The nation’s second-largest teachers union said Thursday it was losing patience with social media apps that it says are contributing to mental health problems and misbehavior in classrooms nationwide, draining time and money from teachers and school systems.
As a parent with a kid entering middle school who just got a phone (average age for one in this area) here is my 2 cents:
I want my kid to have a phone more for me than her. There are no pay phones and if, heaven forbid, some shit goes down (we are on America and shit goes down in schools) I need to not only be able to allow her to easily contact us and us to contact her, I need to know her location. Past events have shown we can’t count on anyone else. Barring school shootings, I would not be anywhere near as concerned about her having one. I know parents of kids with severe allergies also want kids to have a phone on them.
Since she could talk we have talked about media and it’s influence on her mind and life. That talk has evolved as she has grown. I studied the impact of harmful media, so in this way I have the privilege of knowing why this education is so vital. She knows what she watches and puts out there can impact her in insane ways. And though I have to slowly trust that this took root in her as I cant control what she watches forever, things like Google family link can help me block sites and apps, make her ask for permission etc. She knows I do this and why and she will talk to me when she thinks she should have access. It’s a conversation.
I know her friends parents don’t do this. Which I also know allows her access other ways, again, I have to slowly hope this education worked. I wonder if more parents instead were taught to take these steps if it would help and if we taught students directly. There are privacy concerns too though, my kid knows I’m here parent, not the government, she has no expectation of privacy on her phone (mostly anyway) at this age from me, but she should from her school so I wouldn’t want them to be allowed to block etc.
I want my kid to have a phone more for me than her.
Imo, this is the root of the issue that must be addressed. No child under 16 should have a smart phone, of anything they should have a flip phone for calling and texting only, no apps.
Children will see violence, porn, or beheading videos if they have a smart phone. No parental controls can stop a child from seeing the full Internet and a lot of parents don’t get that. The quickest way is to boot the phone into safe mode, access the web browser, boom full Internet.
I think that this is like wrapping a kid in bubble-wrap, though. And like, not in that "over-coddling" metaphorical sense, but much more literal - sure, the kid can't get scrapes if they fall off their bike, but the other kids are going to make fun of the kid wearing bubble wrap.
You don't necessarily want to give them an unrestricted mainline to the worst of the internet, but you don't want to overcorrect so hard that you're causing other problems.
As toxic as it is, as much as there's space for harms and bullying, or that the internet holds porn and violent content ... the internet and social media spaces are where a huge portion of kids social lives live, and barring them from participating in that will do one of two things - teach them to get sneaky in order to bypass the restriction, or force them into an 'outsider' role in their peer group. In the first, it's a lost cause and all you're doing is making it inconvenient without addressing the harms - and ensuring they can't talk to you about what comes from that space. In the latter, there are strong social and self-esteem costs associated with excluding your child from having a social life with other children - is it "better" for the parent to do the harm instead of the other children? Is it better for your relationship with that child, long-term, their trust in you, or your ability to support them?
The kid restricted to "dumb phone only, no internet, no apps" is the current generations' equivalent of that one kid that wasn't allowed to go to the park, or the mall, or hang out on the street - whatever any given past generation used as their youthful Third Place, where they could socialize and hang out separate from school and without adults actively supervising them. And it's never been great for the kid whose parents won't let them participate in the common social life that their peers have.
It's far more fruitful to give them age-appropriate education related to their use of and relationship with the internet and provide a controlled and supported introduction than it is to simply bar their access for several years. You're either stunting their social development in order to avoid harms to their social development (?!?!) or you're simply winding the proverbial rubber band tighter and tighter against an inevitable rebellion - at which point they're jumping in headlong without ever developing any sort of media literacy or social media savvy and never had a chance to build coping and resilience for whatever rabbit holes they're likely to fall into .
I blocked social media sites at the router and on the phones for my kids and don't feel bad about it at all.
Reason I don't feel and about it is that as soon as we blocked everything my daughter's mental health did a 180 from planning her suicide to having real life goals. And she tells all her friends how much happier she is without those stupid apps all the damn time.
