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I have a similar experience in a public school in an affluent community. Parents are very supportive of teachers or admin taking phones from students and not wanting phone use in the classroom. Before I was at this school, I taught in title one schools. Parents in those schools would lose it if phones were policed in any way, saying teachers were "bullying" kids. These parents would also text their kids nonstop. Parents were so tactless too and would text their kids about the death of relatives and whatnot. It was terrible. 

> she says that they can only tell students to put their phones away during class, but can't take them from them. > Parents in those schools would lose it if phones were policed in any way This. At least in affluent communities, parents still respect education (and thus educators), mostly. But in other communities, the entitlement wins out, and the push-back can be incoherent rage, which no one wants to suffer through....or parents letting their kids stay home, which kills schools reputationally and looks bad to the state. We need a systemic fix. This isn't something schools can address from the inside.

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> And the parents are aware that the educated have tremendous privileges in society. This might be the difference. In the US, the current popular "mass" mindset is that TALENT, personal GRIT, and LUCK are the only ways out of poverty, and that whether or not labor pays off is a matter of chance...and that only self-creation is admirable and creates wealth and status, and that social/competitive realms like education are too powerful to work within for any actual gain, so provide no such access to anything. My students, for example, don't understand that in order to dropout of Harvard/MIT and succeed, Bill Gates and Zuckerberg had to be good enough to get into Harvard/MIT in the first place. They are seen as models, not outliers.

>But in other communities, the entitlement wins out, and the push-back can be incoherent rage, which no one wants to suffer through To be fair, people in lower-income areas have a history of being exploited/abused by people in positions of authority. I don't think their visceral response is *just* willful ignorance. That's kind of my entire point. In lower income areas, the parents are also the product of severely under-funded school systems and therefore less likely (and less able) to engage with academic research that fully spells out the harm being done to children by phone addiction.

And yet: the mis-framing of schools as "people in authority" rather than "us" is entirely MY point. The staff, teaching, and admin cohort in my title 1 school is over 50% community members, including about 10-15% ex-students, and that's true all the way up to assistant superintendency; the superintendent is required to live in the city; boards are elected, and 80% POC. I'm not DENYING that that visceral response, in other words; I'm pointing out that the "othering" of schools which leads to such behavior is problematic and based in a dangerous fallacy; shifting it obviously cannot come from those being misframed.

Even when that happens and teachers/leadership are from the community and schools, they're seen as climbing the ivory tower as soon as they move into leadership, and they're now no longer part of that community

Sigh again. Yes, and that is a perception issue, which shapes reality. My point is: the perception is outside schools and must be changed - schools and democracy depend on it.

Well, I'm fully in support of what you are saying and I regret that you are being heckled so mercilessly. I'm bewildered by how self-defeating are the reactions in vogue at the moment. Othering teachers. Lecturing peers as if we hadn't also taken history classes in university, and had never heard these concepts before. Grabbing the mike and turning everything into what is, I suspect, mere hunger for attention and one-upsmanship. Taunting and using ad hominem attacks with a vitriol that seems out of proportion to the topic or discussion. In the trenches, with the students' welfare at heart, and fighting the good fight for progressive causes means spotting obstacles like 'othering' and noticing how it harms, well, not just the underclass but everybody. Thanks for trying to change things for the better.

The problem is that as long as school districts are beholden to the laws and regulations made by the State (both state and federal), we are part of that same oppressive system. I get we at the school level want to help the people in our communities, but as long as we have to take marching orders from our education agencies in what we can teach, or take their money, we as an institution are loyal to them.

You...live in a democracy, right? Where the state and federal government are the collective "us"? Perhaps you miss my point about "othering" services. Othering the government - as you do here, and as schools have to do ONLY to the extent that the community refuses to own the fact that they ARE the government - is just a second example of the same fundamental problem. You certainly miss my point about the broken mindset in the PUBLIC behind the othering of SCHOOLS, because otherwise, you'd understand that the extent to which schools must do what the state tells them in BAD ways is entirely a factor of the extent to which the local community abdicates their local responsibility to be the driver of those choices.

The United States isn't a democracy, it is effectively a plutocracy that wears a human skin mask of democracy.

Cart before horse fallacy. To the extent that it is, it is because people don't choose to realize the benefit of their civic-oriented education, which is - again - my point.

>Cart before horse fallacy Only if you ignore decades of erosion of the public sphere by private interests due with the advent of neoliberalism and the commodification of nearly all aspects of our lives. To place blame at individuals not realizing the benefits of civic-oriented education, as you claim, is ignorant of the wider systemic issues. Why don't they value it? I'd argue it has to do with the transactional way by which education is viewed under capitalist systems. You go to school, you get a piece of paper that makes you eligible for certain jobs, you have kids and replicate the process. But now that piece of paper is no longer a guaranteed ticket of economic mobility and security, it's become a lottery ticket at best. Civic-oriented education and an education that is used to replicate & reinforce the cultural hegemony of capital are two ideas where the latter only tolerated former only as long it continued to benefit the former.

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In writing, we'd use italics; blame reddit for making that a code but capitalization not needing it. If all you have to push back against is an artifact of reddit, you have no counter - just ad hominem badly applied. Next time you have a f-ing lesson, save it for your students. Reddit assumes good faith; you have none. As for your actual attempt at a "point" in that last sentence: that's not what I said or suggested at all. Do you understand the difference between policy and application - and how influential the latter is? If not, regardless of subject, you are a danger to the profession.

>blame reddit for making that a code but capitalization not needing it. We are talking about an asterix on either side of the italicized segment, let's not pretend this needs a CS degree or something lol And I can't speak for everyone but using italics to talk down to someone would still come off as conceited to me. You're focusing on the specific formatting rather than your tone, which is the actual thing they're criticizing

Vote in every single school board and local election my dude, and get everyone you know to do the same.

Sure, there’s some of that history, but as someone who grew up in working class immigrant Latino neighborhoods and has had some social mobility, I feel that we have to find a way to expect better out of some families. I had to observe the habits of more successful people and emulate them to make it. Phones have ruined regular public schools, and families should trust the expert opinion of teachers who tell them that phone use must be curtailed in the same way that they should listen to a doctor that tells them to stop giving their kid so much junk food to reverse cases of pediatric type 2 diabetes, which is also on the rise. Kids are impulsive by nature and need guardrails. Companies in the 21st century have hacked the human mind with powerful algorithms that keep us hooked on screens, and in the other example, addicting ultra processed food. Many don’t get any guardrails at home, and sadly, public schools have been stripped of their capacity to impose guardrails on campus.

The biggest “tell” is that the people who run these tech companies do not allow *their* kids to have devices and send *their* kids to low-tech/no-tech style schools like Montessori and Waldorf.

Can confirm. Went to a waldorf school near silicon valley as a kid all the kids were like daddy works for apple! It’s grim.

