[hparadiz]

Banning cell phones from class hours doesn't actually change the social media rat race in any way. You still have to maintain presence. That's just part of being social.

We had the same distractions before smart phones. We would just hide in the computer lab and browse the Internet while playing games and trying to look busy. A hundred messages sounds like about a half hour of conversation on any chat platform.

We would still play games on our calculators, sign in to IRC, and post on forums. Now it's cell phone games, discord, and twitter but really it's the same shit.

The idea behind banning cell phones is more about attention span and the unfortunate reality of constant dopamine hits.

[michelb]

Yes, there were distractions in my time as well, but I would say it's quite different because now you don't have to go anywhere, you can just pull out your phone mid-conversation and 'be somewhere else'.

I do think (hope?) the temporary removal of dopamine hits works in the long run. If I'm regularly not near my phone to check on whatever, the impulse to grab my phone is removed, because I'm engrossed in other things. Do that often enough and it may just wean people off of this online crack.

[CPLX]

I went to grade school in the 80’s and high school and college in the 90’s.

It wasn’t anything like you describe at all. For better or worse people did actually talk to each other.

And while we did call each other on the phone reasonably often, generally when you weren’t in the room with someone you weren’t communicating with them at all.