I make an effort to talk to my kids about media and critical thinking. We have awesome communication and I'm super happy that my kids talk to me about things. They're not ostracized for their lack of TikTok. They actively avoid the kids who are obsessed with socials because those kids are toxic and struggle in ways that make them not great friends. I truly don't see a downside to implementing this boundary on behalf of my kids.
If your kid feels left out because they can't wreck their mental health with their peers then there's some serious values conversations that need to be had. It's ok, and necessary to use tools for your kids when they can't or won't use them on their own. That's what being a parent means.
My comment was clearly not written to give you advice for your specific child and her suite of issues.
I'm speaking a lot more generally and while I'm leaving room for parents like you to make your choices, I'm also still being direct that I think it's not a good universal rule. Even if that is an outcome someone chooses, it's no less true that engaging with the whole choice is necessary to do a good job of making it. Internet=bad is an incredibly simplistic old-person take at this stage in society, and some parents even to current generations can misunderstand or underestimate the significant role that the internet can play in their kids' lives. No solution fits across all kids, that's part of the challenge - but understanding the role that the internet plays in modern kids' social world and peer networks is important to making decisions about their access to it with complete information and goal-oriented integrity.
The matched point in that comment you may have missed is that I'm not modelling my remarks around a binary of "unrestricted internet" vs "no internet." If anything, I think I was clearly saying that absolute 'solutions' get progressively worse the wider they cast their net - as more and more unintended consequences are included in that broad-reaching choice.
Separately, you also shouldn't expect that what you felt you needed to do in order to support your child in a relatively unusual situation - will also be a good foundation for broad-case parenting practices. What is good for one child is not good for all children - and the more unusual the child or their needs, the less applicable that solution would be to "average" kids. There are other kids in similar-looking situations where your solution would exacerbate the problem instead of reduce it - now not only are they depressed and bullied, but also isolated from their friends. The vast majority of kids aren't in situations particularly similar to yours and using your solution in their cases risks putting them into worse places than they started, or putting a target on them where none existed prior. Sever the child from the internet isn't something you necessarily should be treating as universally good for all parents and all kids with zero possible downsides.
There are always downsides. Especially in parenting, everything is a trade-off and nothing is clear-cut. If you can't see what's being traded off - in effectively anything - that's a good cue to start hunting for blind spots. Especially when making rules for kids like cutting off parts of their world. As you said, being a parent requires making tough choices, and that requires engaging with the whole cost/benefit of the choice.
There's nothing challenging or tough about firmly believing you are wholly, completely, and absolutely Correct in whatever option you pick. It's easy to choose something and insist that it's 100% totally and absolutely correct with zero room for discussion. That approach actively shuts down all the actually hard parts of making the choice. But that is a choice with it's own downsides. It makes it hard to relate to those kids as they age enough to challenge you, or start leaving home, and it doesn't model behavior that I - personally - think is producing functional adults down the road. At the very least, the kind of person who is never wrong is not the kind of person I want to raise.
So I think that commenting more specifically on what you've said here - it rings some bells and tints some flags. You're proudly teaching your kids critical thinking, yet also say you cannot see any downsides to cutting off social media completely. You're absolutely blase about deeming all kids who use social media "toxic" and "bad friends" with "struggles" as if it's completely normal, healthy, and definitely non-toxic for an adult to be passing those kind of judgements about children on such a trivial basis, and to model that for their own kids. You talk about one child's needs to justify the choice, but have more than that one affected by it. You reacted as if this is already a hot-button issue to you - and responded to remarks clearly speaking generally and not at all targeting to you as if it was a personal attack, returning fire with a bunch of spicy jibes about me as a person and as a parent. If this is how you experience and respond to an opinion you disagree with on the internet, I can certainly imagine how you deal with faintest hints of dispute from your own children. Of course they're telling you what you want to hear.
The calls are coming from inside the house, friend.