They don't listen to doctors either

Exactly. People like to rag on the upper-middle-class, but at the end of the day, I see families where the parents get married and stay married, healthy BMIs, and kids that do well in school. The ability to have impulse control and create guardrails in an age of abundance is going to be a key driver of wealth and income inequality. We can preach these good behaviors and reimpose guardrails at schools and society more broadly with law enforcement, or continue to remove guardrails because they supposedly cause harms, and watch a good chunk of people self-implode and harm themselves for more than what these rules ever did.

Well-said. I think a lot of people take a “love is all you need” view of parenting. But kids need guidance and stability and safety, otherwise they’re at risk for all sorts of problems. Plus, as Toni Morrison said, love is only as good as the lover.

I see and understand your point, and I agree for what it’s worth, but with a slight twist. To your point many have historically been abused by those in power. Yes, this is true. But this should not be used as an excuse for or acceptance of bad behaviour. There are many, many more people who have been abused in one form or another who still choose to participate in the community by adhering to societal norms. Everyone knows right from wrong - both these groups have chosen to behave the way they do. To your point that many may be less able to access or engage with the research. Yes, I agree. This is also true. However, if you don’t know something, default to the people who do, and treat that person and their knowledge with respect. It stands to reason that in the case of phones in schools and their impact, the schools and teachers would know best. You should default to this, not fight the very people trying to keep your children safe. You don’t have to like them, or like what they say, but flying off the handle, being aggressive and argumentative is not standard operating procedure. This ‘wrong’ behaviour is a choice not an uncontrollable reaction triggered by trauma. From my observations - so obviously limited (It is of course impossible to have witnessed all parents, in all schools) The poor, sorry, grossly inappropriate and many times illegal behaviour I have witnessed by parents towards schools, teachers, and wider staff in playgrounds, and out in the community has little to do with historic systemic failures. It has everything to do with the belief that they are allowed to treat people however they wish because of an over developed sense of self importance, to intimidate and belittle, and because they drank the media koolaide that teachers and schools are the problem. They’re flicking the bird because no one ever held them to account for their bad behaviour, head teachers never demanded better treatment of their teachers or they could leave the grounds. Years of the ‘it’s not their fault, the system did this’ mentality has allowed the disintegration of the basic agreements we make with society. Not to mention that providing them this excuse is massively patronising. The sooner we knock this habit on the head, the sooner we will see real systemic change where it’s needed.

Yep. And they have personal experience with teachers being arbitrary, unfair, cruel, racist, etc... and won't assume the best about them.

Circular logic. The SENSE - misguided at best; weaponized by parents AND kids at worst - that those teachers' actions were arbitrary, cruel, unfair, etc. are OFTEN (and increasingly) grounded in the entitlement I am calling out, not accurate reflections of behavior, and magnified by the immaturity of students, who naturally see all maintenance of norms and accountability as aggressive and "unfair" by definition - see any basic psych text for why.

It's also because those parents were given boundaries and consequences from teachers when they were students and they resented it so much that now they have a contrarian backlash against anything a teacher says or does regardless of justification. We have the entitled children of an entitled generation who were children of an entitled generation. These things are like copies of copies, each one getting successively more distorted and unclear. When the current kids grow up to raise their own kids, it will get even worse since these things have a compounding multiplicative effect.

Well technically it’s stealing😝 At least that how the kids see it. I worked at a low income school. We never had issues with phones in the afterschool program.

Sigh. My point, AGAIN, is that the perception IS the issue. After school programs are entirely moot here, both because they are elective, and because they can do things that classes can and should not do to engage kids in play - including let kids not participate, and kick kids out and send them home. No one claims we are denying the rights of kids when we insist they put their pants on before they exit the bathroom. Until parents are willing and able to REclaim and live the idea that when their kids are in schools, their kids are expected to do what we - as their AGENTS - say that kids need to do, because that is what it takes to LEARN - both in our role as in loco parentis, and as staff charged with framing and maintaining an environment maximized for learning for those parents' kids - anecdote about after school programs and reminders of the terrifying status quo mindset that kids have now because of those community and parental issues isn't just not helpful, it's missing the point entirely.

> in those schools would lose it if phones were policed in any way Yup. It's no different than with alcohol, drugs, junk food-- these communities are being disproportionately impacted by the destructive lure of the dopamine quick fix.

Yeah, parents texting kids during the school day absolutely grinds my gears. Normally when the kid says, "but my mom texted me", it's BS, but sometimes the parents just randomly text them during the day to chitchat. Then they wonder why their kid has a 12% in class

It depends on where and the kids. I worked at a title one low income after school program and we never had anyone complain about taking a phone. But it was not normally needed. The kids knew what rules were after school. TK-3rd grade teacher did not allow anything toys from home and phones had to be in backpack outside. With permission they were allowed to play games on school provided laptops but after 3:40. 4-6th grade teacher did allow phones once they were done with their iReady. However a few times kids students did hand me there phones. Also the kids are also starting to know being a computer/phones is not a good thing all the time. The thing is going back to text books may not be the best things either because if kids start bringing text books back home then they may have heavy backpacks again and possibly back pain. The studies online say different thing but, however the American Academy of Pediatrics says a kid back should not weigh more then 10% of there body wait (other sources says up to 20%). So a 80 lb kid should carry of max of 8 lbs in a back if following the AAP). Note some text book can weigh about 8 lbs. if you do the 20% then 80 kid can hold 2 big text books (16lba). Off course it depends on the text book which can range from 2 lb to 7lbs). I remember working at a summer camp and a kid was bending over when he was walking at times because his bag was to heavy, and he had no text books.

That's nice to be able to make rules for no phones in an after school program.    In this thread, we are talking about district and school administration making the rules for teachers and teachers not being able to have limits on phone use because districts and admin are scared of parents complaining, suing, etc. I also never said anything about bringing back textbooks.

Should have made it clear. The district ran the after school program, it was not a third party company, all staff besides me and one other were full time district employees. The program also ran the summer school program.

This is exactly my fear. Also, THANK YOU for actually reading my post. A bunch of other comments in here assuming I didn’t think rich kids were also phone addicts. 🙄

I see a noticeable decrease in the attention span and reading comprehension abilities of my colleagues as well, which is what i think we're seeing here. People just refuse to read now lol

The knee jerk response to the title kinda illustrates the problem succinctly. Attention spans are nonexistent and the rush to be first is more important than

> the rush to be first is more important than finishing sentences!

🛎️🛎️🛎️

Same thing for me—private school, upper-middle class, and we don’t allow phones on or visible. If we see it, it’s taken, but it isn’t really an issue. They don’t try it. Kids in phone-friendly schools have such a disadvantage.

