From burner phones to decks of cards: NYC teens adjusting to the smartphone ban

Though not entirely to blame, parenting is certainly a part of the cell phone addiction problem. Setting time limits and holding kids accountable for breaking rules around phone use would go a long way toward guiding kids toward more healthy behaviors and letting them know someone cares about their well-being.

Modeling constrained phone use is another aspect. Parents will struggle to get their kids off their phones if they are spending all their own free time scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

Problem is, many parents are also addicted to their phones, and won't be able to have the discipline to use them this way.

But don't fret: becoming a parent forces you to find strength you didn't know you had. Sounds cliche but there's really no other way to describe it.

Before kids I was glued to my phone. Now when we go to the playground I just stare at the sky like a chimpanzee released after years of indoor captivity.

After doing this for the last 15+ years, I think it's turned out well. The oldest two seem to have a healthy relationship with their devices (as tools) and are just as happy to put them down and go outside or spend time with other people. The youngest is similar, but still needs to use tech a lot for his studies (by curriculum design). However, he'd also prefer to go outside or watch a movie than be on a device.

When I was in high school, right about the time that cell phones were becoming common among adults but not yet among kids, our school had a blanket policy that all electronics other than calculators and simple watches were to remain in lockers or at home.

Having a CD player, pager, pda, cell phone, or pretty much anything else in class was forbidden. Teachers would take them away and you'd get it back from the principal's office at the end of the day.

I've seen a lot of talk about schools banning phones, but I don't understand why they were ever allowed in the first place.

This can be tricky if all their friends / school communicates through such mediums as your kids may feel isolated. And yes, many schools promote the use of apps / social media as a shared means of communication for clubs, sports, etc. - which is maddening.

And, as parents, model reading physical books, not your phone.

They can't go outside any more - third places (aka, places where one can be without consuming something) are sorely lacking, doubly so for youth who are driven away by "mosquito" teen-repellent devices, and you need to be able to get there without being in danger of getting pulped by a SUV so tall the driver literally cannot see a child.

Oh and parents don't want their kids go out alone lest they be charged with neglect by some HOA busybody snitch siccing CPS on them.

They can't be at school after hours because it's closed or because school is an unsafe place for them (e.g. bullying).

They spend too much time in front of computers, their Boomer parents cry about violent games turning their kids into killers or porn turning them gay.

They can't be on their phones because Boomers cry that they're not doing anything else.

Tell me, what are kids supposed to do? It's like an inverse Schrödinger's cat.

the difference now is that we have things like the magnetic pouches so students physically can’t use them. the rule is the same, but now it’s actually enforceable.

Every app attempts to expand until it is social media. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

See:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/10/spotify-is-no-longer-just-...

https://www.wikihow.com/Hide-Channels-on-WhatsApp (tl;dr there is no way)

https://www.thepearlpost.com/1342/tech/pinterest-is-now-a-so...

https://gearandgrit.com/stravas-evolution-the-journey-from-a...

Most people seem to be in a mass trance with smartphone usage. Everywhere I go, the majority of people I see at any given moment are on their phone. It's spooky. I don't look forward to the inevitable mental health crisis we're going to hit when generations who have always lived with a smartphone hit mid-life.

One of the monumental realizations for me when I became a parent (not necessarily the first day but over the first 5-7 years) was distinctly what my parents did right and wrong. My dad told me on the phone one day that I shouldn't show my child my feelings, that I should hide any negative feelings and only show positive feelings. And now I see that this is what my father did to me and it constrained my ability to share negative feelings with my friends and family, instead leading to me bottling up negative feelings like anger and sadness.I realize that this is not the correct way to parent, your child should see the full range of human emotions from their parents and although you want to be careful to not put too much emotional burden and stress on them to create an anxious child, you want to also be sure they see you at your best and worst. They should see you discuss your feelings with others and with them and when you lose your temper, as we all do, you should also afterwards rationalize what you were feeling with them, apologize if necessary (and it's usually always necessary because there is no need for any human to lose their temper with another human that's been on the Earth for only a few years).

Any way, I think of parenthood as a journey of self-reflection and improvement, much like childhood. Just like some people have a negative painful childhood, parenthood can be similar. The goal for you is to be open and honest with yourself and your growing family, and to be constantly looking for ways to improve.

Apologies if this sounded like a lecture but wish you the best in what may turn out to be the most important job of your life.

If you multiply that by 30 kids in a class, conservatively, a teacher could be stuck sitting on 30 confiscated iPhones. That's like half their annual salary in kids claiming they broke their phone. Not to mention any claims that a teacher used a kid's phone for some nefarious purpose.

Speaking as a Dad of two (5 and 2), this is really hard, not because I don't read (I read a lot), but because every time I bring a physical book out the kids start grabbing it, so it's much easier to use my Kindle.

Additionally, I'd probably end up getting divorced if we needed to find space for all the books I read in the house (I've acquired about 1100 books on Kindle over the past ~decade).

I definitely think the scrolling scrolling scrolling has done something negative to society.

He didn't. You're the one that brought "solely" into the conversation.

I see them more as pacifiers for adults.

Whenever I see some adult doomscrolling in public, I hear Maggie Simpson's little suck suck suck sound in my head.

The correct thing to do here is your teachers position is to laugh at the idiot kid telling them about their legal liability.

The school may be taking some on, but if it’s a school policy short of actual gross negligence by the teacher she had none personally.

Even if the school had liability the correct response to such nonsense is to tell the parents to sue them. Most will not, and you defend to the death the few that do so others understand the cost of bringing frivolous lawsuits for silly reasons.

This whole nonsense of entire school systems grinding to a halt and lacking any implementation of common sense due to made up liability fantasies is ridiculous. Let those highly paid admins do their jobs and take on risk.

This just doesn't hold up - FB ended Q1 2014 with ~1.3bn MAUs. I don't know when I would argue FB exploded beyond colleges but by 2014 it had already happened, long before.

> Facebook was still called The Facebook in 2013 when we were on our 3rd phones.

Facebook dropped the "The" and became "Facebook" in 2005.

I'm prepared to accept an argument that social media has contributed, but these dates don't make any sense.

"Teens are sad because they spend all their time on their phones", then maybe ask yourselves why teens flee to their virtual spaces. (maybe look at what seems important to them and is at the same time being dismissed and ignored by the people older than them, while being told not to be idealistic and naive.)

We treat teachers like second class citizens at our own peril.

If that's the claim, I think an appropriate response would be to send the kid out of class (with their precious phone), or home. Can't have them not paying attention in class, and if they are literally a walking liability to discipline in any other way: fine, so be it.

I've watched it happen in real time. Administration terrified of totally nonsense complaints and pretending that they just can't take on the "liability" - most of which would be laughed out of court. Bury these people in legal bills if they want to bring such crazy to court. But there is no risk ever taken unless an administrator's career is the one on the line.

Phone breaks in the custody of a teacher and there is not actual evidence of that happening? Too bad. Sue us. No one is suing over a $800 phone unless it turns into a crusade. If the latter happens, put up the strongest legal defense possible and make sure anyone watching understands they are not an easy target for such things. Don't want your phone to "break" while in custody of the school? Easy. Don't bring it to school and violate school policy.

If there were a competent administrator they'd be having parents sign release forms at the start of the school year for the topic. First offense confiscation for the day. Second you get it back on Friday. Third at the end of the school year.

I don't disagree that we treat teachers like shit. They are the equivalent of a retail employee being put in the front line and forced to deal with customer's vitriol due to horrible corporate policies set by do-nothing executives making 20x what they are. I put nearly all the blame on incompetent and downright corrupt administration enabled by equally deeply unserious politicians.