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

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.

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

20 years ago everyone on suburban trains would be looking at a newspaper, magazine or book throughout their journey. Then they would watch a couple of hours of TV at home. Why is 'looking at a phone' such a problem, when most of the looking replicates those activities, with much of the rest being basic utilities which didn't exist previously - consulting a map, ordering food or shopping, looking up timetables or schedules?

There is no engineered addiction to reading the New York Times, so people just put it down when something else wants their attention.

Looking at a phone is a problem to the extent that it cuts you off from real interactions in society. It is a problem to the extent that the attention you pay to the phone does not go toward solving real problems.

It can be a problem because it allows kids to escape from uncomfortable situations like struggling to learn something, and the Instagram-perfect view of the world makes their own lives feel inferior.