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Comment by RegW | Hacker News Reader

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games.

In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wasteful time sink, so I resolved to completely stop using the social media of its time, and have avoided most incarnations of it ever since (but here I am).

As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves. I know that some simply won't finish school without strong guidance, but delaying exposure to this might just be worse in the long term.

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> As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules.

In my experience with mentoring juniors and college students, it’s common to have some wake-up call moment(s) where they realize their phone use is something that needs to be moderated. For some it comes from getting bad grades in a class (college in the age range I worked with) and realizing they could have avoided it by paying attention in lectures instead of using their phone. I’ve also seen it happen in relationships where they realize one day that their social life has disappeared or, in extreme cases, get dumped for being too into their phone. For others it shows up in their first job when someone doesn’t hold back in chewing them out for excessive or inappropriate phone use.

In the context of high school students, I don’t see this happening as much. A big component of high school social structure is forcing students a little bit out of their comfort zone so they can discover friends and build relationships. The default for many is to hide, withdraw, and avoid anything slightly uncomfortable. For a lot of them, slightly uncomfortable might be as simple as having to make casual conversation with people around them. A phone is the perfect tool to withdraw and appear busy, which feels like a free license to exist in a space alone without looking awkward.

So while agree that most people come to terms with the problem themselves as adults, I do also think that middle and high schools deserve some extra boundaries to get the ball rolling on learning how to exist without a phone. The students I’ve worked with who came from high schools that banned phones (private, usually, at least in the past) are so much better equipped to socialize and moderate their phone use. Before anyone claims socioeconomic factors, private high schools generally have sliding scale tuition and a large percentage of students attend for free due to their parents’ income, so it’s not just wealthy kids from wealthy families that I’m talking about.

> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves

That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies.

What makes you think this is different?

That approach works more often than it doesn’t — outside of certain spiraling situations most people don’t became alcoholics and drug addicts.

Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree.

They weren't always. In fact it took many centuries for this to happen. The history of cocaine in the US is quite interesting. It was being used everywhere and by everybody. Factory owners were giving it to their laborers to increase productivity, it was used in endless tonics, medicines, and drinks (most famously now Coca-Cola = cocaine + kola nut), and so on. You had everybody from Thomas Edison to popes to Ulysses S Grant and endles others testify to the benefits of Vin Mariani [1] which was a wine loaded with cocaine, that served as the inspiration for Coca-Cola.

So probably part of the reason it was so difficult to realize there is a problem is because everybody was coked out of their minds, so it all seemed normal. And I think the exact same is true of phones today. Watch a session of Congress or anything and half the guys there are playing on their phones; more than a few have been caught watching porn during session, to say nothing of the endless amount that haven't been caught! I can't help but find it hilarious, but objectively it's extremely inappropriate behavior, probably driven by addiction and impaired impulse controls which phones (and other digital tech) are certainly contributing heavily to.

I find it difficult to imagine a world in the future in which phones and similar tech aren't treated somewhat similarly to controlled substances. You can already see the makings of that happening today with ever more regions moving to age restrict social media.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani

> The history of cocaine in the US is quite interesting. It was being used everywhere and by everybody.

Be careful with that comparison. The cocaine infused drinks of the past are not comparable to modern cocaine use for several reasons.

The route of administration and dose matter a lot. Oral bioavailability is low and peak concentrations are much lower when drinking it in a liquid as opposed to someone insufflating (snorting) 50mg or more of powder.

You could give a modern cocaine user a glass of Vin Mariani and they probably would not believe you that it had any cocaine in it. The amount, absorption, and onset are so extremely different.

> So probably part of the reason it was so difficult to realize there is a problem is because everybody was coked out of their minds

That’s an exaggeration. To be “coked out” in the modern sense they’d have to be consuming an insane amount of alcohol as well. We’re talking bottle after bottle of the wine.

Be careful with these old anecdotes. Yes, it was weird and there were stimulant effects, but it’s not comparable to modern ideas of the drug abuse. It’s like comparing someone taking the lowest dose of Adderall by mouth to someone who crushes up a dozen pills and snorts them. Entirely different outcomes.

Vin Mariani was 7+mg/oz with a relatively low alcohol content which would have been further mitigated by the stimulant effect of the cocaine in any case. And then of course other concotions (including Coca-Cola) had no alcohol at all - Vin Mariani is just a fun example because of the endless famous names attached to it.

Obviously you're right that the absorption is going to be different and a modern coke head with high tolerance likely wouldn't even notice it had anything in it. But give it to a normal person, and they're indeed going to be coked out - in very much the same way that small doses of adderall to non-users can have a very significant effect. The obvious example there being college kids buying pills around around finals.

> Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree.

Following your argument shouldn't anything that can induce addiction be controlled? Seems that is not the case e.g. looking at sugar.

