The school I work at is implementing this starting next week.
Except it’s a music school so they can use metronome apps. Also, they can use it to send emails to the copy room to print music sheets. Or to use in class when it’s required. Or for whatever exception they can think of. And they actually expect us to enforce it with all these exceptions.
No, it’s “better” to source materials for education from the students themselves. In the US, good luck learning if you don’t have the mandated school supplies. I’m sure if we didn’t need the state-sponsored daycare so adults can work, the administration would rather have all students be virtual.
Smartphones are great. Apps are user-hostile malware. Online spaces are, in the majority, traps. If every time you drove downtown you ended up in a corporate police state designed to play you and your friends off each other and make you all miserable so you look at more advertisements for shampoo, you would conclude that getting in the car is bad for you.
Honestly I would appreciate if they banned phone manufacturers from forcing Facebook, X, and other bullshit onto your phone. Making people go out and get it is one of the many intended barriers.
You shouldn’t need a law, but the reality is that you simply can not control it. Your kid will interact with other kids and most will have access to a smart phone.
Yeah, that would be nice too, but do you honestly see that happening either? I don’t. And for that Matter: there are more problems with children having unlimited access to media through irresponsible parents than just data and privacy not being respected.
Yes they may be able to see a smart phone at school or a friend’s house but if they don’t own one then for the majority of the day they will not be using one. Or God forbid you (the royal you not you specifically) actually try parent your kids and teach them about internet safety.
Should we remove gambling and drug access restrictions for youths? After all, parents can just parent around it.
Like all things, there’s moderation to consider. It’s fine to debate if this is too far, but to simple blame parents for being lazy or unwilling to parent is short sided.
Ahh, yes, because smartphones are the same as cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. Btw if you think kids aren’t already gambling, you are wrong.
I wonder when the last time smartphones gave someone cancer or liver psoriasis.
You can give your kids smartphones and put tons of blocks and restrictions on them. Ya the kids will get around that at some point but that’s the nature of being a kid.
Why are you all so fucking aggressive? How fuck it’s annoying me to the point to not even wanting to participate at all. How about some civility? Can you imagine how a nice discussion there could be? Ffs
I know I can limit what my child might see on their phone, but there are other children and other phones and you just can’t regulate like you want to.
Internet safety would be one concern but not all. It’s not that simple like you make it out to be.
Yeah, well, sorry. I was annoyed by people being unreasonable and either jumping to conclusions or not really interested in a constructive discussion. What’s the point in trying to have a discussion if there is nobody really trying?
Totally understand where you are coming from and sorry if I made it seem like I was not up for a discussion about this. I definitely enjoy hearing differing opinions on stuff like this.
The question then would be if it might cause other problems. A lot of places are moving to e-learning, for example, and might expect the students to have internet access of some form or other.
Whether that be in the form of smartphone apps/websites, or through a laptop that the school provides, at which point, it’s basically the same thing, especially if peer pressure puts them on social media or some such.
As I said in another comment if the parents are the ones to buy it then they can put heavy parental controls on the phones or tablets.
I use a work provided cellphone while I’m on my job site and they have that fucker so locked down I can’t even change the auto lock timing so I know you can lock tons of things with passwords on phones and tablets.
Idk anything about school laptops because I’m apparently old as fuck now and that wasn’t a thing when I was younger. But I would assume that they also use software to lock those down.
Sounds like typical flag-shaggers, yearning for “the good old days” when there were four channels, you played in the road because the Tories took the playgrounds, etc - so they want to force it on their kids instead of accepting that the world has changed.
I’m a dad of four kids. I don’t yearn for the good old days, but I do wish social media companies were legally obliged to ensure kids are 16 before they let them into their platforms. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure to conform and it affects girls in particular. Most 14 year olds aren’t in my opinion mature enough to put a phone down when it starts to become a negative influence on them.
May I ask you a direct question: Are you raising teens? If so, what are your impressions of how they use their phones (for good and bad)?
If you’ve not raised kids during this decade, is it possible you may not have seen first hand what happens?
When I was a kid I was always moving around, going place. Incredibly unsafe, but nobody in my neighborhood died young at least.
The point I want to make is that I have stronger bone density as a direct result of physical activity while young, and I worry about the younger generation now who won’t have that.
You don’t want your kids to have a smartphone? Fine. Don’t buy one. Kids dont need phones, bur if you’re worried about them being able to contact you, just get a dumbphone on amazon.