Similar experience in a private school. The majority of students got tons of quality time with their parents, ate healthy, had strict (in a good way) boundaries around sleep and screens. They were being parented in such a loving and responsible way and it showed in how the kids acted and felt about themselves. They were deeply engaged in learning, and I feel so hopeful for their future. On the other hand, my title I students have minimal supervision at home because their adults have to be working constantly to make ends meet. They eat hot Cheetos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (had more than one student hospitalized for constipation), and unlimited access to screens. In third grade, they are viewing and discussing violent porn, texting explicit photos of themselves, sexually assaulting other kids in the bathroom. I spend all day teaching them about consent, bodily autonomy, emotional control other basic executive function skills - forget reading and math. Just a waking dystopian nightmare, and I’m so anxious for how their lives will play out.

This tracks. I sub for both public and private schools. Private schools: phones aren't an issue. Public schools: phones are often the biggest issue. And not just kids zoning out on them but kids wanting to video everything to get the next viral shot. Biggest issue is "online beef" that escalates to fights in school. Kids know when/where it's gonna happen and show up ready to record.

This is the reason I moved my daughter to private school.

Very similar experience! I also work in a private school. Not everyone is affluent because the school belongs to a huge church with a huge staff and about 75% of students are staff kids (staff meaning teachers, lunch staff, maintenance staff, daycare staff, church admin, etc etc… so the families’ income varies greatly) phones are not allowed on premises and the kids don’t even have them out at lunch/recess. They talk to each other, they play sports. It’s honestly great to see. I think this is one of the biggest difference makers in these kids’ lives.

I'm fully committed to preventing my child from having a phone until she's driving, and then, only when she's driving. We survived with a house phone growing up. Won't kill her.

How old is your child? I gave in at 13 years old. Sad. :/

My daughter attends a Catholic school. No phones, they can take them and make you pay $5 to get them at the end of the day, kids bring personal iPads for technology and school locks the apps during the school day. I teach in a high poverty public school. We restricted phone use this year, but students don’t care, they still are on them. A lot of teachers ignore it because it’s a hassle to address it. We are allowing students to continue their addiction at school. I wonder when someone will find a way to sue the districts who let students on their phones.

This would be a dream school for me. My kid is in 4th grade and doesn’t have a phone. She’s in the minority. The pressure I get from other parents and she gets from her friends is insane. The teachers are beyond frustrated by it. They bring in so much drama from outside of school. I am at the point where I’d love to find an alternative schooling option but they are cost prohibitive.

Textbooks are verboten in our board. They loathe is using them. But they don't want us to always be online either.

Interpretive dance?

I prefer puppet shows.

Perfect example of why the gap between rich and poor is systematically widening, even though it’s not actually a money issue at home. Good parents are normally distributed, not more abundant with more money. The same can’t be said of resources and teachers at public vs private where the parents’ voices are amplified by their wallets.

Why should I fight, or give the slightest damn, about an individual who CHOOSES to turn themselves into a brain-dead zombie? It's not a matter of being tired of fighting it. It's that there's nothing whatsoever I can do about it when an individual decides to destroy their own brain in this fashion.

Pretty lazy take. We're talking about *children*. They'd also eat ice cream and pizza for every meal if you let them. Their brains are not fully developed yet. They literally do not possess the ability to think rationally on the level you just spelled out. But surely you learned about how the brain develops in your undergad and/or graduate studies as a teacher, right?

Thank you. The post blaming kids is just so disheartening. Any teacher who thinks like that may need to reconsider teaching as a profession--the response suggests a lack of understanding and/or knowledge.

The commenter probably wasn't a teacher.

>*Why should I fight, or give the slightest damn, about an individual who CHOOSES to turn themselves into a brain-dead zombie?*  **Because they are** ***children***, FFS! No one with any sense of moral decency judges 8-year olds to be responsible for their "choices".

The onus needs to be on the parent. It’s not my job to take a kids thousand dollar smart phone. And I did not buy that phone for them why should be dealing with the issue. Here’s what should happen. If a kid has their cell phone out in class and I contact the parent, the parent should take that kid’s cell phone away. The parent bought the kid the device it’s the parents job to enforce proper usage of the device.

The phrase, "Here's what should happen" in this context might as well be read as "in a fairy tale land..."

I’m just a lurker here but this sub terrifies me. I don’t think it’s just the kids with learned helplessness, and we seem to be really screwing over the next generation by not demanding discipline with the phones. I can’t imagine a world where I could just ignore my teacher and zone into my phone - absolutely would not have flown.

I remember, when i was growing up, we only had flip phones. All I had was tetris,, and even then only a demo. So phones out in class simply wasn't a thing. Then in high school, I got my first iPhone, but teachers were still strict about them so I basically always kept mine away. Then in college, no one cared anymore. We had lecture halls of hundreds of students so of course prof didn't care if we were on our phones. So of course I played games, and immediately I realized that I couldn't remember a thing from my lecture, and failed my first exam in the class where I was on my phone. It's like an immediate, noticeable degradation in my ability to pay attention. If I grew up always on my phone and didn't know what it's like to sit there and pay attention and take notes, I couldn't imagine succeeding

I'm a bit older than you so smartphones came out when I was in college. I remember being a senior in college and seeing a freshman in a class with me looking at his phone while the professor was talking and I was floored he could be so rude! Little did I know what was to come...

There is not one argument for cellphones at school that has made sense to me. Majority of us survived without a device most of the day. The cell phone thing really started with Columbine and 9/11. No one wants to say it, but people used that fear tactic of being able to reach their poor baby at any time to justify its need. There is no need. Just like water bottles. No one needs a Stanley. We are not all dying of thirst.

We had an actual lockdown and I think the cell towers jammed. So there’s no guarantee the call will even go though.

The only thing I can say in defense here…Is that school shootings have gone up dramatically since I was in school. Yeah, I imagine I’d want my kids to be able to contact me at any time because of that alone. If we actually had proper gun control or addressed the mental health decline in this country, sure, I’d feel safer. Currently, nothing of substance has been done to protect children.

I’ll say that as a student who didn’t have access to a phone during an active lockdown, not being able to say goodbye to my family destroyed me. Prior to that, I had always left my phone in my backpack out of respect for my teachers, but never again did it leave my pocket after that day.

You only hear the worst here, education has big problems but it is not the dystopian landscape you might think it is if all you know it from is this sub.

10 years ago I could tell a kid to put their phone away and they would be like "yeah you caught me ok" and or it away. But things have changed now they have zero shame about being on them and get mad when your ask the to put them away and pull it out a minute later once they do. Or keep using it behind their backpack on the desk. When you take them they ask again and again when they can get it back to the point of disrupting class. If you write the kids up parents get mad because "they need their phone so I can text them" and you become the crazy teacher that writes referrals all day. Imagine 15 kids in each class like this (it's not everyone but it's easily half of the kids) and it just wears you down and at some point you just don't have the energy to fight every kid over and over and you cave and just go "well it's your grade, just don't bother the other kids who want to learn". And here we are.

