> But it rolled in so rapidly that it was universal before we had the chance to push back.

This can't be it. I was in high school when smartphones were coming out and there was zero tolerance for them or any other electronic devices (dumbphones, ipods, palm pilots, etc) in the classroom.

I don't know when or why it happened but allowing smartphones in school was a conscious choice and a policy change.

I think it will eventually settle into a net positive - we're just in the Wild West of smartphones still.

I try to use my phone less and less but as someone who loves photography the ability to take a raw photo and edit on my phone is amazing.

Sports gambling is astoundingly popular for teen boys. Already the prevalence of zero sum games like crypto and day trading was getting to be too trendy for teenagers, and this shit just supercharges it.

> But we have just encountered one of the rare times where something new actually was harmful.

Next let's ban kids from social media.

Or better yet, let's tax social media as a negative externality. Anything with an algorithmic feed, engagement algorithm, commenting/voting/banning, all hooked up to advertising needs to pay to fix the harm it's causing.

They're about as bad as nicotine and lung cancer. They've taken people hostage and turned society against itself.

> I think chatbots and AR glasses are going to supercharge these social problems at a rate much faster than phones and facebook ever could.

Chatbots aren't smart and AR glasses are dorky. They're going to remain niche for quite some time.

iPhone immediately caught on like wild fire. You can tell those other two don't have the same spark. I'm not saying there won't be users, but it's a much smaller population.

I mean, "cigarettes are the devil", especially for teenagers also have stuck.

> With phones there's such social pressure to allow their use, including from forces external to the school, that there was never possibly a hope of the equilibrium immediately settling at phones being banned.

Phones, and electronic devices in general, were always banned. What changed was schools started allowing them.

I was in high school right when some kids first started getting (dumb) cell phones. MP3 players were still new, CD players were not uncommon, and ALL of them were banned from being outside of your locker or backpack. If a teacher saw one, it was gone until the end of the day. Period.

Teachers didn't need to bear the brunt of angry parents, it wasn't their call to make. That belonged to the school administrator, who merely needed to say "tough shit". Somehow, the adult children still won anyway.

How in the world would you keep AI out of schools?

Ok, turn off the internet. And ban the cell phones.

I suppose a district could block the known AI providers, so kids could only use AI at home. I’m very skeptical this would eliminate the negatives.

On the contrary, every administrator I know of is gung-ho about the coming improvements in education driven by AI. (There certainly are SOME, but it comes with minuses.)

Learning where you fit in the social hierarchy and attempting to navigate that hierarchy is more important than anything you’ll learn in math class. Even if it is embarrassing. It’s not like you graduate high school and then the bullies go away.

The bullying is still there, it's just moved online. If anything it's easier for the perpetrators, because they can hide behind anonymity, or create humiliating deepfakes - and so on.

The problem isn't phones, it's the addictivisation of social media and gaming. Being able to stay in touch with friends and family is potentially a good thing.

But it's currently implemented as a hook for psychological and chemical addiction, so that user attention can be sold to advertisers.

That is a problem, and I think we're starting to see a movement which will eventually end with these platforms being banned, or strictly regulated at the very least.

It's basically casino psychology applied to all social interactions. That is clearly not a good or healthy thing.

I always hear this from Americans. My experience in Canada is that the bullying and shaming was limited to junior high (grade 7-9 in my province). Maybe my high school was just too large for any of that nonsense? Or maybe the culture is different - I couldn't have told you who was on the football team, and there was no prom.

All my friends were nerds, but at the same time I didn't feel like there was some brutal social order hanging over me like I did in jr high.

PE class being the other one where bullies thrive, and prey on the sensitive, intelligent, thoughtful kids. The coaches look the other way because they want the "win".

Both of these are different failure modes of adults to parent and/or mentor children. Just because A and B are both bad does not mean C is not a potentially better place to be. Just because lazy teachers and staffers tell kids "you have to learn to fight your own battles" does not make social media A-OK.

>What a lot of people learn from lunch rooms is not a happy social lesson.

valuable lessons don't necessarily overlap with happy.

a kid leaves the gate open until his dog is ran over, it doesn't happen again after that with the new dog.

Avoidance: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems

The point you're making is important and I can already see how many, once years out of school, are able to re-frame their memories into something that bullying wasn't so bad and it's actually a social good, etc. It's as if the return-to-office-policies bringing back bullying/sexual harrassement to one's work environment would be hailed as a chance to improve one's social skills. Ridiculous.

