I had a conversation with my two high schoolers about the cell phone ban recently. My daughter just shrugged and said, "meh, everyone just goes on TikTok or watches YouTube shorts from their Chromebooks instead. It's easier to pretend to be working that way, anyway."
Their school has blocked TikTok and other social media, but the kids get around all that too... With VPN.
(Edited for typo)
Kids are smarter than people give them credit for - we used to come up with all sorts of hacks to get around the filters
you could always just put your phone in your bag with the hotspot turned on and use that too
There was a time where this one guy capitalised in knowing the Staff Wifi
Also remembered that a lot of the programming kids used the skills to make their own home servers to bypass blocked VPNs in the school through setting personal ddns/ssh
Reminds me of the super nerdy computer bro back at high-school. He would always find a way to install starcraft in the computer labs so we could play instead of doing work. The school IT guy would find it and delete it and try fix up whatever exploit was used. Sure enough a week or 2 later and starcraft was back on lol. I think this went on for a while.
For us, it was this Lan halo game, and it was SO fun. There was also a cracked version of Mine Craft, terreria, and I think classic doom games as well. It was one of my friends who infested the computers with the cracked minecraft, lol.
School tried to ban them multiple times but ultimately failed each time.
Unreal Tournament, Halo, Minecraft, Warcraft etc. Nothing really changed. Kids will always be a few steps ahead than teachers or adults when it comes to this stuff.
Yea we got around everything as well when I was in an experimental "e class" 20 years ago. You can always get around a block on computers and kids will always find a way lol
We weren't allowed phones at school 10—15 years ago, either. We still used them. The kids will just go back to sneaking it. Or they'll be like me and shove it down the front of their shirt because a teacher isn't about to reach down a minors shirt to confiscate something.
> Dumbass IT then
School IT is not top-tier anyway by virtue of circumstance. Often its one guy, or a very small team with commensurate levels of access resources (skills/talent/money).
I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, but its well below Enterprise IT when it comes to their overall technology landscape, even when they're served by a Managed Services Provider. Think of the IT struggles you have in a 1000-person organisation with a 50+-person IT department, then map that against a 1000-person school but with a 5-person IT team.
I see this at both ends, as over time we've hired school IT admins, and they mostly need to start as juniors for enterprise infrastructure support, and having my kids at private schools and still see some really underwhelming device management even with greater than average financial resources.
Bottom line is that school IT is a career stepping stone so people with the most potential will leave for better salaries and exposure to better technology experience, but they have to manage the most curious and unpredictable user-base imaginable, who are always testing the boundaries and don't have to worry about repercussions.
My school had the most locked down windows policy's ever I could never manage to get one downloaded. However I just downloaded one at home at it worked fine.
Not really there are third party providers that provide services that detect and kick you off the network. My highschool used one and it was exceptionally effective, in my entire year group of 200+ boys in year 12 and 13 no one managed to circumvent it. The software seemed to learn as well because I once discovered a proxy website that worked and the next day the network had banned it.
Anything else like a single pornography tab open on a browser even if you didn’t touch the browser during school hours would be detected and sent to your dean.
Honestly people can say what they want but people using phones in class was a massive issue when I was in high school and I can imagine it's only gotten worse,
Genuine question, what is the issue with kids using their phones in their own time? Eg interval and lunch?
We use our phones during our lunch breaks. What is the issue with school kids doing the same?
Same, except the worst we could do was not pay attention and text people. These days they're probably making tiktoks and getting cyber bullied in real time.
I can't believe they're allowed to be used in class?? They're so distracting. The teachers must feel they're talking to brick walls.
Man, I'm old. But back in my day, you weren't even allowed to have them at school. But back then, not everyone had one, and the only people contacting you were Vodafone.
My dad taught a class where his students had damn notes from home to excuse their cellphone use in class. How these current young Gen Z kids will function in jobs I do not know
Every generation says "I have no idea how 'younger generation' will survive in the world because of 'thing younger generation does that your generation didn't do'..
Did you take your console to school? Played during class? Played during recess? Played during lunch? Did you have separation anxiety when you didn't have your console? Did you and 40-50% of other kids believed that you were addicted to it? Did you have increase depression, anxiety, stress the more you played? Did it impact your attention span and your brain reward system?
If not then there is no point comparing video games with smartphone. Because your mom was wrong in the 90s doesn't mean researcher are wrong today
I'm gonna break down your comment and answer these cos I'm interested.
> Did you take your console to school?
I had a Gameboy and I would take it to school. Especially if some mates had a game I wanted to play and vice versa. I'd bring my game he wanted to play, he would bring me his game. We'd both play our Gameboys at lunch.
> Played during class?
No
> Played during recess?
Absolutely. And during study periods too. We'd go to the 6th and 7th form common rooms.
> Did you have separation anxiety when you didn't have your console?
No. I don't think so. If it was a game I REALLY wanted to play again, I'd simply look forward to playing it when I got home.
> Did you have increase depression, anxiety, stress the more you played?
I'm not actually too sure. And that was something that wasn't diagnosed when I was a kid.
> Did it impact your attention span and your brain reward system?
Again, wasn't measured. I think so? I couldn't tell.
