School phone bans do not improve grades or wellbeing, says UK study

We eliminated most of childhood. Kids lost their ability to regularly roam for hours, freely and without adults.

With that went most of kids' organic time learning complex problem solving, concocting and executing plans, working with peers, giving/getting feedback, how to lead, how to follow and other factors that set the stage for YA mental health.

Phones are tools kids use to cope with a life spent in perpetual lockdown. Phone use rose as kids were working out how to cope with the loss of their critical growth places/critical growth hours.

In this context, blaming phones seems a lot like adults being adults.

My son attended a school that got quite a bit of attention for banning phones.

Half the battle at that school was less "wellbeing" and was more about day to day dealing with students. It didn't make the news but "phones in the bathroom" and how they aggravated the few fights that occurred, and people taking photos without permission, was a constant concern and staff not being able to monitor the bathroom / not wanting to all the time.

In the end the ban wasn't as much a new ban as it was a policy update. Now if they see a phone, the phone goes to the office, you get it at the end of the day. If it happens a third time ... your parents have to come retrieve the phone and meet with the principal, and the same every time after that.

The phones very much are still there, but the kids are smart enough not to risk the ire of their parents / suddenly no more bathroom phone issues.

I'm not surprised there isn't some overall "wellbeing" improvement like magic just from phones, kids had problems before phones...

Confusing title. The body says

> Researchers.. did find that spending longer on phones... was linked to lower grades, poor sleep, disruptive behaviour and a lack of exercise. But these outcomes did not differ between schools that banned phones and those that did not.

> those bans in isolation are not enough to tackle the negative impact. We need to do more than just ban phones in schools.”

One school that did this reported more face to face time. Unfortunately they used it to gamble on poker games, so I'm not sure it improved well-being