"Internet bad, and as parents we don't really want to be parenting, that's extra work, therefore ban" stance
I had a laptop in school at that age. I managed it.
Anyway, I would think that having a simple, locked-down OS at school is preferable than having a laptop on which they can do whatever they want, at least to the issue of being distracted in class.
Also, a related comment points out that not all is doom-and-gloom - surprisingly, schools can actually implement sane usage restrictions for laptops in class.
This may be true, but even more preferable than this would be no laptop.
My 15 year old can touch type(*) at about 60wpm, knows how to browse the Internet and drive a search engine effectively, can create reasonable presentations using Powerpoint or equivalent, can create nicely formatted docs, is comfortable with spreadsheets, not be fazed by online forms or similar, has a basic understanding of cyber-security/safety, password security and password reuse, spotting scams, etc.
All of these are useful skills that my parents in their 70s struggle with.
Having a phone means they're able to keep in touch with their friends far more effectively than I was when I was that age. They can keep in touch with us (parents) much more easily. They can see how much money they have as they've got a banking app on their phone. They can check the weather themselves. They can check the train and bus times themselves.
I trust my kid to use the phone (and laptop) responsibly. In return they know that I will occasionally ask to check what they're doing just to make sure they're safe. I don't want to have to police it.
Back to the school bit, they could be doing Maths questions from a piece of paper or in a book, which they do do some or most of the time, but their engagement levels seem good when doing it on a laptop via Sparx or MyMaths or whatever. Plus things can be a lot more interactive on a laptop/tablet. Being able to tweak values/variables/functions/etc and see how things change in real time, that's laborious to do again and again with pencil and paper.
> They're not learning computing.
No, but most will have that option to if they want. My kid wasn't interested and so didn't choose Computer Science as an option despite being able to do various simple things in python. Their interests lay elsewhere (sport, music, etc).
* I remember watching when my kid sat down at my work computer and wasn't fazed at all by the entirely blank keyboard I use. There was just a "oh, that's cool" and off they went typing away.
If you’ve spent any time in a classroom in the last 5 years you’d know there are some kids who manage it, and lots of kids who absolutely don’t.
Depends on the school obviously, but at my 15 year old's school they default to their laptops staying in their bag and only get them out for specific tasks when directed by the teacher. The rest of the time the laptop is in their bag. They don't just sit there staring at a laptop during every lesson and goofing around on the Internet.
Also all of these school provided laptops have pretty extensive keylogging/etc installed. The laptops are not provided for personal use and the school picks up pretty quickly on any student browsing websites they shouldn't be looking at or typing things they really shouldn't be typing, even when at home and not on the school's wifi. The students are all aware of this and cope quite well.
As it is we have to allow our eldest a lot more screen and social media time than we think is healthy, but it's more healthy than not having any friends.
I'm not necessarily in favour of a government ban, but I do wish more parents were on board. At the primary school (age 10) 100% of other kids had phones, and no one else seemed to give a shit.
Plus, what are you going to say about children of people who aren't very good at parenting? Do they deserve to grow up addicted to dopamine and groomed into fascism? Or should we try to help them too?
I don't like the solution of age verification on every social media website, but the problem is real and must be solved if we want the future to be any good.
if you're a parent and you don't want your kids to do something, the answer is to supervise them. should hot stoves and sharp knives require inserting an ID for age verification?
It's hyperbolic, sure, but the broad point that there are things that parents find hard to parent for reasons, and society should think about helping them out, is 100% true.