooms, hacking into computer systems and so on.
A valuable social skill set, but probably only for a failing simulacra of a society. (Well, I lived in exactly such a society - one under a post-Soviet curse, so it all fits.)
And while those were some fun times, I hate how I had totally lost a lot of opportunities to learn many useful things when I had all the time in the world for it - and way more capable brains than I have in my thirties or forties. I didn't do it because I just didn't knew that I cared about it. I don't blame anyone, of course - things just happened that way.
So, I strongly disagree with the "doesn't want" bit. Kids do want to learn things. I wanted to. I believe we all normally do - curiosity and desire to learn is humanity's signature trait. But kids cannot steer themselves, so they need guidance. And compulsion does a poor job as such.
But I agree that catering to the outliers is not efficient in present day real-life conditions. Probably not just inefficient, but outright impossible until(if) we ever reach post-scarcity. I even wrote a regret: "[approach] that doesn't work because it requires ideal environment". The compulsion is basically all we realistically have. I just made a note how it's a shame that it's a poor man's solution to a problem that ideally should be solved very differently.
In a classroom environment, once one kid is futzing around on their phone, others follow. That creates issues for the teachers who end up policing behavior instead of their jobs. You also have the obvious issues with cheating.
When I was the president of a school board, a subset of active and vocal parents were against the ban, citing a desire say goodbye to their kids in the event of a school massacre. In some cases I had doubts with respect to the veracity of that argument. The parents are a problem too - many have an expectation to text or speak to kids throughout the day.
The school handled it well IMO, no phones until grade 5, then kids can have them in their locker and use them at specific times.
Hah, let's play the "Guess the country this person lives in" game...
Even if you're interested a smartphone can distract you.
So no smartphone helps those people to focus on the remaining possibilities.
I would literally doodle, stare out a window, zone out daydreaming, or anything else other than read a textbook I didn't want to read for one reason or another, or pay attention to a teacher for that matter.
Yes, it is anecdotal, but I'm sure we've all been children before, and even if you didn't do it, people around you surely did if you paid any attention. For god sake, I remember my classmates just using a lighter on small patches of whiteout ink during one specific class because of how bored they were. Extreme example? Yes. But passing papers, making paper planes, and other crafts, literally anything to pass the time.
This isn't exclusive to children either. If an adult doesn't want to do something, they might very well not unless forced to, and even then.
Btw, I'm not trying to argue about banning or not banning a phone, this is specifically about the statement above.
EDIT: I should probably mention that this isn't a 5min thing, I could easily zone a teacher out for 45min-90min blocks if I didn't care about what they had to say, much less a book I didn't want to read.
A smartphone is a guaranteed distraction because of what you can do with it.
No smartphone doesn't guarantee you read the book, but the chances are higher.
But if you give them a tool to aid in being distracted, it will encourage all of them to not pay attention. It really is a question of likelihood
Being bored allows for creativity and problem-solving. You might not do well at that specific subject (eg, math if you never pay attention in math class). But you might do something with some other area of your life.
Constant distraction/consumption means never doing anything of value.
I was considering trying a month of no I internet browsing unless it is required for my job or learning.
Benefits became clear almost immediately. I got more actual work done. I suddenly had way more free time than I imagined. I renewed my library card and started reading again. My focus improved. I actually started actively listening to music again (rather than just having it on in the background). I got more exercise. I took the time to prepare better food. A certain low-level sense of anxiety that had become all too familiar simply disappeared.
I did slowly regress. It started with watching a movie or show in the evening, that sort of thing. Now, here I am writing this comment. Probably time to give it another go.
nit: If you mean to say these groups are so dependent on ease of access it's impossible to estimate correctly to what degree, you mean it can't be overestimated, not underestimated.
Nope, even then it was easier for me to stare at walls or daydream. That never worked for me :(
I grew up in the 80s and 90s. If I'd brought a handheld game console like a Gameboy or something into class, it would have been confiscated immediately. Sure, I get it, that's not the same thing; obviously phones have other uses.
But there is absolutely zero reason a kid needs their smartphone during class. All educational materials should be provided by the school. Kids do not need to be and should not be communicating with anyone outside class. If parents/guardians need to get in touch with kids during an emergency, they can do it the way they've done it as long as we've had the telephone: call the main office and have someone walk to the class to bring the kid to the phone.