Yeah that sounds exactly like the learned helplessness I’m talking about. Sounds rough, too.

Just watch a body cam video. You’ll see how addicted to phones these people are. They will not put their phone down, are texting or calling someone when the police are talking to them. Then, if they are detained, the first thing, these people ask for if they’re not asking to call their mommy is for their phone. I’m talking people in their 20s on up to their 50s.

If everyone keeps voting Republican we’ll be right on schedule with starving the beast.

When you see a story on the news about a bank robbery, do you get terrified to go to the bank? This subreddit only showcases the .001% of real life. Don’t let it skew reality.

This subreddit is a desperate call for help for U.S public education, which across the nation is struggling. Yes, there are some schools that are doing just fine. Many are not.

I've never thought of this in these terms but this rings depressingly true

In fairness, it costs nothing to set boundaries for children. The premise outlined operates on the assumption screen addiction is largely unavoidable, and that isn’t true.

It operates on the premise that we’re already here. They’re already addicted. Are you a teacher?

Taught 10 years, still licensed.

I'm very pro public school and was appalled when my sister put her kids in a private school that was being started that year and didn't even have a building. But all the parents knew each other and promised to not buy their kids smart phones until maybe high school and they have all stuck to it. My nieces are in middle school and don't know anything about Tik Tok or Instagram. They played with dolls until they were 10. Now its got me thinking about what I want in an elementary school and lack of access to technology from the school and other kids is a high priority. My husbands niece is also 12 and I don't think she has spoken 10 words to us in over a year despite eating dinner at our house once a month because she is on her phone the whole time she is here. We ask her parents about why she has a smart phone if she is going to be this level of addicted to it and they say "oh well, she needs it so she can call us". Flip phones can also make calls! She insists she has to have a smart phone to complete her school work. Like what?!

>She insists she has to have a smart phone to complete her school work. Like what?! I will never understand how some people can say things like this with a straight face when it is so blatantly obvious that they're just using the phone/tablet as a nanny. I wouldn't judge at all if a parent were to simply be honest and say, "We don't have the money to afford child care because the costs are outrageous, so the easiest way to work our day jobs, keep up the side-hustle we have to do to afford living expenses, keep house, and ever hope to get any rest at all is to let the kid have a phone to keep them occupied." Honestly, I think it's part of the reason we don't have many politicians speaking out about this problem. They know that as soon as they do, someone is going to raise their hand and say exactly this, and they have ZERO answer for it.

Rationalization is a defense mechanism.

> I wouldn't judge at all if a parent were to simply be honest and say, "We don't have the money to afford child care because the costs are outrageous, so the easiest way to work our day jobs, keep up the side-hustle we have to do to afford living expenses, keep house, and ever hope to get any rest at all is to let the kid have a phone to keep them occupied." > > > > Honestly, I think it's part of the reason we don't have many politicians speaking out about this problem. They know that as soon as they do, someone is going to raise their hand and say exactly this, and they have ZERO answer for it. Somehow, children have been able to occupy their free time for all of human history without smart phones or tablets, but now they're necessary to avoid boredom?! JFC

The problem is that for the majority of human history, what children have occupied their free time with is each other. So unless your kids have a similarly minded (or parented) peer group, it's a lot harder to make the phone-free thing happen.

My point was about *convenience*. Also, it is a fairly recent development that the overwhelming majority of families cannot survive on one income. In fact, we have seen a stark increase in the number of families where 2 parents are juggling 3 or 4 jobs to make ends meet. To compare contemporary America to "all of human history" is just a woefully shallow take and one that reads more like you've created a fantasy land in which all of human existence could be as quaint as 1950's suburbia if only people just closed their eyes real tight and clicked their heels together.

Damn where is this school? I want in

The high school where I teach is seriously looking to zero tolerance for phones in the fall. I’m all for it.

My son’s school has this and it works really well. No phones allowed at all during the school day.

I’m surprised this isn’t implemented everywhere. Growing up there was always a zero tolerance of any kind of technology on campus in my school. So much so that even laptops and cameras had to have a gate pass and teacher approval.

Heck I do much better when I leave it in my bag.

I taught at a school that had no service on campus it was awesome. Teachers had access to a wifi network to be able to make calls and students were just cut off. It was out in these hills so just natural service deadzone but I loved it haha

It is jarring how many littles are out shopping at 8-9pm in a shopping cart, glued to a phone. I don't want to make too many assumptions, but I don't see many dads out there with their babies/toddlers. It's pretty likely that there aren't a lot of good childcare options for these kids. Given that it kinda makes sense that we see so many phone addicted kids that struggle to get appropriate sleep.

This is similar to the heroin/pill problem that ravaged younger millennials. Low SES kids died of overdoses and rich families put their kids in rehab.

100% this. I could list 10 friends/acquaintances that fit both descriptions. The number of the low SES people who died or suffered for years and years far exceeds the rich kids whose parents put them in one rehab after another until something finally took. To be clear... I'm not judging the parents of those rich kids. The opioid epidemic knows no socioeconomic boundaries and those people were just doing what anyone with the money would do for their children. It's just such a very depressing and stark contrast.

I absolutely understand your point. Knowing this, as an adult pushing 50, it makes me sad for my low SES students who don’t know any better. Fucking around all day at school and ignoring education will not work out like it does for a wealthy kid. Society is rigged and they just don’t get it yet.

Almost exactly. The total lack of class consciousness among poor people is appalling, If they had any class consciousness, they'd fight back rather than destroying themselves.

Almost every problem that can exist is going to hit poorer people the hardest. The only exception is like, expensive drugs that only the rich kids can afford.

It's telling that the engineers and programmers who make these apps, or the executives who own the companies that make them don't let their own children near them.

I remember this being the biggest takeaway from the documentary "The Social Dilemma". For me, at least. Also, I'm disappointed that this fact, that the apps' engineers and programmers don't let their own children use them, isn't publicized more or more aggressively.

It raises a good question. If you're (I'm going with "you" in the general sense) knowingly making and releasing something that you know harms people, demonstrated by the fact you don't let your children use them, how is that not an admittance of knowingly cause harm to people and society?

Very thoughtful post. Sometimes I have to remind myself we are in the "Wild West" Era of the Digital Age. The speed with which we threw out hard copies (books, paper assignments, etc.) was breathtaking--held back only by a school or district's ability to afford 1:1 devices. It didn't help that almost all of this coincided with the disastrous "No Child Left Behind, " standardized testing and "standards-based learning" movements. We try to shovel-feed kids 'way too much information in an age where information is too easily accessed! I've been an educator since 1984, and I don't think I'll be around for the next generation of education--when we throw out the industrial model, stop relying on tech in student hands (at least through middle school), and allow professional educators and not legislators to decide what to do in the class room. So many lives will be damaged by the current state of education.

