Maybe instead of banning kids from using phones, they should consider banning companies from making their apps addictive on purpose.
Most modern social media apps are now redesigned to allow for endless doomscrolling. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram all allow to scroll through content fed to you by an algorithm without even being able to preview the next video. It just slams it in your face.
It's extremely addictive and imo harmful. It ruins attention spans, it ruins social development and it causes insecurities.
I am in favor of banning smartphones in schools. I have seen what these apps do to people only a few years younger than me and it's just depressing.
> seen what these apps do to people only a few years younger than me and it's just depressing
I'll make the obligatory point that the situation seems not much better for older people (Millennials, Boomers, etc.) who are also consuming a shocking amount of video on their phones throughout the day, to the point of it being anti-social.
I wholly agree.
As for the personal experience, I am only 21 so I left high school (in europe) around 3 years ago. TikTok started to boom around 4 years ago. What I've noticed is that my peers who are just a few years younger than me use these apps much more. To the point where it's just unbearable to watch a movie with them because they open their phone up every minute just to get fed some random content. My sister who is 4 years younger than me is insecure to the point of having developed an eating disorder, and I know that social media played a big part in that. Both the insecurity and specifically the pressure to eat healthy.
The algorithms in these apps really play into your faults. If you engage with videos about healthy eating because you are insecure about your weight you will only get fed more of the same. And the creators on these platforms can make extremely toxic and harmful content.
I myself have tried to get TikTok to only feed me conspiracy theories and managed to do it in minutes. Some of my friends have succeeded in getting it to show self-harm content in a few minutes as well. I really find these platforms that give you absolutely no control over the content you're fed dangerous.
> the situation seems not much better for older people
I personally don't know many older people that really consume much phone content. My parents sure don't, neither does my older sister or my colleagues. For the most part anyway. So at least in my social circles the situation does seem better.
I even know a lot of people of my age that actively try to fight it. For instance by disabling video suggestions on YouTube.
Yeah, unfortunately I know some Millennials and Boomers like that too.
Anyway, you have an impressive perspective on this for a 21 year-old. These discussions tend to be among us old folks who grew up with dial-up Internet on the family desktop computer in the living room. I would not have guessed your age from your first comment.
But back to the apps and social media, when we put restrictions on use and got back to the real focus on family and school, then the healing started. It was instant.
I encourage everyone to have phone timeouts.
It's such an easy sell too. Hey parents, any objections if we prevent companies advertising to your kids? How about stopping them from tracking everything your kids do?
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/no-evidence-screen-time...
The York study was a tiny set of kids and the only change was sleep pattern. There have been numerous studies done on larger groups and they results coalesce around screens not being a problem.
Either way, the same "they" does not have agency over both things. It makes sense to consider the thing you can actually do.
I think its very challenging to come up with a solution of what part of it makes it addictive and how they can not do that.
Taking that logic we would need to remove almost all video games, social media and even online videos.
They are all marketed to keep people engaging with them.
Almost everything we create has been developed so that people engage with it, that's why we have marketing companies.
It's difficult to feel a sense of belonging if all your peers have access to something you don't, even worse if that something is your social space itself.
(Full disclosure: I am rampantly anti smartphone. But I understand kids' need to have it.)
* Use an LMS called Infinite Canvas. Among other things, the kids have to submit homework online -- which can be done on the web app -- which often requires them to take a photo of handwritten work to upload. Have you ever tried taking a photo of a piece of paper using a $200 Chromebook?
* Use Teamsnap for sports team management: scheduling, roster management, messaging, etc.
* Use Instagram for school-official communications, including things like social events, counseling services, college visits, and sports team news.
... There are more, but the point is that phone apps make certain things easy and schools are taking advantage of that fact, even if they're simultaneously banning them during school hours.
No, but I've used a scanner before. Surely that's still an option?
Maybe it's unusual that we've kept them, but both my ancient inkjet and my wife's ancient laser printer both have flatbed scanners on top.
The Internet wasn't this bad when people were on Usenet and no one would censor your thoughts.
For cognitive abilities it is the phone ban itself.
Living with the social (organic) consequences of sharing unpopular opinions is much better than being silenced and digitally imprisoned, because the latter takes away one's dignity to think or build community around ideas which disagree with the status quo.
Reducing the algorithmic targeting of children (by taking away phones or otherwise) is no more censorship than telling someone to stop standing in front of you and shouting in your face.
Problem is, the regulations regarding all that will take much much longer because the very fact all this engagement driven software is actual poison for the brain hasn't reached the stage where you can just hammer down facts and drown everyone who still thinks this is a good idea. They should show how all that affects overall productivity and all the billions and trillions they throw out of the window, how it pours oil into the fire of more and more people being overly stressed (which is not just work causing this) etc.