I do expect that smartphones could actually bring something useful to the classroom -- after all, they grant access to more or less all the world's knowledge -- but the downsides of allowing them far far far outweigh any possible upsides.
In class, different story of course.
I think it has to be in the locker. Kids who don’t have lockers yet, no phone.
No need to take any students phone away from them.
I had a CD Walkman during high school. Was smart enough to never to bring it out unless everything else in class was done and neighbors had nothing to say.
Banning smartphones is such a boomer thing
To be clear, I believe a phone ban in schools would have a positive effect on academics, and that that would show up if it were studied. It's just that it doesn't seem like that's what they did in this case. Thus, arguing about whether phones affect attention span, memory, even reading time, is not relevant in the context of this article.
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2022-results-volum...
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2023/12/05/concernin...
Academic performance is somewhat of a burning fire - I'd guess there is less of a translation issue with the article than a cultural and political issue around the topic.
Also, why do parents these days need so much that their kids have some an instant communication device?
Also, culturally, parents don’t let kids walk home. When I was a kid in NYC only the kids bussed in from the hood had busses, the rest of us from the local neighborhood walked. State aid only reimburses for trips beyond a certain radius.
Sure, a few kids got rides on most or all days, and many rode a bus (sometimes a school bus, or sometimes a church or YMCA bus that ferried kids off to supervised after-school activities). We might get a ride to school if we were running late in the morning, or get picked up if we had an appointment after school, or if the weather was awful. (And I made sure to have a good look for my grandpa's car every afternoon: Every now and then he'd show up seemingly at random, and we'd go get ice cream.)
But at 3:00PM, what broadly happened was that we filtered out onto the quiet sidestreets that bordered the school and [eventually] made our ways home.
The daily line of cars was short enough that it didn't take any particular special consideration to manage: Folks just parked on streets that weren't used for lining up school buses and it all seemed to work fine.
It worked fine. It seems a bit chaotic in retrospect, but it really was just fine. Nobody got kidnapped or murdered. If we were late getting home it was because we were just out fucking off somewhere being kids.
---
Nowadays, I do some work sometimes at much smaller public elementary schools that requires me to take a break when the hallways are flooded with kids, and that gives me opportunities to passively observe what goes on.
Every afternoon, rain or shine, a huge organized line of cars appears, on dedicated pavement that did not exist decades ago, and organized individual dismissal of kids into their requisite cars begins. It looks like madness to me. Some cars even show up an hour and a half or more before dismissal, and the drivers seem to remain in the car the entire time -- just waiting.
So what changed?
To posit a theory: In this particular school system, reorganization didn't help at all. Schools were consolidated, and on average they shrunk (the big school I went to still stands, but it is empty). Due to what I can only presume is complete mismanagement, this lead to a lot of kids needing to go a school that was very far away and required riding the bus instead of just walking home.
But also: Parents of school-aged kids these days largely grew up with the Internet, and that made the world seem like a scarier place than it actually is.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
Can’t do that nowadays.
I had never used a payphone. I had perhaps rarely used our rotary home phone to dial out.
Of course it was after school hours, and a stressful personal crisis already, and no adult was hovering nearby to explain anything.
I figured out how to put in the coins and enter the number on TouchTone, (just like I'd seen on TV) but I didn't know what a dial tone or ring tone sounded like, nor a busy signal, and the line was in use at home, so indeed it was a busy signal that I patiently listened to for several minutes. I believed it was ringing and nobody was picking up.
By the time I was 21 and working at my first job, I was promoted and given a cubicle with a phone on the desk. I was quite anxious that it would ring and I wouldn't know what to do with the call. I was working for an Internet provider!
Back in my day we didn't even have a phone!
1980s East Germany, many homes did not have a phone. My parents could have gotten one, their job was important enough, but they did not want to be disturbed at home so they never asked for the great privilege of having a home phone.
Smartphones can be left in a locker (or somewhere else inaccessible during the school day) for use on the way to school and home if something happens.
Even in the shooter situation, there's no need for student phones.
My phone usage dropped after I got a personal laptop and an eBook reader. So did pretty much every one else's. The phone is just really inconvenient for anything other than doomscrolling.