I’m with you on this. I blocked them too and my kid knows why. The commenter above may mean more using/having a smart phone and internet access generally and I reluctantly agree for the most part. But yeah, fuck social media and it’s debilitating impact. Not just on youth, I don’t use that shit because five minutes makes my fairly successful ass feel terrible too! Just toxic all around.
I totally get your thinking, and really thought this put and almost went that route. But she is 11, I want to see how she uses this stuff and have an active part in it and teaching her how to navigate because at this age there is no holding back. Maybe if all the kids had dumb phones that tracked location or something but it is not the world we live in. I pretty much agree with the comment below yours except on social media. I have a hard fucking no stop and I think, I can’t be sure but really think, my kid gets why that is just so terrible. Thankfully we don’t use it so it’s easier to call that a cesspool. We’ll aside from reddit and now lemmy 😉
We did similar with our kid regularly talking about social medias effects and ills. Maybe not in enough detail (mental note for me to bring this up soon). She’s entering HS and is mostly uninterested in social media. Only thing we blocked was TikTok. She mostly only texts with friends. Which can and has led to issues, but normal ones that are somewhat manageable. I would imagine plenty of parents do similar. And plenty don’t.
I’m not even sure we as a society entirely grasp the impacts of social media on society or individuals. Things seem notably different today versus a decade ago. The whole influencer culture. Ever more sophisticated information. Alt right recruiting tactics. Echo chambers. I think we are collectively fucked for a couple generations at least.
Social media impacting mental health is definitely happening, but its a symptom of a larger problem. And COVID definitely accelerated it. But this is a problem that has been going on for decades IMO. American society is crumbling and fixing it will be a multi-prong, multi-decade, probably multi-trillion dollar effort.
I’ve heard this before about a billion things, it’s not a particularly useful take. IMO we’ve got a youth depression problem because of extremely hostile messaging about “how screwed our country is”, “how screwed our planet is”, and addictive mind manipulating social media apps.
I’m in my late twenties, my generation was plagued by hot take social media, and I think the current generation has it even worse. I’d love it if we could avoid these hot takes on Lemmy. Break the problems down into their pieces and attack those things; IMO, like solving any big problem, that’s how we get through this.
I’ve heard this before about a billion things, it’s not a particularly useful take.
It wasn’t really intended to be, as that is a larger conversation. But I didn’t mean it the way I suspect you thought I did, in a boomer “tight pants and rock music are all of society’s ills” way.
My take on it is that ever since corporations got away with prioritizing shareholder profits over everything else, the safety nets that kept families strong started to crumble. Parents had to work more hours, people were more stressed, neighborhoods became more distant, urban spread increased. Add that to hysteria over crime and we get parents that aren’t able to raise kids and think schools can do it. No sense of community responsibility and no safety net of a village helping to raise the kids because everyone’s at work and scared that someone’s going to shoot or kidnap them. So you get generational radicalization with acting out behavior getting worse and worse.
Social media makes all this worse because it optimizes for engagement, and nothing gets engagement like misery and jealousy all while giving an illusion of actual socialization. COVID was gas added to this fire that has been burning for decades.
Break the problems down into their pieces and attack those things; IMO, like solving any big problem, that’s how we get through this.
I definitely agree there. Which is a challenge in and of itself. Like I said, this is a multi-pronged issue. It didn’t get to where it is quickly and it won’t get fixed quickly either. It will be a generational effort. And I don’t think all the fix actions needed are agreed on or even known.
I think part of it will be strengthening neighborhoods and creating a sense of community and pride in it. Another part is allowing parents to actually parent and giving them the tools that their parents didn’t pass on to them because they probably didn’t have them either.
I think this is a really great response; I agree with you on a lot of this. I (personally) think we need more of this sort of dialog and less “American society is crumbling.” I hope you’ll agree here/try to keep that in mind as much as possible. IMO some outwardly expressed optimism and hope is really important and can go a long way towards fighting the collective depression and overwhelming feeling that we’re up against an insurmountable force … IMO we can get through all of this, we just have to work together and have constructive discussions on how.
