Japan city drafts ordinance to cap smartphone use at 2 hours per day
english.kyodonews.net
english.kyodonews.net
We have a depressing state in America where you can predict the parents’ income based on whether their kids’ school bans smartphones.
Teachers at my school do not believe allergies are real! If there is asthma attack, it is an uncorrelated event! School will stab my kid with epipen, call ambulance and send me hospital bill! Avoiding it is too much work!
Once school brought unrestrained police dogs to school for a demonstration! Those had a record of attacking and torturing suspects!
Being able to call help is a basic human right!
> The only known official instance of cat litter being placed in school classrooms for potential use by students was in the late 2010s by the Jefferson County Public School District in Colorado, where the 1999 Columbine High School massacre took place. Some teachers were given "go buckets" that contained cat litter to be used as a toilet in an emergency lockdown situation, such as during a school shooting.
_Only known official instance_ and not for drills, but in case there was an emergency situation.
> Parents and teachers in a Colorado school district were surprised by some new additions to the list of necessary back-to-school supplies—including kitty litter, buckets and trash bags.
> The products are part of Jefferson County's "Emergency Go Bucket," a way for students to relieve themselves in the event of a prolonged lockdown because of an active shooter.
Honestly, it didn't take long to find this article either:
> Dale Munholland’s classroom at Pomona High in Arvada is equipped with the necessities in modern-day America: a touch-screen projector, a computer — and a bucket filled with kitty litter, just in case an active-shooting drill lasts longer than a student’s bladder can handle. (https://www.denverpost.com/2018/03/03/school-shooting-prepar...)
It seems it really was for drills and not just lockdowns
Right now anyway, the wikipedia article which says "The only known official instance of cat litter being placed in school classrooms for potential use by students was in the late 2010s by the Jefferson County Public School District" also says it's for "an emergency lockdown situation, such as during a school shooting" so I guess drills can also count as "an emergency lockdown situation"
Pomona High School is in Jefferson County. It's still the same one.
I'll grant your point that it's at least not entirely settled whether it's for a drill or for an active shooter.
Taking your phone out when I was in school meant having it placed on the teachers desk until the end of class, and possibly some other kind of penalty if they particularly didn’t like you. But you always got your phone back before leaving the class.
I can imagine if the current “meta” is literally holding your phone in your hand for the entire school day that problems would indeed arise.
Personally, I think banning phones in the classroom similar to what I grew up with is the minimum. If students still have poor outcomes or are being bullied by other kids sneaking phones, then yea, collect them at the door or implement stricter punishment for students caught with a phone.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/24/california-s...
This is just my own opinion, of course. I think it is also inappropriate to say you need someone's permission to use the restroom. All my opinions of appropriate ness is mostly about adults behaving like adults though. They probably don't make sense when it comes to children?
What's a ridiculous appeal to emotion. Between 2020 and 2022 there were 131 school shooting deaths, including suicides. Let's put those all in 2022, and assume that there were actually 0 suicides.
That means you have a 0.0026% chance to be killed (at most) in a school shooting. This is too much, but this is not the reason to allow cell phones in schools. Come on.
Sure we still did sneak in a bit of phone usage in the bathrooms and behind secluded buildings but it’s a huge difference from being able to freely scroll social media all day.
Or is this one of those "I hate phones, therefore banning them must be good for kids" things?
If you want to measure something for this measure happiness or strength of social circles. Good luck with that.
That's not science, that's a demonstrably false assumption that everyone thinks smartphone usage is bad for kids.
In my experience with kids and smartphones, kids of the young generation (gen Z) are way better informed (and less brainwashed) than kids of their parents' generation were, whose only access to information about the world when growing up was through the captured, centralised legacy media.
> our results indicate that there is an improvement in student performance of 6.41% of a standard deviation in schools that have introduced a mobile phone ban.
> Finally, we find that mobile phone bans have very different effects on different types of students. Banning mobile phones improves outcomes for the low-achieving students (14.23% of a standard deviation) the most and has no significant impact on high achievers. The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of whether phones are present.
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1350.pdf
I believe OECD and Pisa results have also pointed towards banning as a net postive since their 2022 report.
I think it's fair to say that it's not a "black-and-white" thing. As the research points out, digital devices aren't the only factor in the equation. I believe OECD research has also found that using a digital device with a parent can be a benefit while using it alone will most certainly be a negative for children aged 2-6. I'm sure you can imagine why there might also be other factors that make a difference between parents who can spend time with their children and those who can't.
Aside from that there are also benefits from digital devices for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia. In most class-rooms this can be solved by computers + headphones, but for crafts people (I'm not sure what the English word for a school that teaches plumbers, carpenters etc. is), having a mobile phone in the workshop can often help a lot with insturctions, manuals and such.
So it's not clear cut, but over all, banning phones and smartwatches seem to be a great idea.
"vocational school"
I'm not sure what you were hoping to achieve with the request for evidence, but what you're asking is not yet subject to a longitudinal study. The move has certainly been praised by educators, and that should be enough given it's the first or second year year of implementation in many cases, and what they are advocating for isn't a social taboo, nor draconian.
Are we going to draft laws to ban fiction books from school because kids might be reading books during class? Because I literally saw that happen when I was in school. Obviously unrelated things to the class shouldn't be used during class, but these phone bans go beyond just the classroom.
I ask for evidence, because all the evidence I've seen on it has been effectively nothing. The studies are vague, get weak results or draw conclusions that aren't supported by the study. Eg there were some Spanish regions that banned phones in school. Soon after they scored higher on PISA, this was naturally used to support the ban. But the next round they scored lower than before the ban.