In my opinion, the lack of alternative activities is overlooked. It is a ban and a prayer that the problem will solve itself.
disagree; it's the social media that's the problem; the phone just makes it possible to access it at all times
remove social media and you won't have kids on their phones all the time (or, if you're very lucky, they might use them for something productive)
This is a testable hypothesis. We shouldn’t conclude either way without more evidence. As it stands, enforcing a phone ban has advantages over an app one.
Every app, every website you visit is infested with dialogs and pop-ups that you're brushing out of the way, trying to get something accomplished.
It really tests your resolve and concentration, to see if you finished that one task you had in mind when you unlocked your phone, without going into 5 more on the side, or whether you can tame your phone sufficiently to be an assistant or productivity tool, rather than a firehose of marketing from dozens of companies to you, the consumer.
They are (generally) always on your person. They discourage the creation of text. They always have an internet connection. They are usually charged right next to your bed, so they are the first and last thing you interact with every day.
A concert would make sense though IMO.
It elevates the experience. Going back to the class thing [1], cell phone on the table or cell-phone use during dining is a noticeable thing between e.g. Michelin-starred restaurants and diners. (And I’m only counting N > 1 tables.)
For who? Not for the people who might want to use one, and for the people who get annoyed seeing someone else using one, that's their problem.
A lot of the people that might want to use one would in fact have a better experience if there was zero or minimal phone use at their table.
If I go on a date in a high end restaurant and hit it off with my date, I might want to show her something briefly or look up something, and we would both be on bored with it and having a good time.
In that case, the phone is enhancing the experience, not taking away from it.
That is why I said "a lot", not everyone.
Your "Nah." is not true, by your own argument.
> briefly
There is a reason I said "or minimal". That's minimal.
It's no different from insisting someone would like a variation of something they have no interest if they would only try it.
Or to put it in simpler terms, you seem to think you know better than "a lot" of people.
I said a lot. Not most.
> It's no different from insisting someone would like a variation of something they have no interest if they would only try it.
You shouldn't push people to do things, but as an objective true or false question, it's true a lot of the time.
> Or to put it in simpler terms, you seem to think you know better than "a lot" of people.
Are you implying that such a thought is obviously wrong?
It's not.
I can list a thousand topics where enough people disagree that many of them have to be wrong. People are wrong all the time. "A lot" of people being wrong about something is the default for most situations.
I'm not saying which specific people are wrong, that is beyond my abilities. I'm talking statistics, and I think there's plenty of evidence for it.
Edit: Also, you distracted me from the far more obvious answer, desires are complicated! Someone can want to use their phone and also want to avoid interruption. So they might have picked the same thing I would pick, zero "knowing better" involved.
Sigh. Do you find being pedantic like this productive, honestly? Fine, though. You're making an unwarranted assumption about a lot of people. Happy?
> but as an objective true or false question, it's true a lot of the time.
No, it isn't. This is purely your preference.
> Are you implying that such a thought is obviously wrong?
In this case dealing with subjective preferences it absolutely is, and you absolutely are.
> I can list a thousand topics where enough people disagree that many of them have to be wrong.
Those topics would likely be far more objective in nature, as opposed to dealing with individual preferences as is the case here.
> I'm talking statistics, and I think there's plenty of evidence for it.
So make your argument instead of just insisting you're right. Let's see the evidence.
Cool, that's super easy to prove. Ignore dinners, go look at the science of addiction. I can link the Wikipedia page if you want, it's full of links to evidence.
Also "most" versus "a lot" isn't pedantic. There's a ton of statements that are true of 5% of people but it would be ridiculous to suggest it's a majority.
No, I'm objecting to the idea that you think you know what people would enjoy more than they do themselves, for any amount of people barring maybe close friends and family. It's incredibly condescending.
> Also "most" versus "a lot" isn't pedantic.
It is when you already clarified it twice and it wasn't pertinent to the main point I was making, repeated above in this very comment.
Are you calling me condescending, or wrong, or both? Both, it seems? But those are different arguments. Don't confuse the two.
When it comes to addiction, the evidence is clear that I am right.
In my opinion if it's both true and impersonal, then it's not condescending. And I'm being as impersonal and nonjudgemental as I can here. But if "condescending" is your only objection then good enough I made my point.
> It is when you already clarified it twice and it wasn't pertinent to the main point I was making, repeated above in this very comment.