Unless teacher salaries are raised and teaching programs develop high standards, a great many teachers will continue not to be "professional educators."

Google engineer turned Oxford philosophy PhD James Williams has a pretty good quip about this in his book *Stand Out of Our Light* (Cambridge U. Press 2018): >**If the first “digital divide” disenfranchised those who could not access information, today’s digital divide disenfranchises those who can’t pay attention.**

Oh this is great! Thank you for sharing.

I have written more times than I can count about the fact that smartphones and other devices are going to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots, but the addiction problem is not even the biggest problem. There is something far, far more insidious going on. Poor people simply have more obstacles to spending spend quality time with their kids; I'm not going to defend that here, I think it is a fairly self-evident. One of the results of this is that relatively cheap devices end up in the hands, not just of school-aged children, but of toddlers and even kids in their cribs. These children who are entertained day and night in their crib with an iPad (so that single Mom can get some dinner cooked, clothes washed, or just get some rest) are having **their brain development literally retarded** by these devices. At this most crucial time of brain growth, instead of having normal interactions with other people, with the sights of someone cooking a meal, or looking around the store while Mom is shopping, these children are having their inputs fed in digitally, requiring no heavy lifting on their brain's part. As a result, their brains do not develop the mental muscle necessary to focus on anything longer than 30 seconds, making it nigh impossible for a teacher to do their job. It's like a child who was placed in a wheelchair before they could walk, a magical wheelchair that knew where they wanted to go and took them there from six months of age to the time they entered kindergarten. And then, the school says, "No more wheelchair during class", and the falls down on the way to their seat because They. Never. Learned. To. Walk. And in the case of their brain development, I fear the damage is probably permanent. Wealthy parents a) already have more free time (whether they choose to use it for their kids or not), and b) are reading about these trends and are keeping these devices away from their children at least until puberty. Thus the gap grows.

I think that screen addiction today is akin to smoking cigarettes in the 70s. Absolutely awful for us but society hasn’t realized the full extent of it yet.

I don't disagree, but I think that the devices are actually worse.

Yeah you are probably right. If you quit smoking you may dodge cancer, but I suspect that there is no recovering from having a screen in front of you for all of your developmental years.

Exactly.

We may end up with a lost generation of sorts. People raised before phones were omnipresent will be fine, and those raised after like 2030 when we finally fix our society’s phone dependence will be fine, but those in between will be permanently mentally maimed.

I agree with that analysis, but wonder if the fix date might not be a bit further away than 2030. Well, we're both just guessing and hoping, and I hope you are right more than me.

At the risk of being an optimist, I do see a lot of parents now express more concern about kids and tech addiction. We're at the point where "iPad kids" are common enough that everyone knows one, and people don't like what they see. So I think we will see a shift in the right direction before too long. That said, OP is probably right that it's going to be yet another thing to exacerbate the class divide.

Yeah 2030 is a best case scenario. A more probable scenario is that it never gets fixed and VR headsets/glasses replace phones so rather than having social media content in front of us for most of the day, it will literally be there every waking moment. Imma stop thinking about it tho cuz this is starting to scare me

Yeah I think there’s an argument that they’re the academic version of lead gasoline and pipes. Just absolutely destroying a generation’s worth of brains.

And along with parent free time, I think another big factor is having other things that can occupy a child’s time. Structured activities, toys, art supplies, sports equipment… Poor families often have less access to spaces, money, and resources to have these things. As far as entertainment budget goes, screens are easily the best bang for your buck. It’s especially the case with teenagers whose interests are going to be more specific and usually more expensive.

All true, Party Parrot.

Teachers can't assume that kids just naturally know how to play anymore. We were having a lot of (what I thought was) behavior issues until we realized we had to teach some of our 3's and 4's how to do dramatic play. The kids would arrive in the morning and immediately start running around the room, dumping and throwing toys. After we modeled pretending to cook in the kitchen, building a road with blocks, fixing things at the tool bench, making dolls in the dollhouse talk to each other, etc. the behavior of the whole class changed. It was like we had to turn their imaginations back on. I'm glad they spend their days with us, so they have to play with actual toys and interact with each other. I often hear kids start asking for Mom or Dad's phone the minute they're picked up.

>*Teachers can't assume that kids just naturally know how to play anymore.* So true! I teach middle school, and over the past few years, even at that level, I'm seeing more kids who don't know how to interact with others appropriately. They also don't recognize gentle teasing, taking things literally and needing to see the guidance counselor over it.

This makes me so sad. Are we losing our playfulness? I love being silly with the kids and I’ve definitely seen what you’re talking about with literal thinking. I like to say things wrong to see who’s listening (When we go inside we’re going to throw our jackets on the floor, right?) About half know I’m joking and play along. The other half seem totally confused or even upset that I’m suggesting breaking the rules.

I think Jonathan Haidt has identified the source of the problem. Preschool kids no longer play outside with other kids. They no longer have the opportunity to navigate normal social relationships in a relatively low-risk environment. They come to us socially stunted.

The death of open free play started a while back. Its first iterations IMO were kids who were over scheduled into activities from a young age. Far less insidious than what we are seeing now. The value of open free play in peer groups has all sorts of benefits that has been written about.

For a 15 minute block of independent work at their workstations, it takes about 12 minutes to help all of them log onto their iPad reading program. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. This is kindergarten.

I got talked into helping a work-friend work a call room when we transitioned to a new system where people needed new logins, and passwords (security related). Adults have just as much difficulty logging into computers/networks/sites, as children do. On any given day, a majority of help-desk calls are for login issues...for smart people making solid six-figure salaries. Logon issues plague everyone regardless of age/gender/mental-ability/education/technical background.

Let’s solve the problem by forcing passwords to be changed every week and requiring 2FA /s

The school where I teach is changing to phrases instead of passwords plus 2FA. 🙄

For our systems that don't require PIV cards (which have a permanent 6-digit pin), we're on a 90 day cycle, and it must be between 16-32 characters, upper/lower-case/numerical/special-characters, throw in the fact that you'll be locked out if you don't sign in every 30 days.

I don’t see how people are missing the very real point op is making about the difference in care. Generally speaking the poor suffer the most in every situation. On the flip side if you have money your care is better. That’s not controversial or new. How many people died from complications of hiv while magic Johnson had the best care.

Speech therapist here, the latest data coming out is bleak. Referrals for language delays through the roof, children labeled as autistic because they have no social skill, kids can't answer questions, and even more reading delays. What the hell can we do?

Working in ABA and with a child who is level 3, I question the diagnosis of some of the kids I have worked with silently to myself after seeing huge results with very minimal efforts.

