Canada

Nobody does programming on their phones

I'm all in to get programming classes where children learn to code on PCs. That's a high pass for me. But AFAIK children aren't doing programming on their phones.

In general i doubt using a phone at school is going to help them program or teach them about technology. They have plenty of time to explore phones on their own when they get home, especially now that kids don't go much outside anymore. It's not like a school ban would be cutting that away from them.

I mean my dad had me help him code a game on his commodore 64 at 5 but my internet usage in 1999 was still monitored. My dad made sure I understood the dangers and implications of interacting with people online and I knew exactly how to rebuff any kind of solicitation. I never gave names, exact locations etc, when using chats of course asl was a popular thing to ask and I never was more specific than USA. I have also lied about my sex when I'd participate in chats where I found identifying as a girl got me nehative attention. Even then, when my dad wasn't around, as he trusted us after some time... I somehow got porn pop-ups all over my screen and I have to say that I wish I hadn't seen some of the stuff on there lol! We didn't have social media in its present form but youtube became a thing while I was in college and I made the mistake of posting some videos of myself which I'm glad I removed shortly after realizing how embarrassing and cringeworthy they were. I'm just glad the posts I made on street fighter online forums and new grounds weren't on something like Facebook or tik tok... as an adult I went back and deleted these profiles and posts because I obviously was too immature to post. I can't believe what kind if drivel teenage me was spewing online and I'm glad there isn't video evidence of the idiotic things I said and believed. I personally don't care as I stopped teaching before this social media boom but if adults can be twisted and manipulated, pushed toward extremism and critical thinking goes in the backburner, I can't imagine what it does to the mind of a child. Smart phones are great tools if you can somehow limit their functions while in the classroom like some kind of school mode.

It's an analogy. It's inaccurate as all analogies are. Yet it's useful to make the point that banning children from doing X or Y isn't unprecedented or unacceptable.

Kids go to school for much more than what they learn in class. A fully formed human being that can function in a society requires a lot of social interaction training. That's what school is for in-between classes. If kids are staring down their phones during that time instead of interacting with each other, that training is lost. Worse, instead of that, they get trained on a false social reality as portrayed by whatever enshittified platform they're currently on, based on whatever behavior makes the most money today. Is this enough to visualize the damage phones in hallways cause?

We don’t let kids eat during class because it’s disruptive

You're so close the understanding the problem

I am comparing a drug to a drug that's the whole point. Phones are drugs. For adults and children alike.

The problem is not in the phone itself. It's in the lack of doing things that kids should normally be doing at that age. They will play with their phone instead of playing physically (less tonus), sleeping (constant tiredness), talking with their parents (learning) or other kids (socializing).

I know kids like that in my family. You can tell from the dark lines under their eyes that they spend most of their day staring at a screen. And if you ask them to play outside they just don't know what to do, they need access to a screen even with other kids. It's really a scary sight. And its a drug yes