When you ignore the clarification, I worry you didn't see/understand/internalize it. The levels of proof are very different, so that makes me say it again to make sure we're on the same page.
Even your reply here is condescending, good god.
I'm not confusing anything. You got it right the first time, I think yoru argument is wrong, AND it's condescending.
> When it comes to addiction, the evidence is clear that I am right.
The problem is you making the assumption that people wanting to use their phone at a restaurant are suffering from addition.
That's the claim you need to support.
> so that makes me say it again to make sure we're on the same page.
Yes, I'm sure that was the reason.
Because you keep phrasing things as if wrong and condescending are the same, and it makes it annoying to respond to your claims.
> The problem is you making the assumption that people wanting to use their phone at a restaurant are suffering from addition.
> That's the claim you need to support.
I don't need to cite phone studies when I can counter your main argument.
You made an extremely general argument that I'm wrong if I say any preferences a bunch of people have are making them unhappy. I made extra sure you were doubling down and making a claim so strong.
And addiction disproves it.
If you want to go back to just dinner, you need to make a new argument that isn't entirely based on whether you think I'm condescending. And at this point I don't have much patience or belief you'll actually listen to me.
If you do want to agree with me that yes lots of people have immediate preferences that make them unhappy after a few hours, but you think phones at dinner are an exception to that, then I guess we could talk about why you think that, and I'm open to hearing why.
But any argument that says people are always right about what they want? Nah.
I don't think I need to build a ground-up argument that only applies to phones. It's an instance of a more general problem: people are not always good at planning and impulses. If you object to the general argument, then I only need to disprove your objection.
> Yes, I'm sure that was the reason.
If you won't believe me then there's not much I can do, but it's true. I've had people ignore a critical part of my argument over and over. If someone misquotes me, I will point it out.
By the way, do you have a reason you kept misquoting my argument? I feel like you should have to defend that instead just attacking me for correcting you.
No, that's purely an issue with your interpretation. Drop your assumptions and look at it more objectively, if you can.
> Right now, the best way to support it is to counter your claim.
My claim is that your claim is wrong, lol. Don't try this slippery snakeoil salesman crap, please.
You're making the claim that "a lot" of people would enjoy their food better if they didn't have their phones with them, or were not allowed to use them. I'm sure you'll be pedantic and correct this, but regardless of your reply that's the general point you've made.
The basis for this claim is your belief that most of these people have an addiction. That's an unsubstantiated assumption.
For your claim to hold water, you can't just assume addiction, you need to prove addiction, since that's the foundation of your claim.
> I made extra sure you were doubling down
I'm not doubling down on anything. I'm simply telling you your assumptions are unfounded and that you are wrong AND condescending to assume so. I really hope emphasizing that 'and' helped assuage your confusion on that point.
> If you do want to agree with me that yes lots of people have immediate preferences that make them unhappy after a few hours
That wasn't your claim, and it's disingenuous to make it more abstract to try and defend it. It was your specific claim that I took objection to, not this abstracted significantly less specific version.
> It's an instance of a more general problem: people are not always good at planning and impulses.
There's also the issue of people like yourselves insisting they know peoples preferences better then they do. You don't seem to understand that your own preferences don't necessarily map to other people in the way you assume. Have you considered you're an outlier in a way that has nothing to do with addiction?
> By the way, do you have a reason you kept misquoting my argument? I feel like you should have to defend that instead just attacking me for correcting you.
It wasn't deliberate or malicious, it was just because I was typing instead of copying and pasting. As far as my argument is concerned, the quantity difference between 'most' and 'a lot' is irrelevant - the issue is you're insisting you know better than a group of strangers, regardless of if that group is "a lot" of people or most people.
Correct.
> The basis for this claim is your belief that most of these people have an addiction. That's an unsubstantiated assumption.
Incorrect. The basis of my claim is that people are often wrong about what will make them happy.
Addiction is not the basis of my claim, it was just a single example of people choosing wrong.
> It was your specific claim that I took objection to, not this abstracted significantly less specific version.
1. Your argument was not phone specific, so I asked if you were making the general claim, and you confirmed it as far as I could tell.
2. Fine, let's start over. Do you think phones are an exception to the general argument?
> There's also the issue of people like yourselves insisting they know peoples preferences better then they do. You don't seem to understand that your own preferences don't necessarily map to other people in the way you assume.