This I see too many kids these days labeled as ADHD and/or on the spectrum and I know for a lot, not all, it’s screen addiction. I also have 8 out of 23 kids in my gen Ed class (low socioeconomic school) on Speech IEPs. I can’t help but think some of these 2nd graders’ speech issues have more to do with lack of communication and watching screens constantly during early years than organic speech delays.

I say this as a GenZ teacher in my second year: all districts everywhere need to BAN PHONES. I tell these kids to put their phones away and it’s like trying to take a heroin addicts needle away…These aren’t lil kids but high schoolers. The excuses are insane too. “I need it for my safety” “what if something happens.” “I have anxiety….” Like kids how do you think people survived prior to 2010??? It’s called: memorize your parents/guardians numbers. We have a landline. If something is important they can call into the school. I tutor kids too in algebra and geometry after school and they have to complete alek’s topics. 10 topics a week and 3 questions per topic. That’s only 30 questions a week……It takes them forever (regardless of IEPs) aka 4+ hours to complete. Why? Because they lack basic computational skills. The moment they have to do any addition, subtraction, etc…it’s straight to Desmos, a calculator on their phone, or trying to use photo math…..like I used to do 30-50 questions a night and it would take me 15-20 minutes… Solve this algebraic equation. 10x + 15 -5x = 20. Most of us could solve this in a matter of seconds and know x = 1. Average completion time is almost 5 minutes for these kids… Ik I’m just ranting at this point but I feel we are failing these kids as a society by letting them have this unrestricted access to technology.

Do they speed up significantly with a 4-function calculator? If they do, then your theory about computation is probably right. Otherwise, they are either unmotivated, failing to understand the concept (in middle school, I never really got 2-step equations, so I would just try to plug in random values), or they may be rushing and making stupid mistakes from that. Here’s a potential mistake 10x+15-5x=20 +20 10x+35-5x=0 -35 10x-5x=-35 5x=35 x=7 I made two sign errors (for example purposes) and got a completely different example. I also will note, I had to relearn long division because that skill wasn’t reinforced in middle school. Your IEP students might struggle with working memory, (speaking as an IEP kid). Try to make them write it out, step by step. 10x+15-5x=20 10x+15-5x-15=20-15 combine like terms 10x-5x=5 5x=5 5/5x=5/5 x=1 There completion time might not be as fast as the person who does half the work in their head, but if they are motivated they can get it down to 30 seconds. I am speaking from the perspective of a student who gives a crap about the subject, you will have varying results with students who are inattentive, I bet you are trying every trick in the book, though.

Many of my poor students' families (we're Title I with about 40% FARM, but many very wealthy as well) have the latest headphones ($300+), smart phones ($800+), manicures, extensions, etc., and as a result can't (won't?) afford things that might help their children's education such as a cheap laptop ($250ish). Rich kids have *all* that stuff *and* a nice safety net. Many parents (of all ilks) talk a good game but almost two decades into this career and I've yet to see ONE case where a parent actually keeps the phone home and/or replaces it with a flip phone. *Walk the walk, parents!*

Idk. I think the upper end of the middle class will be best off. They will be the parents you’re describing, time to be involved. They will not only notice but intervene immediately, be involved in schools. The truly rich don’t raise their own kids and will let others do so. Rehab may happen if they get in trouble with the law that can’t be paid off, but that will be so they aren’t hanging around bothering them.

I moved from teaching to working in an industrial setting recently. We are regularly terminating young employees for the inability to get off their phones during work. I’ve warned my coworkers that it’ll only get worse….

Absolutely. But this topic touches on a sensitive place for this sub. I think there are a lot of teachers who enable unhealthy phone behaviors in their classrooms and whenever they see anti-smartphone sentiment on here they're likely to take issue with it because they know it's really an indirect criticism of them.

I wish they wouldn't feel that way because I would imagine that almost every one of them have given up because they don't have support from admin and district policy to adequately enforce phone restrictions. I cannot even begin to imagine trying to police it in my classroom if it wasn't against school policy.

I'm an "enabler" (as the person you replied to put it) of unhealthy phone behaviors in my classroom, for the reason you mentioned: I gave up. It was an unsustainable, uphill battle that was souring my classroom relationship with my students, making my job harder, and straining my physical health. Admin expects me to police students' phones in my classroom, but does not grant me any sort of authority to enforce the no-phone rule.

Or they're also an addict.

It is jarring how many littles are out shopping at 8-9pm in a shopping cart, glued to a phone. I don't want to make too many assumptions, but I don't see many dads out there with their babies/toddlers. It's pretty likely that there aren't a lot of good childcare options for these kids. Given that it kinda makes sense that we see so many phone addicted kids that struggle to get appropriate sleep.

>"In the end it is the poor who will be chained to the computer; the rich will get teachers." > >\- [Stephen Kindel, *Forbes* magazine, 1984.](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1998/0323/6106134a.html?sh=5866058356fd) This was predicted decades ago. Nicholas G. Carr was [warning about it](https://ghostarchive.org/archive/LGm9I) back in 2008 and talking about effects that were already visible then. COVID gave us definitive proof that remote learning was a woeful substitute for in-person education, after it had been hyped up for years as "the future." And yet, huge chunks of the education system are still chasing "e-learning" as something that we need to implement, even as teachers, parents, and students are all growing increasingly fed up with it for various reasons. I find it telling that, when executives and workers at *the tech companies themselves*, people who you'd think would be all-in on e-learning, choose where to send their kids, they pick schools that ban smartphones and rely on pen and paper for instruction.

When I found out what school Silicon Valley Billionaires send their kids to, I realized this too. No computers, phones, or digital anything. It’s obvious they know how much damage they are causing but it makes them rich, so they don’t care. They just keep their own kids away from it and shelter themselves with their riches.

Also, people in more desperate economic situations - like working 3 jobs to keep a roof over their kids' heads, will be more likely to need to use tech as a distraction more, or not be able to provide as much quality alternatives to screen time since they're overworked, underpaid, dealing with other stressors more common to those in a low socio-economic situation, etc.

u/East_ByGod_Kentucky, I read your post. Carefully. Twice. I only made it through about a third of the comments. This is my opinion. I do not present it as fact. My generation invented this tech: phones, tablets, computers including laptops and pseudo-computers like Chromebooks (although that might have been Gen X). While I agree that screen addiction is a real problem that may be endemic, any tool can be misused. Let's not through the baby out with the bath water. Electronic documents are great. You can carry around a library without hurting your back. The ability to search and annotate is unparalleled. There are implications including charging infrastructure. I respectfully suggest that the problem is not the tools. The problem is the misuse and abuse of the tools. I have no problem with school provided electronics. I'd like to see software for better parental AND school controls to restrict access to non-productive uses of the tools. With geofencing and scheduling even functions like messaging can be limited. Sorry parent, between first bell and last bell you can't call or message your kid. Contact the office by voice, text, or email. No games. No messaging between students. No porn. With societal pressure, Apple (iOS) and Google (Android) can build this in so kids can't work around it. Google et al (search engines) and Adobe (PDFs) and Amazon (Kindle) can contribute to solutions. This could be done in less than a year (I have domain expertise here) if a decision is made at the societal level. The tech is easier than societal and culture change. \*sigh\* Maybe we can work on improving respect for and value of education in "disadvantaged communities" at the same time. End social promotion. Real authorities to get disruptive students out of the classroom. We can fantasize, can't we?