>Following your argument shouldn't anything that can induce addiction be controlled?

Depending on a risk profile -- totally. There are talks of taxing sugar drinks and not selling "energy drinks", which are coffeine + sugar, to kids for this very reason.

I also mean controlled in the broad definition, not as in the "controlled substance". The culture of consumption prescribed by society is a way of regulation too, more effective than laws even.

Because it is proven that phone usage is not an addiction like drugs or alcohol. People put phones away easily if they have a reason to do so.

I have no idea what you are talking about. It walks and quacks exactly like drugs and alcohol.

Thousands of deaths every year are caused by drivers on cell phones. You'd think they'd have a reason to put them away.

There are a lot of reasons for distraction while driving, but we don’t call all of them addiction on that premise. If a driver was not looking at his phone - maybe he’d be looking at something else. The phone is not the reason - it’s just a very suitable object.

this is thoroughly debunked with hard data from distracted driving laws that focus on phone use while driving. We have the luxury of both before and after data and across different jurisidictions.

I agree, but something being distraction does not automatically mean it’s addictive. Gear shifting is a distraction, but we don’t consider it addictive.

Citation needed

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6174603/

The main idea here is that overuse not equals addiction.

The first part of the Results section says:

    [...] the majority of research in the field declares that smartphones are addictive

Though that section continues on to disagree with that majority, "the majority" declaring smartphones are addictive is certainly supportive of them being so.

They aren't physically addictive like alcohol or opiates but it's very clear that many people have a psychological dependency on them. Whether or not a psychological dependency counts as an addiction is up to debate (personally, I believe they are due to my experiences with self harm, which many people including myself were or are psychologically dependant on) but the differences are mostly semantic if they end up functionally the same

I don't have time to search for a credible source, but it is claimed addicts often seek treatment after hitting "rock bottom".

There's obvious reasons why it's not encouraged to wait that long though.

Maybe we can make school harder so they will go there earlier.

> it is claimed addicts often seek treatment after hitting "rock bottom".

From my experience it is often too late at that point. And actually hitting rock bottom is difficult and destructive, and leaves scars. As they say, preventing is better than curing.

> That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies.

Children raised in cultures where alcohol is soft- rather than hard-banned for young people, and gradually introduced to it with parents around (think European teenagers having a glass of wine with lunch), tend to have healthier relationships with alcohol in later life than those raised in hard-ban-until-18/21 cultures. I think exactly the same will prove true of phones.

There may be a massive confounding factor in the type of alcohol consumed.

The more permissive cultures tend to be beer- or wine-centric. I have never been deeply interested in addictology, but the few (older) works on alcoholism I have read mentioned that beer and wine drinkers tend to develop a different sort of relationship with alcohol than hard drink consuments, in the sense that they have a hard time abstaining entirely, but fewer of them develop into the full-blown "gin zombie" type.

I suspect that's not so much a confounder as one of the mechanisms.

I disagree. You see less depictions of beer or wine addicts despite them (at least from my experience) making up the majority of high-functioning alcoholics. I don't know for sure why they're depicted less, but my running theory is a combination of not being tragic enough for drama focused on alcoholism and being played for jokes with things like the "wine mom" stereotype. They also tend to be a lot better at hiding their alcoholism due to their type of drinking being more accepted. They have a different relationship with alcohol, but not necessarily a better one (arguably a more dangerous one due to the relative societal acceptance of their type of alcoholism).

"high-functioning alcoholics"

That's the crux of the situation, though; on hard liquor, the slippery road to becoming a non-functional alcoholic is much steeper.

There also might be a gender difference. In my experience, men who drink wine, mostly drink with friends and self-limit. The sort of men who are prone to alcoholism won't be satisfied by mere wine and will proceed to hard drinks quick. On the other hand, women often drink wine alone and might develop a daily habit that degrades into full-blown alcoholism even without resorting to hard drinks.

FYI, I barely drink at all and I dislike sloshed people (incl. myself when I rarely get intoxicated; it is an unpleasant state to be in). But even hell has layers.

I might also be biased. My dad was a "high-functioning alcoholic" who primarily drank beer. I also suppose that my definition of high-functioning might be a bit different as I think it's just as dangerous as non-functional alcoholism because it's easy to hide. My dad hid his problem well, it was only when he almost killed himself by driving off a cliff into a lake while he was shitfaced drunk that he decided to sober up. If he wasn't as good as hiding it he might've been pressured into stopping before he did as much damage to himself and those around him

In my midwest area it seems like you can tell who are the alcoholics right away because they buy and drink cheap beers 90% of the time. Maybe to make themselves feel less like an alcoholic because they aren't drinking hard liquor, and it seems someone is more likely to say something if they see someone down a half+ bottle of vodka themselves, but nobody ever says anything seeing someone down 10+ beers.