See, I don't know which people are wrong. I'm making a statistical argument.
I'm also wrong a lot! There are people that know what I want better than I do, sometimes! The trouble is we don't know which ones
> you're insisting you know better than a group of strangers
If the group is everyone keeping phones out, then no I'm not.
If the group is a subset of those people that I can't identify, then is that direct enough to be an issue? I don't think it's realistic to think 100% are correct.
> Addiction is not the basis of my claim, it was just a single example of people choosing wrong.
In this specific instance, of using phones at restaurants, you seemed to think people could not go without them due to addiction. Are you saying that was not your position?
> Do you think phones are an exception to the general argument?
Not so much an exemption, more that when you make an abstract argument it's going to change when you zoom in a few levels down, and it's going to change depending on what is being discussed in.
In this case, I certainly disagree that it's safe to assert that "a lot of people would enjoy their meals better if they didn't have their phones with them" - is that a fair paraphrasing of your point?
> See, I don't know which people are wrong. I'm making a statistical argument.
What are you considering a lot, then? Even 0.1% of the population could be considered a lot, so what's the low end percentage of western phone owners you would suppose your position would apply to?
> I'm also wrong a lot! There are people that know what I want better than I do, sometimes! The trouble is we don't know which ones
In the context of statistics, what do you think the split is between people that think they would know what you want more than you do, and those who actually do? I'd think it's something like 9:1.
> If the group is a subset of those people that I can't identify, then is that direct enough to be an issue? I don't think it's realistic to think 100% are correct.
I guess it depends on how much you consider a lot. I'll grant it is correct for 'some' just on the basis of variations that exist, but I'm not sure I agree with it being true for a lot.
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Unrelated, what are you using if anything to get reply notifications so fast? Are you just manually refreshing?
Correct. I only brought up addiction after I thought we moved to the general argument, because it's so easy and objective. If we stayed with phones I probably wouldn't have mentioned addiction.
> Not so much an exemption, more that when you make an abstract argument it's going to change when you zoom in a few levels down, and it's going to change depending on what is being discussed in.
It will change some, but if the general idea is that people are bad at knowing what they want and avoiding temptation, that can only change so much. If it's not true for phones at dinner then that sounds like it has to be an exception.
> In this case, I certainly disagree that it's safe to assert that "a lot of people would enjoy their meals better if they didn't have their phones with them" - is that a fair paraphrasing of your point?
I think that's fair, but I'd replace "have their phones with them" with something like "use their phones for more than a minute or so per hour".
> What are you considering a lot, then? Even 0.1% of the population could be considered a lot, so what's the low end percentage of western phone owners you would suppose your position would apply to?
0.1% is still a million people. I think that has a good chance of qualifying?
But I would bet the number is >5%. If it's 5% that's definitely enough for me to count it as a lot of people.
> In the context of statistics, what do you think the split is between people that think they would know what you want more than you do, and those who actually do? I'd think it's something like 9:1.
If those odds work the other way around and 10% of people would be happier without phones, then I would take that as very strong validation of my position.
I think it can change significantly. The devil is in the details in this case.
> but if the general idea is that people are bad at knowing what they want and avoiding temptation,v
If it's a general idea though, as in you are generalizing, that would mean you are talking about 'most', and not 'some' or 'a lot'.
Ah, I can clarify that.
The vast majority of people aren't very good at avoiding temptation.
But when we look at the choices people make, "avoid temptation" is not a universal correct answer. I'm not suggesting people be ascetic monks.
So if we look at people facing some tempting choice, I might estimate that 99% of them are generically bad at resisting, but of the people that give in only 10% of them are actually making a mistake.
Just luck. I refresh more often right after commenting but otherwise it's erratic between a few refreshes an hour and several hours between refreshes.
https://kwatch.io/monitoring-keywords-hacker-news-kwatch
You can give it the URL of a specific post or comment and it will notify you when new comments are made in the thread.
I hope it is useful.
It's not a matter of knowing better, it's a matter of people not considering X. If they don't think about X they wouldn't even know to change it or try something else.
Truly, you don't know something until you try it. If you never try it you just don't know. At least for most things, some things are obvious.
Also, there's arguments about phones being addictive. That changes things a lot.