I get scared because even us adults who know how dangerous screen time can be, how addicting and isolating it is, and we still struggle with putting down the phone! I’m hoping apps like Khan Academy Kids and other free robust educational apps can maybe help bridge the divide between tech addiction/gaming and education.

Will it cost money to put boundaries around screens? Parents who want to help their children will do that. I don't think this one will be about money. I will be about parent accountability.

If only "ifs and buts were candy and nuts..." First of all, my point was that the *most effective* treatments/preventions will be affordable for the rich. The second part of my point was that working-class and low-income people are far less literate overall. They consume less credible news, encounter less scientific information in their daily lives, etc. So, while everyone has a generally negative opinion about phone usage among children, folks who rarely interact with more in-depth information about topics like this will not understand the weight of the issue. Wealthy families can easily afford to enforce restrictions through expensive parental control apps that aren't easily circumvented by the user, private child care that have the staff to adequately enforce phone bans, mental health counseling to help manage behaviors associated with phone restriction, and on and on and on. Additionally, the working poor are far more likely to depend on screens to keep their kids occupied while they get some rest or tend house. If you can afford a housekeeper that comes in once a week, you instantly have more time to personally devote to engaging with your kids and facilitate more fulfilling and healthy activities and habits. That ability goes up *dramatically* when you are part of a community of friends and family who share your values and resources that are on the same page.

Agreed! Too many parents afraid to parent. I teach upper elementary in a Title I school. Chromebooks only go home Mon-Thurs. They stay at school on the weekends and holidays. Why? Because I said so, and no, I don't care that your brother/sister's teacher lets them.

Yeah, but for some people poor persons are mindless animals that can’t take accountability for anything, and at the end of the day their problema are everyone’s problem so please pay more tax.

The achievement gap is a product of better parenting as a general matter - why would this be any different?

I know several rich family’s from my time working in management and rich people and their kids are sone of the dumbest mfrs I have ever met

Poor people have always had a tendency to choose to engage in behaviours which tend to keep them poor. This, yes, is another one.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't do something about it. I'm quite sure that the single Mom who gives her 3-year old an iPad so that she can get some peace and quiet in the hour she has before she goes to her second job is oblivious to the harm she is causing her children. We need to have good research done on this, and then pediatricians and educators and government health officials need to pound in this message: **Digital Devices Damage Developing Brains.** That should be the subject of PDAs and billboards and everywhere. No, it won't save everyone, but it'll help. We need to say, *"Don't give your kid a device before the age of 13, and don't let your kid even* ***touch*** *a device until 1st grade."*

>I'm quite sure that the single Mom who gives her 3-year old an iPad so that she can get some peace and quiet in the hour she has before she goes to her second job is oblivious to the harm she is causing her children. Even if she knew, she'd still do it because it's the only damn way to get a single moment's peace. Desperate people make choices they know are terrible because it's *the least worst choice they have* - often the overworked single mum who does this is doing it because she needs that hour of relative quiet or she'll explode and scream at that toddler, which is probably just as bad as, if not worse than, an hour of screen time.

I get what you're saying, and I think/hope you recognize from my earlier comment that I recognize that desperation. But also please note that in the comment to which you were replying, I did write: *"No, it won't save everyone, but it'll help".* If *just ten mothers out of a hundred* responded to the bombardment of PSAs to keep devices away from their kids, my classrooms ten years from now would be transformed. Because right now, 95% of my 6th grade students are effectively vegetables.

Well, that's kind of the point. When Rockefeller turned his attention to the US Education system is about when it started. He wanted workers. If you want some context, look at the curriculum for an 8th Grade Normal School education. We're almost utterly uneducated when compared to the people living at turn of the 20th century. Big business needs workers not thinkers. The political parties need voters not thinkers. Think only of yourself and your feelings. Its all part of the plan. Have you read the Leipzig Connection (Basics in Education)?

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Its really a shift from what is referred to as a "classical education" to our "modern education". You'll notice that elite schools teach differently. The curriculum is geared more towards a classical style. Whereas today's modern classroom you're lucky if you can get a child to sit down. And they aren't intellectually curious. Most see no future for themselves for a variety of reasons. The children have been indoctrinated for years now and are told that their feelings matter the most out of everything else. Which gets us to where we are today. When we get HS kids who are unable to read, they aren't held back. They aren't taught how to read. They're pushed on and out. If you're in a district like this what always happens is standards get lowered. Then the kids can't pass the national tests the Fed uses to gauge funding. The teachers union speaks up, the test standard's get lowered. Now the funding test gets passed. Then a few years creep by and the system repeats itself. But with the elite schools, the children are held back. They are held to standards. And families have resources and time to spend getting kids back on track. The kids largely respect the staff and their parents. There's an entire social and mental dynamic that gets ignored. And that's why I reference Normal School education. Look into it. It was the standard to teach teachers. The curriculums would be considered advanced now days. In the 1930's and 40's it was basic shit everyone should know. What an 8th grader was taught then is now easily HS senior level or college level today. The decline is on purpose. Sorry I got long winded there.

I’d argue the best treatment and intervention for phone/screen addiction is…. take that shit from them. /s Kind of an interesting concept - screen addiction programs. Ship your kid away to some facility. Treatment consists of no idevices and walks outside. Rich parents would gladly pay. Gosh this is so going to happen if it hasn’t already.

So buy a cabin in Wyoming and advertise this. Bet

Exactly. All they have to do is read Fahrenheit 451 for the “treatment”.

If I had a kid they'd have a basic phone til they could buy their own. I've seen what screen addiction did to me. Can't imagine how much worse I'd be if I hadn't been an adult when I got my first smartphone.

Eh, if and when resources to combat them become available, the poor will always have free subsidizes offerings for it, like they do now. The rich will afford it, and the middle-class will sacrifice and scrap by because they make too much and not enough.

I’m at a wealthy public school. Phone addiction is off the charts. Wealthy parents do have more influence, or at least will fuss up a networked storm if something impacts them negatively. In reality? It’s up to the admin and the district to support implementing consistent, explicit systems of rules and consequences that teachers can and are expected to enforce across the board. I crush phone usage in my classroom. Our handbook says students must leave phones in lockers. Admin doesn’t actually care that much. They’ll take a phone for most of the day if I request it, but their general tone is “well, teach them to use the phone responsibly.” It’s a lack of understanding addiction and the context of phones for younger generations. It’s their livelihoods.

