[than3]

There really isn't much to debate.

Kids are developmentally unable to cope with addiction.

Even adults have a hard time, with training, support, and wasted life experience with regard to online gaming. They may move past that addiction, but never really get over it.

Current times are just the flashpoint where parents and schools have largely abandoned their core responsibilities.

[throwaway50603]

There is a lot to debate. I don't agree with this "addiction" argument at all. My siblings (much younger, school age) don't have social media by their own volition. Apparently they're immune to this addiction - or perhaps it's not really addiction, but something different.

Taking away their phones because others can't handle themselves is wrong.

So yeah, a lot to debate.

[wetmore]

> Taking away their phones because others can't handle themselves is wrong.

Why, if it's during the school day? What's the advantage of having a phone during class?

[throwaway50603]

There doesn't need to be any advantage. They're not causing any disruptions - nobody should be telling them where to put their property.

A phone contains private photos and conversations, has authorized access to email, chat and (in other cases) social media accounts, it's a second authentication factor, it has payment cards, saved passwords, browser history, potentially health data (for example, period or medication notification app) and other data that they might not want anybody else to access, or could even cause them problems if the wrong person saw some of it (which doesn't mean it'd be something illegal or inappropriate - but some teachers have really weird ideas about how the life of a student should look).

It's perfectly understandable they want to have it under their own sight and control. Touching it without permission is unacceptable.

I have seen kids steal stuff from the teacher's desk/other school property when I still went to school - one kid even stole a RAM stick from a school computer right during class. I would never trust the school's ability to keep my phone secure.

Also - the school day is not 100% class time, there are breaks in between. What they do during breaks is their own business.

[harshalizee]

Ok, then just don't bring it in?

I don't why America constantly acts like we have unique problems no one does. Most schools in EU just bans cellphone usage during school hours either by taking it away or barred from bringing it in and it's just effective.

Humanity dealt with periods/medications/emergencies long before smartphones and can still do.

[mock-possum]

> Ok, then just don't bring it in?

So - in my experience, when I find myself saying "why don't you just-" it's a flag that I don't fully understand the situation.

Use your imagination, in what ways could having ready access to a smart phone be a marked improvement in your ability to navigate the day-to-day experiences of a student?

You could take notes or record lectures, obviously. That's an easy one. One a related note, as an accessibility tool - you can automatically transcribe speech that you may be having difficulty following, and you can quickly look up definitions or even translations if you need to. Teacher just used a big word that you didn't quite catch? You could either raise your hand and interrupt their flow for the entire classroom... or you could glance at your phone and get your answer yourself.

Do you need to perform some sort of self-care activity periodically? Your phone can remind you that it's time for the next pill, or time to get up and stretch, or have a small snack to manage your blood sugar.

Along those lines, the assumption that it's so easy to just discard such an essentially integrated piece of modern technology comes off as subtle ableism, if nothing else.

[throwaway50603]

I'm right in the middle of Europe.

Why not bring it in? I don't understand why they should behave as if they lived in 19th century. They're people living in 21st century, making full use of new technology - nothing wrong about that.

It's bullshit to demand they have to go home to get their phone before they go on with their day after school - not to mention they use the phones before school too. My siblings buy breakfast and lunch with the virtual payment cards (from our parent's Revolut) they have in the phone.

Even their public transit tickets are apps - it's a QR code, and because the transit company wants to reduce staff, you pay 20% less if you buy tickets in the app. Will the school reimburse the additional 20% they caused them to pay? I guess not, right.

And remember Covid? Here in Europe the vaccination/test pass is an app too, and they needed it to get into the school building, the cafeteria, the public transit etc. Soon the ID and driver's licence will be apps as well.

The school itself is sending them homework and grades into an app, btw. It has web access, sure - but they access web on their phones. It's bullshit to make them unable to check their grades or homework assignments during schooltime.

Sure, they could go back to 19th century life with paper calendars, letters, money and transit tickets. But their quality of life would go significantly down. Schools have no right to demand that. Nobody has.

And as I said, school day is not 100% class time. What they do during breaks is their own business.

> Most schools in EU just bans cellphone usage during school hours either by taking it away or barred from bringing it in and it's just effective.

No, they don't. In my state it's very wrong to touch the phone - could be a fine and suspension (for the teacher/school employee) or even a crime, depending on what they did.

The school can demand it's turned off during class time (doesn't apply to breaks) but they have no way to verify or enforce. They can write a teacher's note in case of a disruption or take the student out of the class in serious cases, but they can't touch the phone.

Currently, the trend here is to integrate smartphones into the lessons. Make students use Google search, YouTube, Wikipedia, ChatGPT and other tools.

[than3]

Honestly, this sounds more and more like an association trigger and addiction seeking behavior.

You may want to: https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/how-an-addicted-brain-work...

Additionally, each one of those apps has nearly full access to all your private information. Accurint goes out of their way to get most data about people.

That entire ecosystem lacks adversarial review. Additionally, coercively forcing you to only use those apps while removing more reliable methods for interacting is just one more way they can monetize you. You've got a rough road ahead.

[red-iron-pine]

> There doesn't need to be any advantage. They're not causing any disruptions - nobody should be telling them where to put their property.

Bollocks. Even on silent it's disrupting someone's attention, if only the owners.

And those under 18 years old aren't adults, and are wards of their parents. They're required by law to go to school and during the duration they're wards of the state. They don't get to own property in the direct sense that actual legal adults do.

> It's perfectly understandable they want to have it under their own sight and control. Touching it without permission is unacceptable.