These things are not comparable. Alcohol is so old a thing we not only built plenty of stable cultural norms around it but we even developed genetic adaptations.

And speaking of culture, as an Eastern European I would argue our rules regarding alcohol are not soft. Yes, we drink, even expected to drink on some ritualized occasions. But contrary to Hollywood depictions, it's not cool to be a non-functional alco in our lands. When society decides you can't manage yourself, it builds harsh zone of exclusion around you. Imagine you have an uncle Jim who is constantly doomscrolling and for that he has no chances with a good reliable woman, his job opportunities are limited to something non-prestigious, people talk about him like he's a dimwit, even kids look down at him. He's recognized as a failure of a man and parents don't miss a chance to remind about the bad example to their kids. That would be "not-hard" rules EE style.

I mean, it does work for most people. Most people can drink responsibly. The alcoholics are the ones who can’t do it on their own.

The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25.

The problem with that is without some explicit instruction or guidance or invention before they have full control of their impulses, not everyone tames the beast unscathed.

> The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25.

This factoid has been repeated for decades but it’s essentially a myth.

Brain development continues into your 20s, but there isn’t a threshold at age 25 where someone goes from having poor impulse control to being capable of good impulse control.

18-25 year olds are not children and are fully capable of having impulse control. That can continue to develop as they age, but it doesn’t mean age 25 is when it happens.

I would agree that actual children need some more explicit boundaries, which is also why we don’t allow children to do a lot of things that people over 18 can do.

I don't think anyone is saying impulse control goes from 0% to 100% on everyone's 25th birthday, like flicking a switch. But is it not reasonable to say that a 25-year-old will have significantly better impulse control than they had when they were 18? (And that their 30-year-old self probably has a similar level of impulse control as when they were 25?)

I owned a string of fast food restaurants. I had the ability to not hire anyone under age 20 if I didn't have to. When I did, the requirement was that they be in college but, in every case, I found that these kids, who returned for summer work every year, did a lot of growing up between the ages of 18 and 20.

I think this persists because in most studies, 25 - and other specific ages for further stages - comes from plotting a distribution of the traits being analyzed and pulling averages from that. We like precision and fixate on the numbers but they really mean "the majority of the observed change under study appears to occurr within a specific range" but that does not make catchy headlines for the public.

As someone who graduated from high school in 2025 I completely agree with this. I am glad I had to work it out on my own, and I don't think this is a place that a school should take control. If I had to figure this out along with the stress of college, I don't know if I would be able to handle it. I also think that it has helped with my overall time management skills and prioritizing my time.

I know not everyone will have the same experience as me, but I just feel like learning to manage it on my own was overall beneficial for me in the end.

I think the problem is that most students, (as this study shows) are not figuring it out on their own, at least not in high school. It feels like you're one of the outliers, not the common case.

Having rules about what you can and can't bring into school is nothing new. I went to high school in the 90s, and there were plenty of things we weren't allowed to bring with us into class; back then, the closest analogue to smartphones would have been pagers, probably.

It seems entirely reasonable to ban smartphones (and dumb phones, even) from schools. Frankly, I think it's absolutely insane that they were ever allowed.

And sure, maybe these students who go to high schools where smartphones are banned will get to university and go nuts, sitting in lecture halls with their phones out all the time. They'll learn very quickly that their grades will suffer, and will clean up their acts or fail out of school. But this is like everything else: the first year of university is the big year of independence, of being away from parents for the first time, and college students do plenty of dumb things in the name of that independence. That's always been the case; I'm no stranger to that phenomenon myself. They either work it out on their own, or they fail out.

Similar situation as you, I switched to a flip phone and now use my old iPhone as a glorified youtube machine when I'm too lazy to go to my desk or don't feel like dealing with my tablets poor wifi range

> As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually…

Fellow Scouter here. Lots of Scout units in the USA have cell phone bans. That’s such an obsolete policy. We need to help the Scouts model good choices, and that doesn’t happen when decision opportunities are removed.

Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback on how much fun they are[n’t] having in your Scout unit.

> Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback on how much fun they are[n’t] having in your Scout unit.

You are misunderstanding the addiction part here. It's not about not having fun.

There are tech companies spending literally trillions of dollars on one goal: ensuring that kids keep looking at their phones.

Your framing this as a question of boredom is really naive.

I speak from experience. They aren’t on their phones when they are doing adventures.

Of course, but they can't be on adventures 24/7, that's the point.

Kids aren't supposed to have fun 24/7. It's impossible.

The problem is what happens the moment the "fun" stops. If everybody reaches for their phones, then that's an issue that cannot be fixed by your "just have more fun" mindset.

These kids are set up to fail.

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