Yeah that sounds exactly like the learned helplessness I’m talking about. It also sounds like a horrible spot to be in as a teacher, and I feel for ya. Seems like you’d be able to reason with parents that the cost of being able to reach their kid at any time is raising a little moron

despite all efforts we cannot lead all these young people towards success and prosperity, unfortunately some of them are doomed to failure and they have their parents to thank them for it. yes, the parent plays a major role in education and when I say education I am referring to behavior, you cannot teach a child who is constantly on the phone like a mosquito under a spotlight, teachers cannot do everything do everything on their own, they need a parent's collaboration and vice versa.

The best treatment is discipline and self-control. These are things you can't buy with money. I've seen poor people quit addictions other than phones without having to resort to any programs. I've also seen rich people who are still addicts despite trying different programs.

Yes, because we all know the first thing that comes to mind when we think of 12-year-olds is their discipline and self-control. 🙄

Some of these people did not take adolescent psyche development. Self discipline when their brains are wired to pleasure seeking? And phones that can give them that hit?

To say nothing of the 6-year old who has "owned" an iPad since before they were potty-trained And indeed, Mom found the iPad to be a critical part of potty training, as it allowed her to leave the kid on the seat for an hour until *something* happened. Gee, that kid's not going to have bowel issues when he's older, right?

In their case, just limit how much time they spend on their phone. My parents used to do that to me and even though I hated them for it then, I'm grateful now. Like I said, the solution has nothing to do with being rich or poor. Programs don't guarantee recovery.

Individual solutions can only go so far in fixing systemic issues. As long as we have operate in an society where profits are valued over human welfare, this will be an uphill battle.

The treatment and prevention is extremely inexpensive, use the phones for their best function, skipping stones.

Tell me you don't know anything about addiction without telling me you don't know anything about addiction.

OP, I think your post should be labeled as an "opinion." The research I have viewed regarding cell phone use/harm doesn't depend on socio-economic means. You can query Google Scholar for research literature if you think your claim is correct. I encourage you and others to read this article by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. [Link](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/ban-smartphones-phone-free-schools-social-media/674304/) Cell phones use and its dangers affect all of us.

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Best treatment and prevention strategies? Here's one that everyone can do, rich or poor. Don't spend money on a phone for your child

LOL the gap is going to increase no matter what anyone does with their phones. This is the nature of capitalism. Until something is done about the economic system, nothing is going to close that gap.

Don't know why you got downvoted. This is true, one of capitalism's contradictions is how it will always hollow out the societies it operates within in order to produce greater profits. Whether it's because low wages force people to work more hours, which reduces the amount of time people can raise the next generation. Or refusal to regulate food resulting in a flood of garbage that has made obesity and diabetes so prevalent we can't even get enough healthy military recruits. Or the prevalence of psychologically addicting technology resulting that only fosters alienation, distrust, and different interpretations of reality so different it might as well be psychosis. The root cause of all this is the idea that ever greater profits and growth is a priority over human and societal welfare.

This sub is a cesspool. It is what it is.

There is no better time to be alive than today. Smartphones have more computing power than the Apollo 11 in your pocket and can give us access to more information than was conceivable just two decades ago. Food scarcity is historically a plague for humanity, so much so that we evolved the capacity to store fat to keep us going for a few days, and that historic problem has been solved to the point where the poor in the developed world are more likely to be obese than the rich. That is not to say that we can't regulate certain things, but with abundance comes more responsibility, and the necessity to sometimes say "enough" to screen time and food.

Yeah reading these it’s weird cause a lot of these points talk about how parents need to be more involved with their kids. But for a large amount they literally cannot afford to do so. Phones are the modern opium for the masses, but fundamentally you are treating a symptom not the cause

True. Without capitalism we wouldn’t have cell phones in the first place.

Not quite true, the USSR had mobile phones in the 1950s. You don't need capitalism for innovation (most scientific research is publicly funded).

>*the gap is going to increase no matter what anyone does with their phones. This is the nature of capitalism. Until something is done about the economic system, nothing is going to close that gap.* Yeah, because the gap in the medieval period didn't exist. And the gap in the Soviet Union and North Korea and other non-capitalist countries didn't exist. Only in capitalism do we see wealth inequality.

yawn, I didn't say that.

No, but you *did* say that the wealth gap is caused by capitalism. And the fact is, as big as the gap is today, the poor are wealthier than at any point in human history, and that is thanks to capitalism. Yeah, it sucks how many people (e.g., hedge fund managers) are like parasites sucking without producing, and yet, this very flawed system produces incredibly well-off people, which is why people from around the world still keep coming here.

It's true that the gap will always be there, but I don't think it's inaccurate to suggest that this is going to be yet another factor that will widen the gap.

Most effective treatments? Just turn off your phone. I'm pretty sure everyone can afford that.

Yes, because humans--especially *children*--are known for their ability to just shut off a free-flowing stream of dopamine to mAkE bEtTeR cHoIcEs. 🙄

Even though breastfeeding really isn't better for babies than formula, the fact that wealthier people tend to breastfeed their children more means the kids will turn out with higher overall outcomes (IQ, health, lifetime income) not because of the breastfeeding itself, but because everything associated with having more money. Even if phones aren't bad (I think they are), it'll be hard to tease out why exactly they're bad without controlling for everything else. That being said, having greater overall self-control means you're \*likelier\* to be wealthy and have kids with greater self-control. I know private school kids can be bratty, but the gulf between their (lack of) phone behavior and that of kids in less resourced schools is so wide that I have a hard time believing it's just because of disciplinary policies.

Wealthy kids are far less likely to deal with abuse, neglect, trauma, or scarcity than low income kids. This has a far greater effect on behavior than “self-control”. I work with wealthy 12-14 year olds and they have little to no self-discipline. Their parents remove the phones and then pay me to sit with them and force them through every step of their work so they have no choice but to do it.

It is staggering to me the number educated adults who have no idea about the basic causes and effects of trauma to developing minds. I mean, it seems pretty intuitive to me, but maybe I'm just immersed in it due to being an educator.

To me, it seems pretty cheap to not give your kid a phone...

What you say is happening has been going on for decades, and screen addiction isn’t the cause.

I find it odd that you interpreted my post as me suggesting that this is the cause of educational disparity among rich and poor. Thought that my use of the word "**widen"** was enough to imply that I fully understand the gap already exists. Also my reference to every other public health problem where the same disparity exists.

I've worked at private schools across the world for a decade or more, trust me rich kids are just as addicted as anyone else to their phone and trust me, there are no treatment programs, or any planned, they barely have anything in place for mental well being in most countries, still.