There’s definitely been some dropping the ball by previous generations, and I hope (and if we try, know) we can do better in the coming years.
Maybe I’m not thinking through everything here, but why not have a phone locker by the classroom door? Student comes in, phone goes in the phone locker. Student leaves…phone comes out.
Parents throw a fit, and honestly I can’t blame them. With school shootings as prevalent as they are I’d want my kid to have a phone at all times too if they need to call for help.
There have been multiple times that my daughter has had emergencies at school that she was able to solve by calling us. I’m glad she has a phone. But she also uses it responsibly.
Honest question. How quickly do these emergencies need to be resolved by you specifically? Like if the teacher or school can contact you in a quick manner if they go to the office, why would they need a phone on their person?
Maybe there are person exceptions here, but how often does a few minutes, or a direct contact matter?
We work with high schoolers and have for over 25 years. My husband is a high school band director. This is absolutely completely true and getting worse each year. COVID really contributed to very rapid decline in mental health, and we’re only more seeing kids get just a tad better. Many parents aren’t willing to make the hard choices for their kids and turn off these devices. The kids are not ok and we as a society are doing nothing to fix it.
My take on this is my take on school in general: it's manipulative, coercive, and overall bad for you. I say this having considered becoming a teacher, and having chosen to become a librarian instead precisely because I refused to lend my energy to the school system.
Teachers have a disproportionate influence over the lives of basically everyone. School being compulsory, and most people* not even understanding that alternatives exist let alone having the resources or wherewithal to pursue them, the influence of teachers is very nearly inescapable, and yet they always demand more. More hours, more days, more ceaseless undivided attention (regardless of the quality of their content or the interests of their captive audience), all in direct contradiction to mounting evidence that all of those things are bad for you.
Studies from Europe indicate that homework, for example, at best does nothing at all, and more likely is actively bad for you. (This doesn't really require modern science -- John Holt and John Gatto were writing about this in the 80s -- but modern science confirms it.) Students nowadays are subjected to levels of anxiety that would've gotten their grandparents hospitalized. The pandemic largely disbanding in-person schooling resulted in a noteworthy drop in student suicide rates. And still, the school system demands more control, more influence, more access to more of young people's waking lives, seemingly not content until every conscious breath is scheduled and supervised.
And then there are teachers' unions. Considering how badly teachers are paid and what utter trash their benefits are, it can be observed that the only significant function teachers' unions serve is to keep bad teachers from being fired. I know it's only anecdotal, but I have in my own experience observed teachers who re-use the same test papers for literally decades without changing a thing. This might be acceptable in math -- math doesn't change much -- but I've seen history teachers do this. Fuck's sake, man. Unions certainly do little enough to guarantee the quality-of-life of teachers making any effort to do their best.
The combination of artificially insatiable demand and utterly dogwater compensation means that the system has an incentive to churn out an unholy number of mediocre teachers, and then never let them be removed no matter how mediocre their service is. This is leaving aside the problem of teachers forgetting that the people across the desks from them are their employers, not their subjects, and the authoritarian attitudes that comes with that.
(I have to include an asterisk * above because when I say "most people" I mostly mean "most parents" -- the people actually affected by the failures of the school system are routinely denied any voice whatsoever in the management of that system, and as a matter of course denied any choice about their own education, so we can only talk about the knowledge and ability of people who are at least one step removed from even being involved in the situation, which is it's own problem, as you might imagine. In no other aspect of life does leaving decision-making in the hands of people unaffected by the consequences of their own decisions lead to good outcomes...)
There's more I could go into here. The failures of 'zero tolerance,' for instance; the root causes of school violence; the almost comedically cruel euphemism that is 'bullying'; the entire concept of the school-to-prison and school-to-military pipelines. There's a lot wrong with the idea of giving teachers more influence over people.
I am explicitly not saying that social media is the answer, but I am saying that I can very easily understand the desire -- the need -- of young people to claw back a few minutes at a time of their own waking lives for themselves.