Strongly disagree.
> It's not a matter of knowing better, it's a matter of people not considering X.
You're making the same mistake the other fellow is; you're assuming the other people haven't considered x, when they likely have.
I'm not making the mistake of thinking they didn't consider it. I think every human is bad at considering.
But it's also true that a lot of them really haven't considered it.
People suck at driving enough as it is without driving one handed and distracted.
I’ve only been driving for a decade (although I’ve been paying attention to traffic for maybe 15 years?) and in the last ~4 years I’ve anecdotally noticed a very steep decline in general driving competence, across 3 provinces and 6 states. Not just distracted driving (poor reactions, unable to keep vehicles centred in lanes, etc), but unnecessarily aggressive driving (purposefully blocking merges, passing in dangerous conditions, etc), unnecessarily fearful driving (hugging the right of the lane, driving >20% below the speed limit/flow of traffic during busy times of day, braking unnecessarily early for stoplights that haven’t yet changed [or worse, for a stoplight that doesn’t apply], etc), and what I call “mindless driving” (camping the left lane while travelling well under the flow of traffic and/or speed limit with cars passing 20-40km/h faster on the right, changing lanes without checking it’s clear or even signalling, blowing through stop signs/crosswalks, not moving over or slowing down for emergency vehicles on the shoulder or approaching from behind, etc).
All of these things have been happening forever, but I’m certain they’re occurring more frequently now. I’ve had a dashcam in every vehicle I’ve owned, and I used to save clips of “idiots” every week or two when driving ~600km/week. These days I drive less than a third of that on average and I’m saving clips almost every time I drive somewhere. Just this past week, I’ve seen two near collisions involving school buses, 6 (!) cars changing >3 lanes in opposing directions simultaneously in and out of each other within 150m of multi-lane off ramp, an accessible school vehicle (wheelchair-equipped minivan for disabled students) pull out of a stopped lane into another lane in front of a car travelling at full speed (~80km/h, the posted speed limit) who had to swerve off the road to avoid it, a vehicle purposefully matching the speed of a vehicle trying to merge on the highway to prevent them from merging safely, and (my favourite) a pickup truck accelerating from ~105km/h to ~130km/h at full throttle (while previously camping the left lane of a two-lane freeway) to prevent me from moving over for a police car and ambulance stopped on the shoulder, partially in my lane, up ahead. All within ~450km (busier driving week than usual). And this isn’t a particularly notable time period, the last 2 years have been like this constantly.
Maybe I’m just noticing it more now, maybe it’s localized, but I’m very confident that drivers, in general, are worse now than they were even 4 years ago.
I’ve been to several wedding ceremonies of somewhat large size where no one took their phones out, and certainly not for photos.
Did trust in society hit a new low while I wasn’t looking?
No, no, no. A device in a (near-)stranger’s unsupervised physical possession for hours is a compromised device. No.
But at the same time this sort of thing would also make me kinda annoyed (as I have no problem, generally, keeping my phone in my pocket, on silent, when having it out is inappropriate0.
It's unlikely there will be state actors at this wedding or whatever ready to open up your phone and swap out a chip.
On balance I'd probably try and get rid entirely, but vividly recall my academic/engineering/whatever awakening being from downloading huge quantities of textbooks and the like onto my phone at the age of 14 or 15, so I wouldn't go stray too far away from modern technology in some sense.
I could also argue that this made me quite distracted but (say) also meant that it was the best part of a decade until I would see something, conditioned on that I found it interesting, that I hadn't seen before in formal education.
Social media is far more addictive now. And doom scrolling is far better tuned. I see my kids and those of my friends. It's not at all what it was even 10 years ago.
This is only getting wise as engagement is the only metric these companies care about. I support the social media ban under 18.
One component seems to be not providing them with a networked general-purpose computer out of the gate.
I say we do need digital exploration.
No one complains about being hopelessly addicted to listening to audio books or doing anki flashcards.
I suspect it isn't just social media but the cultivation of an online presence that is hopelessly addicting to many.
It is kind of like saying how do we get people to stop being addicted to smoking crack pipes. The crack is the problem, not the pipe.
I also used the internet to get interesting tech manuals (and plenty of other books) from IRC channels when I was young
But that was before social media, which has IMO destroyed (not entirely, but largely) the positive aspects of internet connections for teenagers
A phone is now primarily a source of always-on entertainment (in 10 second bytes).
