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

Texas banned phones in schools as well. A local school administrator told me “in the high school, the lunch room is now loud with talking and laughter!”

There are still parents that complain. Turns out they are as addicted to texting with their kids all day as their kids are addicted to the same.

Regardless, it’s great to see that the ban has seemingly nudged things in a healthier direction. Its a failure of leadership that schools needed a statewide ban to make such an obviously positive change.

Phones might be as much a symptom as a cause

The related issue is parents are overly protective of teens and don't give them enough independence. You see this in a lot of different ways from parents wanting to text their kids, to only letting kids do highly managed structured activities, to treating teens as their best friends, to helicopter parenting protecting kids from all adversity, etc etc

And a similar thing happens not just with parents, but society, there are not a lot of places teens can just hang out. A lot of fun things teens would do increasingly ban minors.

If you want teens off devices, you need to give them alternatives

> but society, there are not a lot of places teens can just hang out. A lot of fun things teens would do increasingly ban minors.

What fun things ban minors? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t see that around here.

When I was a kid in the 1980's and early 90's the mall was the place to go and hang out. Go to the food court, arcade, shoe stores, Spencer's gifts.

Google "malls that ban teenagers" and you will find a lot of articles. I have been to a few places that have signs "Anyone under 18 must be chaperoned by an adult."

Usually that's the result of an incident with premeditated mayhem from an unsupervised gathering.