I kind of wish you'd posted this before your original post, though I appreciate it was significantly more effort to type. You've made a number of well laid-out points that I largely agree with, but I'm not sure your original post indicated anything other than teacher and/or union bashing, which was difficult to get on board with!
I really appreciate the response. There are many good points you have. Though I would place much of the blame on school administrators, districts, and politicians that are meddling in the education system rather than teachers. I have family that are teachers and some I wouldn’t trust to teach basic arithmetic.
I personally would weigh teachers opinions heavier than those of the school and district administration as they are front line and see what our children are experiencing directly. I do agree that much of our education system could use reform to be more holistically focused on children’s general life and well-being. Though I consider that an extension of a general reform of our society with a greater push towards better work/life balance, improved social services, infrastructure, housing, etc.
As you’ve eloquently presented, teacher pay and benefits are abysmal. I would rather spend more time and taxes to improve those work conditions rather than condemn the union. I was regularly in classes of over 30 students (mind you, this was 2 decades ago) and decreasing the student:teacher ratio has always been an active topic they are working towards. Whether it’s better to have a lower ratio vs firing bad teachers is up for debate. There have been plenty of studies that show high student:teachers ratios are detrimental to students.
I haven’t spent a lot of time exploring the different schooling theories and styles like Montessori but perhaps another style may be a good change. A lot of parents aren’t aware of the options they have for their children, but that may also have socio-economic barriers that prevent them from being able to make a choice.
I think the problem there is (likely) more the social media than the phones. I grew up with high schoolers having phones in the classroom in 2009-2013; Twitter and Facebook were the big two, and Instagram wasn’t what it is now. Even then, Facebook & Twitter could kind of suck/cause drama way more than just the more basic things phones can be used for cameras, calculators, web browsers, and messaging family & friends.
“Addictive social media” in particular, is probably where congress’s eyes need to be placed. That sounds like what this union is saying as well doing a quick skim, so 👍👍 .
What were we warned about back in the prime Facebook/Twitter era? Short term dopamine driven feedback loops or some such?
This is the result of not heeding that warning.
You’re right that blaming phones is dumb. The phone is a tool, just like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build something, or destroy something. It’s all about how it’s used.
I don't get why kids are allowed to have phones in the school. Just install signal blockers. Parents can call the office if there is an emergency like it's 1995.
I agree that they shouldn’t be allowed to have phones during class. It would actually probably be best if the students had assigned classrooms, they stuck their phones in a teacher-controlled box at the beginning of the day, then the teachers move classrooms to teach each subject.
Then the kids get their phones back during lunch and at the end of the day.
I agree. Just have a designated box or place for the students to leave their phones in each classroom. They can grab them in an emergency or on their way to lunch.
the only people that's stopping are the honest ones and those who only have access to one(or none) phone. It'll just add on the teachers already heavy load. I don't think it's such a great idea turning school into basic military training.
Meh… Kids need to learn self control. Who’s gonna hold their phones when they have a job, or during a funeral? Workplace don’t want to be responsible for your phone, and they’ll just fire you if you get caught using your phone during work hours. Also liability problems… what happens if the phones are damaged or missing? What if some creepy pedophile teacher injects spyware in the phones when the kids attention are focused on a test?
If you can’t leave you phone in a backpack for a few school hours, how do you deal with not being able to use your phone at a job which may have even more hours, and which your livelihood depends on?
Depends where you work, everywhere I’ve ever worked in the last two decades haven’t minded you using your phone providing you aren’t spending all day staring at it.
Even if you are allowed to use your phone, I’m pretty sure low-performance would get you fired from almost every job. The point still stands, kids need to learn self-control starting at a young age.
Easy, they try to come in and collect fees, I’ll send straight to detention. Eventually all those FCC guys will be stuck in the mean teacher’s room next to band class. Problem solved!
A lot of people don’t realize this but signal Jammers are illegal. There was actually a professor who was put on administrative leave for using one, he was lucky that he didn’t have to pay fines or that he wasn’t sent to jail for it.