As a parent you’re in a constant balancing act between disconnecting from your teenager while also trying to provide guard rails to aid their maturity and growth. If you lose a battle in an area, their friends (and the wider world, because remember they have a phone) are more than happy to help raise them.
It’s always a compromise. You can stand your ground hard on area and that’s another shard of their life that you don’t have influence on and won’t hear about. Every channel between you and your kids have to be balanced between guidance and enforcement.
I don’t think I like it, but there is an argument that kids without phones will be ostracized, or students will be expected to have access to phones in school, etc.
I know even in like 2012 or so some high school classes were expecting students to have phones for quick research and such. I wouldn’t be surprised if that type of thing was moving into lower grades
I wouldn’t be opposed to a device that blocked all social media, but was filled with educational, and age appropriate, apps for a child. I don’t think playing Math Blaster ruined my childhood. Super Mario Brothers didn’t give me any life skills, other than improving hand-eye coordination. Neither one ruined my life, though.
I always would advocate for an act only when needed approach, blocking kids from accessing content their peers have access to can only result in them resenting you. And to what end, at some point they are going to get online they are going to start using social media they might as well be used to it.
You are much better off talking to your kids and having an open dialogue than you are trying to hide everything away from them, because that’s an impossible task.
You gotta realize that restricting access to the internet is a 100% neccecary action. You, as a parent NEED to block your child’s access to the internet. Especially social media.
My childhood was before smartphones but when the Internet already existed.
In my preteen and teen years, the Internet was more or less my only escape from my horrible offline life. I envy today’s kids that they can access it everywhere.
Everyone who wants to take that possibility away from any children, go have sexual intercourse with yourself.
Almost all the solutions I read in this thread go from one extreme to the other. Here are my PERSONAL perceptions:
Taking away children's smartphones or limiting them is obviously not the solution, and if we did, in the process we would be violating multiple rights, to privacy, freedom, access to information, etc. There is no guarantee that they can be fulfilled in other ways.
But children are not responsible enough to use ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) without adult supervision!
That is simply false, the responsibility and use they make of ICT is not something that is born by magic, it depends completely on the education they receive, if you say that your children are not responsible enough to use a phone as their parent you are the main responsible. From that, start thinking about how to educate them to be more responsible, not all parents are as good as you at making sure you don't blind them.
Regarding privacy, there is a great discussion about parents and the privacy of children and adolescents, however, I will ask you some important questions.
Did you tell your parents everything? Didn't you divide school life, friends, and family? What would have happened if you had had ultra-religious or extremist parents in some way who limited your way of acting and your access to information that they did not consider part of their values? These three things have been happening for a long time.
I also read in a comment that people don't verify information. Many organizations, governmental, family, religious, etc. They don't want people to verify what they're told, but that doesn't mean we can't make our voice count to make it happen.
Another thing I read is a problem mainly in the United States (I'm not from there) and it's the iPhone, it's not worth wasting your time here, I mean bullying still strongly exists there. They need a big change in their education as the first important step in the discussion, I wish them luck.
Everything has to do with everything, and the general economic situation in the world keeps parents working instead of taking care of their children, but at the same time if we leave them the cell phone we will get worse. Taking measures on our side is not going to help, we have to generate consensus on the use of ICT.
Sorry for my English, I am learning the language and writing this text with the support of a translator, some things could not be expressed as I wanted.
EDIT: With translator, I mean google and LanguageTool.
I’m probably going to make it a rule that my kids don’t get them until 15. I’m 28 and have definitely been ruined by smartphones. My attention span is shit and motivation is hard to maintain when the internet is just right there.
I wish there was a device that only did the bare minimum of email, phone, texting, navigation, and music.
Dumbphones still exist. The only reason a child needs a phone is to place a call during an emergency, so as far as I’m concerned, they should get them whenever they can be trusted not to use them in class.
I didn’t use mine in class because it wasn’t allowed and teachers would take it away if I did. Is that not a thing anymore? Or maybe just a german thing in the first place.
That being said, don’t need a smartphone to play games in class. I was a god at snake on my graphing calculator…
No, it isn’t universal. Teachers here quit trying basically as soon as smartphones became common.
For me it is equal parts paying attention in class, developing attention spans away from video crack tiktok/shorts/whatever, and generally encouraging them to do other things.
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