There’s no way allowing them access to their phone during school allows for any schooling to happen. This is what the school system is up against (in certain kinds of privileged high tech communities).
They may already be too old for a hard shift, and it’s too enabled by their home life situation, but their school career already feels set.
If I were an alcoholic, would it be a good idea to walk around with a bottle of liquor in my pocket?
If there is a school ban, then enforcement happens at school too, making it harder to do behind your back, and the bulk of their social circle isn't on social media, avoiding the FOMO issues.
So I get the complaint, but I feel like even if kids sneak around behind your back (been there too, lol, I rooted my iBook G4 when my parents added a password) the added friction makes a difference. In other words, kids will be kids, but that shouldn't stop us from setting healthy boundaries.
Edit: Bit of a tirade, but I'm trying to say I agree with you! Just trying to add interesting context.
In other words, how holistic is the metric "reading time?"
> a student could be reading a bunch of fiction on their phone
My kids have dedicated reading time with physical books and, if they want to, they are always free to read more long form text on their devices (not likely -- that's just reality unless you have a dedicated reading-only device).
Never have I ever seen a student reading on their phone. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it must be a vanishingly small fraction that I have not yet encountered. When my students are on their phones, it's games, or it's (primarily video-based) social media. A smaller but notable fraction is background media consumption, either music or movies.
That's not to say I don't have kids who read, though they're much rarer than the music listeners, just that the readers seem to prefer physical books.
So at least in my experience, I wouldn't expect that metric to be vulnerable to this particular flavor of distortion.
Snake!
I got in trouble all the time in school for reading (real books) during class time when the teacher was lecturing about things I already knew. Do kids like this not exist anymore? I thought autism rates were going up!
Seriously, no one reads? I thought kids were getting all political and woke, presumably from reading progressive things? I guess it’s all TikTok mind control?
I categorically oppose phone bans on the grounds that it harms the “brilliant lazy”, and that these forces are exactly the kind you want to cultivate. (insert the famous bill gates and 4 types of German officers quote about this here) - but if this class of people has evaporated from the school systems than who am I even defending?
My kids are avid readers, but even they won't read on a phone or a pad or a computer. If they got hold of a phone, they'd always choose either games or viewing videos.
> For example, a student could be reading a bunch of fiction on their phone, thereby reducing their time in the school's library.
That would be a great exception, but very much not the norm. Most kids are not reading long-form books or fiction on their phones.
Without root access to the device and blinkers to ensure they aren’t looking at a second device strategically placed out of sight, you can’t conclude anything.
It's a nice thought, but I have kids that age and never have I once seen this happen or heard of it happening with any of their friends/classmates; that's not what phones are for according to GenZ/GenA
Even worse is the plague that are PDFs, for instance for science papers, the reading of which is a miserable experience due to too big fixed pages (lack of reflow).
There's been a few studies suggesting reading on paper is better for retention than reading on screens, and I've found one suggesting the size of the screen makes a further difference, but it looks like the latter may have some conflicting findings as well.
Phones and certain services like social are made to capture, retain and redirect your attention.
Students come more out of this tie of constructed consumption origin.
The default state is often not idle, boredom, it’s consumption.
Relative to that..
There’s productive time and non productive time.
Passive consumption va active learning or active creating.
It’s easy to see what services accessed at a network level per devices.
There’s also digital health built into android and iOS that tracks app usage by time.
Another option is apps like opal which help manage things.
We use parental controls on iOS but those are buggy (and Android even worse from what I heard).
A teacher has a bad day and a kid films the teacher crying? It's all over the socials and teacher is mocked.
A kid has a bad day and throws a chair through a window while the teacher films it? Teacher is likely sacked for filming kids at school.
Assuming the teacher doesn't post that video, and only uses it as evidence for what the student did, why would they get fired for this?
Instead, what the article basically says is that banning phones results in kids spending less time on the phone, which is an improvement if your idea of an improvement is having kids do things that don't involve spending time on the phone. There is some circular reasoning here.
Note that I am not against the idea that phone bans have positive effects on general well being, academic performance, etc... but for me, this article doesn't sell it very well.
The argument these days is more about "distraction" caused by cellphone usage instead of something quantitative.
