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Comment by dmd | Hacker News Reader

Nearly everyone in our family’s (public, Massachusetts) high school writes papers exclusively on their phone.

Wow, isn't that painful without a big screen and keyboard? [1] Most primary schools here (NL) use Chromebooks or Windows laptops. High schools sometimes have a BYOD, but you certainly have to bring a laptop.

[1] Of course, you can hook up most phones to a display, keyboard, mouse, but that blurring the lines a bit. A Samsung DeX device or future Pixel desktop mode device hooked up to peripherals is pretty much a desktop (Pixel will even support Linux apps in a VM).

To you or me, yes. And I would say “oh they just don’t know what they’re missing” but they all have laptops and chromebooks but prefer to use their phones.

I'm a millenial and I'm touch typing. The idea of writing long texts on a phone or tablet feels ridiculous to me. I already get annoyed when I have to write an e-mail on my phone. Also, I find the mobile UX for text formatting, cut/copy/paste extremely frustrating.

Interesting. I'm also in MA, and my daughters (like all their classmates) mostly use the chromebooks issued by their public high school. They strongly prefer their macbooks tho. Granted, we live in an affluent town. But I thought the chromebooks were a statewide thing.

We’re also in a quite affluent town, and yes everyone does have chromebooks. But they’re considered uncool to use.

I'm in San Jose and it's school-issued Chromebooks here, too, though many students have their own [superior] laptop they are able to use. In the case of my household, my son has a Thinkpad X1 Carbon and my daughter has a Pixelbook Go, I use a MacBook Pro M1 and my wife uses an old Pixelbook or an old iPad with a Magic Keyboard. Everyone's pretty much chained to their phones but recognize a real keyboard and bigger screen are beneficial for certain tasks (like writing, or Khan Academy, or even consuming media).

Have they ever tried to use a real computer for that? Can they afford a real computer? Would they prefer a bigger screen and a real keyboard over a tiny screen and an even smaller keyboard? Maybe they just don't have the experience of using a real computer to know how far superior it is to a tiny screen/keyboard?

Using a phone to write papers seems like an exercise in masochism, if better alternatives are available.

It's also possible that their peer group that does use laptops to write papers is doing far better in many ways.

Yes, this is a very affluent district. Everyone has a chromebook from school and most have a macbook from their parents. They prefer the phone. (“Big computers are more of an old person millennial thing.”)

They sound young and dumb, to the point that their opinion on this matter is irrelevant. They will figure it out eventually.

I made an account finally just because this no laptop thing was too shocking. I get kids and teens have preferences. But what in the world is going on with the parents? Who cares if Timmy wants to write his paper on a phone. You tell him to sit down at a desk, focus, and write like a normal person. You can always regress to your own quirks once youve proven yourself.

I have no idea what your comment is supposed to convey.

It's supposed to convey that kids doing dumb things is expected. But parents allowing this is parental malpractice.

In highschool classes forever ago we had to write 20+ page papers. I can't imagine trying to do that on a phone!

These days might be gone, with the availability of LLMs now. You only need to prompt a bit, then it is all copy and paste. I have no idea if the students are learning a whole lot this way, though.

Depending on the subject and writing methods it’s still not this straight forward. Regardless GPTs are hard to detect. Here are some examples.

- If it is an English class and you have to write about a personal experience, that would still take a lot of prompting.

- Other courses in psychology, political science, and journalism can pull from events too recent for writing subjects.

- Writing essays by hand in a tests setting or just as an exercise can solve two things. Now you would know a students writing style for the future and write without a computer.

- Using Google Docs to analyze revision history, not perfect by any means but helpful.

How do you write long school papers on the phone's tiny screen and keyboard?

ChatGPT?

Good point. You don't even need to use the screen and keyboard for that, just voice prompts. Kids are already living in the future.

With your thumbs

Right, slowly and painfully, with a lot of mistakes. Mouse and keyboard is still, by far, the most efficient input method into a computer.

Interesting. My great nieces have Lenovos (Windows) that they use for school work and light gaming. They'd like better gaming laptops, but don't have them.

This is incredible, wow.

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