They're kids, you think they're going to agree to that? Confiscate em -- put em in a box at the start of the day -- or else make them stay at home.

> I have seen kids steal stuff from the teacher's desk/other school property when I still went to school - one kid even stole a RAM stick from a school computer right during class. I would never trust the school's ability to keep my phone secure.

Then they can keep those phones at home.

> Also - the school day is not 100% class time, there are breaks in between. What they do during breaks is their own business.

This isn't a job -- there is no expectation of freedom in between classes. If they're in the building they're still wards of the state. They're just not in classes.

Listen, if this was a 19 year old on a construction site, I'd agree with you, but there is plenty of legal, moral, and basic cat-herding involved in having kids at school. You wanna get treated like an adult before 18 then drop out and get emancipated, otherwise thems the breaks.

[than3]

There's a lot of supporting material about addiction and young adults. Social media is just one avenue or road on a path of thousands at your fingertips.

You don't control it, the phone manufacturer and the app makers do. You may be shown something, it looks like fun, and then wastes hours, days, or months, on a simple dopamine 'loop' that's been designed (Octalysis Framework). You may spend a lot of money on worthless digital assets in the moment. Loot boxes for example.

When you are younger than on average 10 or 11, most children can't comprehend lying, deception, or deceit. They naturally separate people into two groups, the kids, and the adults because adults lie and can be deceptive but aside from that its not something the kids perceive clearly, and that's a biological developmental issue as well.

Its largely referred to as the age of reason, when you can start thinking critically and being able to recognize and tell lies is an important brain development. Incidentally what you are taught before and during that time is often accepted as true even if its not, and may be accepted as a true belief. Its hard work re-examining things critically that you thought were true but were actually lies (of omission or comission) designed to get you to think and behave in a certain way.

Now the ages differ individually, but for the most part there is always a period of time where you are vulnerable and have cognitive biases and blindspots, which is why it is important to have friends in different age groups, so they can point out things you don't notice. Some blind-spots never go away, and its a process of building up an association in those cases of some thing that triggers you to examine it critically.

Addiction is similar, you are mostly blind to it perceptually up until the part of the brain develops that helps moderate it, usually in your late teens, early 20s. That's strictly biology and varies to some degree but remains true.

Its still something that is very hard to do, but you are capable of doing that once the area in your brain develops.

For confirmation, you might look no further than objective observations about your and others behaviors to highly processed sugar treats. If your parents didn't stop you, would you be able to choose and have only 1-2 servings of your favorite sugar snack? or if left alone would you go through a long process of rationalizing just one more and before you know it the entire bag is gone. Even adults do this, but there's a variance in adults; there's very little variance in developmental stages.

Barring some excruciating/traumatic past experience, you would not be able to stop yourself. You would make yourself sick, because it tastes so good going down.

Also, phones are a leash. I know many parents who are perfectly fine instilling an omniscient presence via a spyware app that lets them track you everywhere you go, and punish you when they think you break a rule. My cousin got the brunt of this growing up, and would have his car taken away from him when the average speed would go above a certain threshold (and poor technical implementations in certain places bounce between several towers, so when you travel in an area your almost guaranteed to set off an alert). He got punished numerous times until he got the idea to take a drive, with them, in the car through that area (going the speed limit) to do something. They only believed him after he did that a large number of times, where the alert was setting off.

Anecdotally, fun fact, anyone with an antenna can actually do location finding like that. Its called trilateration, you learn about it when you start working with Ham Radio, and the requirements are almost nothing just need an adjustable dipole antenna ($15) and a SDR/modulator.

Some of the data might be encrypted, but IMEI number and a few other things are not and make you pretty uniquely identifiable over time. There are companies that aggregate this information regularly, and some non-companies that may use it for nefarious purposes (i.e. scam phone calling, deep fake etc). Risks are only increasing, if the experts can't keep up with the pace of trends, what hope do you have.

[musicale]

> If your parents didn't stop you, would you be able to choose and have only 1-2 servings of your favorite sugar snack? or if left alone would you go through a long process of rationalizing just one more and before you know it the entire bag is gone.

"You can't eat just one." Fortunately I seem to be able to easily resist the lure of potato chips/crisps and actually feel full after eating a few of them. I think the greasiness or fat content helps. I can enjoy the hyper-palatable salty, savory and spicy versions but a 200kcal bag is really overkill.

But some hyper-palatable foods are so well optimized that they can be really hard to resist; they press all of the buttons of deliciousness while making you hungry for another one.

[than3]

I used 'sugar' for a reason, comparing it to potato chips is an apples to oranges comparison. We are talking about addiction, and how the brain at young ages can't really perceive or moderate highly addictive behaviors.

Sugar is provably addictive and has been compared to cocaine, heroin, and other opioids for the flood of dopamine it causes.

Those optimized foods you refer to often simply have a lot of sugar processed into them.

[musicale]

I wonder if children can actually metabolize sugar better than adults? They certainly seem to have more of a sweet tooth, and sugar cereals seem to be more popular with children than adults. Adults are far more likely to complain that something is "too sweet."

But hyper-palatable foods aren't just sweet - they're savory, spicy, tangy, salty, fatty, all sorts of delicous! They also smell amazing. I recall reading that simply smelling pizza can be enough to cause your blood sugar to spike, presumably in anticipation.

Paradoxically artificial sweeteners can apparently raise blood sugar as well, as can black/unsweetened coffee.

[ido]

Children's palate is still developing, that's why they like different tastes than they would as a adults. It literally tastes different to them!

[raarts]

Completely agree.