No smartphones before high school
No social media before 16
No phones in schools
More free, independent play
On the flip side, I lived in a rural area and my parents would frequently take me to play with kids that had no TV or internet access. Words cannot describe how thick these people can be. One of them was a pair of history buff brothers that weren't allowed to read anything their parents didn't vet - they didn't even know what the Civil War was when I mentioned it. There was a family that lived on a farm, where every time I visited their kids would ask me what weed looks like, what porn was and how alcohol tasted. There were the kids that asked me to recite Newgrounds videos verbatim, explain who "Iron Man" is and even ones that (tragically) didn't know the Mormonism their parents loved was a cult. Rejecting social media is a smart thing to teach anyone, but you have to be extremely careful to not use it as an excuse to shelter them.
Sometimes I worry that HN creates a "growth hack" mindset for parents that inhibits them from thinking rationally about how a child develops. It's not a new phenomenon but it seems fear overrides our willingness to empathize with the events of our own childhood. It all feels reminiscent of when people played Mozart for their baby because an unreviewed paper correlated it with higher IQ. Missing the forest for the trees, a bit.
https://typeset.io/questions/how-does-television-affect-read...
I have noticed this among my children as well. We decided very early on that we won't have a TV at home once the children arrived. They have shown far better reading skills than their peers in school who are glued to the screens. Their peers who have mostly avoided TV also show similarly improved reading skills and also a desire for reading.
Certainly sitting in front of a TV all day is bad for you, but I think policing TV use for a child to ensure it doesn't become a problem is a lot easier than policing smartphone use.
Sometimes one of his buddy brings his Switch home to us and they can play together in the same room (I have a PS5 my kid plays on).
As a kid for part of that time, I have to say my gut reaction is supportive.
Three of the most important consequences of your above were (1) creating boredom, (2) promoting independent in-person social interaction, and (3) emphasizing present-ness in the moment.
All in ways that are very difficult for children to experience today.
Many of my most impressionable and favorite childhood moments came from hanging out with friends, being bored, and getting engrossed in whatever we came up with...
... nowadays at that age, we probably wouldn't even get together and would immediately fire up our consumptive dopamine bricks to banish the first hint of boredom.
What are you basing this one?
(Semantic note: “surely” implies an internally-reasoned versus evidence-based hypothesis. It wasn’t always that way; maybe it’s because of its frequent use in reverse.)
And unless you block the browser (parental controls on mobile are garbage), they're going to get to those sites anyway.
1. https://www.youtube.com/live/Ewxe4pWOH-I 2. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1647639025879064579.html
Furthermore, your backup includes 'X can't be caused by Y because X happened before Y existed'. This ignores that possibility that X can be caused by Y and also caused by something else that existed before Y.
Late stage capitalism’s reference is a touchy subject and probably hyperbole in most cases, but it is also a specific reference and does not require the complete abandonment of capitalism to repair the problems. Referring to it does not necessarily equate to a moral panic in my definition of the terms.
I do not ignore the possibility you cite; I find the reasoning of it existing prior far more convincing.
I once held a similar position of anxiety about this issue until someone wrote a response to me that was very similar to my own in this thread. I’m trying to share something similar with others: to inform those concerned that banning is not necessarily the only or best option.
And still my idea is only for phones and other portable devices with easy internet access, since that's the hardest for society and parents to regulate the kids screen time and ensuring the kids don't have access to sites engineered to keep them on for as long as possible.
If students were more attentive, more enthusiastic, etc., those would not be numbers that you could report, but would absolutely be positive results.
When I visited one of our offices in India there was a phone ban. Employees were given a locker for their phone (and other stuff if they wanted), where the phone was to remain while they were in the work area. Being a visitor, I complied, but then quickly found out almost no one else did. They all secretly had their phones out doing whatever when the boss wasn't looking. I stopped locking mine up after a bit as well after seeing this.
We need statewide rules if we’re to avoid creating a generational gap in cognitive and social competence.
Parents who can't afford that will resort to anything to occupy their child when they need a moment of peace, and it's hard to blame them, honestly.
But the divide is much less rich vs. poor and more about parental involvement (which has some obvious economic relation, but a stable home life seems more relevant).
On the othe hand, I know some families at private schools and those kids seem much less regulated phone-wise.