[Arisaka1]

Why not educate the users about the dangers misuse and abuse lead to the attention span, instead of banning things?

I vaguely recall too students back in the era where our biggest distraction was MSN messenger and our university forums. They kept both off until late at night.

We're letting people experience the downsides of the attention economy when it's almost (if not entirely) too late to avoid the negatives.

[rmholt]

> Why not educate the users about the dangers misuse and abuse lead to the attention span, instead of banning things?

Because social media is precisely in the short term benefit x long term risk that human brains are bad at conceptualizing. Same reasons for why we mandate belts in cars.

[prussia]

> Same reasons for why we mandate belts in cars.

Hardly anyone in the "west" gets pulled over by police for seat belt checks (unlike say, India, China), yet nearly everyone still wears them, because they understand if they don't, they'll probably become a stain on the asphalt. I imagine if tomorrow, a law passed that seat belts no longer had to be worn, most people would still use them. Perhaps the regulation and enforcement are only needed initially when not everyone is educated on the long term risks.

[odo1242]

To be fair, belts and phones aren’t the same things. Belts are popular now because wearing them is barely an inconvenience compared to the improvement in safety - abstaining from phones is way harder for the average person.