I do think though that it's worth discerning here: We don't need to accept a world in which we have to decide between apathetic children stuck to tiny screens and daily traumas. Both things are evil, and in both cases it's a testament to lack of care our education systems have for us/children.

Asociality is not the same thing as social harmony. It's not better for children if their shithead peers are replaced with smartphones.

The unfortunate truth is that cliquey behavior and bullying are some of things that children have to be exposed to - you won't come out of school as a fully-capable human being unless you've spent the last several years being exposed to a ton of different adult emotions.

Allowing kids to have their phones in class, even if they weren't allowed to use them, was setting teachers up for failure. It's easy to call them lazy, but if you've ever tried to police the phone use of a bunch of screen-addicted adolescents you would understand. The calculator comparison is not a good one.

I encourage you to seek first-hand accounts of what teaching in a contemporary public school classroom is like. Teacher discipline can account for so much.

When I was in university, I had a math teacher that brought extra chalk to class everyday because if he saw you on your phone, he'd snap a piece off and throw it at you pretty damn hard. Maybe that wouldn't exactly work in a high school but damn if Dr Murphy didn't have me paying attention in that class.

Are you saying that reading comprehension is an outdated technology?

An electronic version of coal rolling. "You can't tell me this is unhealthy, and I'm going to prove it!"

Sounds more like "freedom" which New York has taken away with some big government regulations.

/S

And just to show how (US) universal this idea is becoming, a Texas law banning cellphones went into effect at the start of the school year.

This happened at the same time a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms would have went into effect but was temporarily blocked while it works it's way through the courts [0]

[Texas educators praise new school cellphone ban] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/10/texas-cell-phone-ban...

[0] https://apnews.com/article/ten-commandments-bill-texas-schoo...

California just got strict about this, too. I have found a dramatic increase in the amount of interpersonal talking that's happening in school as a result, which is great!

I'm expecting a kiddo this winter and my use of devices+my likely future kid's relationship with tech has really been on my mind. The fact that people are thinking through this and actually working on it puts me slightly more at ease.

>> There is no need for a phone during the school day

I see you don't have kids yourself. You need to sync up with them when after-school plans change.

> Hopefully as a society we can also learn the lesson that tech companies cannot be trusted to deliver what's best for us.

If society were ignorant, then it’s forgivable. But society is not ignorant.

We know tech companies deliver things bad for us (lies and manipulation).

And we knowingly choose it, over the good (truth).

Why would anyone expect them to deliver what is best for us when the purpose of a company is to deliver what others want?

This is the same logic that has parents buying games like GTA for their prepubescent children and being dumbfounded that the kids are exposed to violent images.

While we can definitely point the blame at tech companies that manipulate algorithms, engage in dark patterns, etc, it's ultimately up to the consumer to consume judiciously and moderate their own well being. Nobody ever asked Apple or Google to "deliver what's best" for society. What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults.

In class that is good. However at lunch kids should be talking to other kids. I know many teachers/schools are control freaks and so they would do such things, but it was always evil.

> In 2020, school systems in the United States began to close down in March because of the spread of COVID-19

I definitely know who was president in March of 2020. Before they lost their election 8 months later.

Somehow it seems a lot of people don't.

In the early 2000s, when everyone had a phone but no smart phones, we had this "thing" at the college bar:

Sitting around the table with some beers and friends, everyone put their phones in the center of the table. First one to touch their phone had to buy the next round of drinks. It was effective. I've tried similar recently, but people are less enthusiastic about the idea.

For my generation (just post-Boomer), it was the TV.

For my parents, it was the radio.

For their parents, reading out loud for everyone to enjoy ("Mr. Dickens has published another episode of The Pickwick Papers!"), or playing instruments.

Even then, individual screens is isolating.

Collapsing in front of the TV with the family was still quality time enjoying something together.

Not universally though, the local skate park and sports fields see plenty of activity.

Thankfully that state is far from evenly-distributed.

It’s here but do we think it’s better? Should it stay?

As a society we do get to answer these questions.

The "Safety" excuse is bullshit. What safety problem could exist in a school that a child with a cell phone can solve? Fire? School administrators will call the fire department. Intruder? School administrators will call the police. School shooter? Same. There's nothing that a child with a cell phone will fix.

Which would cause a lot of questions if you pull it out in the classroom.

The smartphone OSs hide all that "tech". They are not more educational (by themselves) than interactive advertisement streams.

The student-elected body is often called the Student Council.

Sometimes each grade level will have a class president.

Varies from school to school for the details.

Other countries don't have prefects? Wikipedia seems to indicate the phenomenon is worldwide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_president