Morbid but with the amount of school shootings that have happened the more people that can call 911 the better. The kids need the phones to possibly save their lives. Signal blockers are not the answer.
Not sure how that matters. Teachers and other staff could have phones true, but what if a shooting happens in the bathroom? Or in the halls where there are no teachers? Or the teacher is killed first and all the kid’s phones are locked up somewhere?
But to be clear, I don’t think that means kids should be using them during class. I can’t remember where I saw this, but putting boxes on each desk where kids can put their phones that stay there until after class or an emergency is an option. Or just tell them to keep them in their pockets and discipline them if they use them during class.
I own multiple. Again, I don’t see how that matters. In an environment where school shootings are common, taking away a way to reach emergency services at anytime, anywhere should be a non-starter.
I’m with you on this. How is having like 300+ more options available (depending on the school) to call the police really something that will help with school shootings specifically. Like if it happens a teacher would call.
People are so paranoid about not having instant connections available at all times. It is not that needed. Especially with kids in school.
Having everything at your fingertips is great, in theory. But for kids without the ability to regulate, it’s as much a distraction than an advantage.
Signal jammers are illegal. Certainly wouldn’t be a good idea to install those in the US, where school shootings are common.
Edit: Also, unrelated to the signal jamming thing you talked about:
Phones are useful in case of a fight were to occur, which happen very often (at least in schools I went to). Video recordings are good to determine fault. School surveillance cameras are often cheap, blurry, unreliable, have many blind-spots, and also forbidden in classrooms (at least in the US). In addition, sometimes classrooms still use old textbooks that only have 1 class set, and are very heavy to carry, and they aren’t available online, so in that case, kids can just take photos of the textbook and the school saves a lot of money from having to copy-print the textbooks, so maybe they just need to make 1 or 2 copies for the kids that don’t have a phone. Phones are very useful, just needs reasonable rules. A complete ban is not necessary in my opinion.
There is not a large number of people who think children should be made to spend 100% of the time at school, including being made to sleep there. People are interpreting that person’s obvious sarcasm seriously so they can be upset about i t. Not necessarily intentionally, they may just be dense. But that’s what they’re doing.
It has EVERYTHING to do with what that person is saying - 'troubled teens' is just how many of them justify abuses. Normal teenage behaviour, or even signs of LGBT+ or autism/ADHD are enough to get you sent to one.
No it has absolutely nothing to do with what that person said. That person was making a fucking joke and you are running wild with it like a crazy person. Cut it out.
I'm just saying it's possible he was 100% serious, like flat earthers and anti-vax. It's possible to be 100% serious and completely idiotic at the same time
I didn't make any commentary about how likely one or the other is, I just said 'some people genuinely believe these things'. I don't know them, I don't know you, what I do know is that there are people out there that actually believe this stuff and actually send their kids to them all because they had the nerve to answer back.
You're right, it's far more likely they're a sane person being sarcastic, but Poe's law is a very real thing. Because some people actually sound like this.
Unfortunately teachers don’t “have to deal with it”
When they get fed up they quit, and then random unqualified people get hired to fill the needs and they end up being the ones who don’t give a shit either way and spend their day on the phones.
You won’t get good teachers if the working conditions are shit, and students these days are the main problem creating the shitty working conditions.
I’d place my bet on administrative bloat hogging too many resources. Making teachers move on to more lucrative professions because teaching isn’t worth all the headaches it entails for what they are bringing home at the end of the day.
"I may have mental health problems, but you also have mental health problems" does not...strike me as an argument against lessened social media use....
If the instructors were doing this, they'd need to be fired because they are not doing their job. If the students are doing this, well, you can't fire them from learning, so it needs to be handled at the source.
Would also be pretty neat if we gave the educational system perhaps a money, and the problem is probably exacerbated by all that future the students tangibly don't have. But a heavy increase in counseling won't make anyone listen. I vote for addressing both, both is good.
I also forsee a handful of court cases when parents inevitably make their kids' "non-minor" accounts because they just want to be left alone.
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