Banning phones in schools seems almost entirely to me about "kids these days are ruined". Phones are just the easy culprit to point to. Meanwhile phone bans do infringe on the liberties of the kids. You are taking something away from them.
The iPad kids are more prevalent and highly recognisable. They’re also highly concentrated in the lower and lower-middle classes. (The country’s richest communities and private schools are banning devices in schools.)
No, we are not. The post I'm replying to is talking about banning phones in schools entirely, not just during class time. (Why else would the implication be about kids sneaking phones into bathrooms?)
I would also like to point out that children who grow up without using technology will be bad at using that technology. We already have a generation of kids who suck at using computers. Will the next generation be the same way for phones too? Who are we building all this digital infrastructure for then? Look at the older generations and how helpless they are with technology. That's what we're going to get with kids who don't use technology growing up.
Personally, I avoid phone use even as a pedestrian in busy city spaces - I think the time it takes to fully switch attention to be fully aware of things like a reckless driver running a red light is too long to not affect safety.
You definitely need a source for that comment given that it only just happened.
Smartphones are neutral pieces of technology. It can create the next Einstein or radicalise the next terrorist, the 1's and 0's don't mind.
Why not ban them at universities also? Are these kids suddenly protected the moment they leave high school?
Like your opinion I have my own, and banning smartphones in Australian high schools will turn out to be overwhelmingly negative for outcomes. I predict it will be reversed and looked back upon as a failure.
Khan academy taught me more than dozens of different teachers. Kids are now blocked from accessing it for their entire time at school and when they would be most intruiged to learn.
Just like terrible having internet, Australians seem intent on being left behind in a hypercompetitive world.
I don't know a lot about the impact, but this happened about 2 years ago in multiple states. Here's some thoughts from those who have looked further:
https://thepostsa.au/education/2025/03/26/more-laughter-more... https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-all-the-recent-evid... https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/mobile-phone-ban-impro...
Anyone can read that site and make up their minds about the scientific merit of it's claims.
I assume it's very intentional that it's right down the bottom in tiny text that's it state government owned media vehicle
> https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-all-the-recent-evid...
"Our team screened 1,317 articles and reports as well as dissertations from masters and PhD students. We identified 22 studies that examined schools before and after phone bans."
"Our research found four studies that identified a slight improvement in academic achievement when phones were banned in schools. However, two of these studies found this improvement only applied to disadvantaged or low-achieving students."
"In a sign of just how little research there is on this topic, 12 of the studies we identified were done by masters and doctoral students. This means they are not peer-reviewed"
Do you really want to keep wasting people's times here because I'm more than happy to debate it with someone who actually cares.
Nothing in that article suggests it's of overwhelming benefit. I'm talking much bigger than teachers having an easier job too, education outcomes like this take decades to be seen.
> https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/mobile-phone-ban-impro...
>gov.au/media-releases/
Mate you've spammed us all with the first things you've found on google. Correct?
I look at it in a similar light to nutritional guidelines.
Once again, I must reiterate that parents choose the schools their children attend, and that means that they choose the solution. I argue strongly that we, as a society, should not impose arbitrary restrictions on parents and children. If we afford the freedom of letting parents be parents, there is no scientific basis for reallocating smartphone use responsibility to the state.
And social networking after that.
As I read "Comet crossed jupiter's rings at blazing speed!" some guy looks at me at tells me to live in the moment. Thanks.
And starting small is probably good, lets the idea iterate before rolling it out wider and this often comes down to making a choice, this city just thought this would be best and I suspect unless this goes horribly wrong it will help
Then a public scientific body should come up with such a recommandation, right?
And then there would be no need for a mere city to issue one, am I correct?
Just because someone ride the wave of payouts for kids doesn’t mean government is giving back a lot. Japanese government, just like any other government out there, extremely inefficient and corrupt, absorbing huge amounts of money in taxes and giving very little back. Particularly to those who actually earn those money.
https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/17744?phrase=Onaga%...
Isn't it the job of a public health agency? Like, at a national or even international level?
Or of a scientific body?
What legitimacy has an administrative, and often political, structure, to make a non-binding health recommandation (thus, an advice), with a scope limited to the city, even though the matter has nothing to nor specific to this city?
It looks like a political stunt, not something initiated by health specialists.
To learn foreign languages?
To study sciences?
I really don't know what to think.
Like, if they think that the bottleneck, the motivation source, to get people to improve their lifestyle, is to have an ordinance issued, then they really need to study the basics of psychology and sociology. And of public communication.
What I would like from these things is to be able to opt-in to a recommendation. Just a two-minute way to opt-in. They can do the work and we all can have the least possible hassle trying it out.[1]
[1] I’m not up to date on the state of the art of limiting your own smartphone time
There is no punishment for breaking these ordinances.
We're starting with "suggestions", but it's a slippery slope, especially when you look at the slew of laws being passed in US states around the freedom for children to use devices and communicate according to their parents' own guidelines.
> The city will work with schools and parents to promote the healthy use of electronic devices, according to the draft ordinance.
And where will this begin and end? It's moral policing by the government, even if it's only the first soft step in that direction.
As usual this is Japanese politicians being completely clueless and pretending to do something.
It also defines "a normal amount of smartphone time" as 2 hours for every citizen, which also has an effect.
In a way it builds a point of reference
Detectors and cameras are used to find and fine those who break the law.
Smart watches are actually super useful for kids, it lets them still talk to their parents (or other trusted people) w/o the distraction of smart phones. Plenty of kids age 7-12 or so have them and they are basically used to call kids home for dinner at the end of the day.
>While the Asperger’s syndrome and academic pressure no doubt played a part in the breakdown, Wang and Liu’s therapist also felt that she had become overstimulated by her online socializing.
Naturally, it wasn't the Zhongkao, but basic social media.