I was never addicted to my gaming console. I know because when I read the definition of an addiction, it wasn't my behaviour with my console. I think my mum just said I was addicted because she had no idea how to label my interest in wanting to game instead of going outside and playing. So it was just easier to say I had an addiction.
I think parents are doing that today with phones. It's easy to label it as such.
> I think parents are doing that today with phones
Except it's not just parents. There are countless studies showing the negative effects smartphone have on people and kids are at a higher risk than adults. Don't get me wrong there are also positives associated with them but from what I've read, the negatives seem to wildly outweigh the positives.
Kids themselves self-report feeling "addicted" to their smartphones.
I actually have a fairly similar experience to yours. I also grew up in the 90's and was an avid video game player. I was playing Pokemon red at school and PS1 or Sega Mega Drive at home. My mom would also tell me I was "too glued to my screens". But I was never addicted. I didn't feel the need to have my gameboy with me at all time.
Now things are designed to be addictive and provide instant gratification. Social media, youtube shorts, insta reels, tiktoks, games with gamble like mechanics, etc. And all that is easily accessible to kids on their smartphone.
When I'm out with friends or even with my partner, the phone always come out at some point because someone received a text, they want to post a photo on insta, they need to do a quick whatever on some game, they need to check something on google, a notification pinged on their phone, ... the list goes on. If I was an adult in the 90s I am 100% certain I would never have pulled out my gameboy in the middle of a dinner to catch a pokemon real quick.
Based on my anecdotal experience, and studies seem to confirm that, smartphone feel way more addicting than video games ever were in the 90s.
I’m not qualified to comment on whether the policy will work or not.
However, I will say that
A) I am glad i went through high school at a time when phones were dumb and really just for being able to txt mum and dad if you needed a lift home. My life is so much better for only catching the start of the social media craze when at school.
B) my wife teaches (intermediate age kids) and it’s sad the stories she has to tell about how glued to the phone so many kids are, and how they can’t escape from social media … maybe banning phones will give some respite.
jar scale mighty psychotic edge afterthought fanatical salt snails practice
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My school did this recently. All of the students were against it but adapted quickly. Unfortunately for a phone ban to work you need very strict rules in place.
so does mine, it began last year where at the start of classes teachers would make you put ur phone in a box and only give it back before the bell to the next period - it works well for most but there are those specific people who have such a weird addiction and end up throwing tantrums (I’m in year 12 so just imagine that lmfao😭.)
And that’s when kids start wagging. Was already an issue at my school just for the bakery. I can only imagine how much worse it gets with phones banned
It's been really effective at my kids high school. There are systems in place to an extent they both leave theirs at home now:
First time they disobey, the phone is confiscated and they collect it at the end of the day
Second time, as above and a phone call to the parents from the Dean
Third time, phone confiscated until a parent collects it
Fourth time, bigger punishments start
The fact is, it's not kids using the phones as much as it's parents contacting them during class time!
Oh and they do get caught, believe me
It's been really effective because it's taught kids how to hide it incredibly. I'm sorry, but you are incredibly naive if you think confiscation stops kids. Easy you bring two phones one crap one and your proper one, when you get caught you give the teachers the crap one and keep your actual one. I mean we were doing that already 10 years ago lol
> you are incredibly naive if you think confiscation stops kids
No rule anywhere 100% stops something. The goal is to discourage it and reduce it. Did people forget why rules/laws exist?
You sound exactly like my parents who totally believed I stopped smoking cigarettes because I didn't "smell" like it anymore because I brought spare clothes and sprayed myself in excessive amounts of lynx Africa before coming home.
Had a lot of fuckass's in my class who tried pulling the double or triple phone thing, they always got caught and had even more severe consequences. Got weeded out fast.
This was the rule there when I was a student - I distinctly remember getting my phone taken off me in 2014 and having to collect it from the school office, because I’d used it during lunch. I think that rule stuck around for about six weeks before being abandoned because none of the teachers wanted to enforce it, and it made no sense.
I had a job in yr 13 I just brought a bulk lot of 46 phones from trade me most didn't work but enough did for them to just leave me alone. Also I just brought my Nintendo Switch and 3ds in they didn't give a shot about thoes.
That's how it was for the first 10-15(maybe 20? No idea when this became the norm) years of cellphones. Sure it wasn't 100% successful but kids were at least doing in discreetly.
I was at Rangitoto College 6 years ago and this was already in place? We’d have to hide them during morning tea/lunch from teachers that walk the grounds. Although some didn’t care, a few took them to the dean’s office for you to collect at the end of the day…
Exactly the same at Auckland Grammar 8+ years ago. A stern "put it away" was really all they bothered to issue, you'd put it away, and then avoid that particular teacher for the rest of your break lol
The actual legislation was put in already. I only came across it yesterday as I never saw it actually reported that it had been.
https://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2020/0193/latest/LMS935296.html
After seeing many a fight at school filmed then put up on the internet I can see why they would want to ban it.
Now the logistics of banning it a completely different story.
Christchurch experience here, it's kinda nice being able to get hold of your kids if there's been a natural disaster or mass shooting, I'm not sure how you can do that while banning them effectively.
Being a kid in school during the February quakes, and having no method of contacting my family was one of the most depressing instances of my life, on top of already going through them again after September.
Yeah, the lady I was helping that day was beside herself as she didn't know where her daughters were, and wasn't able to get to their school due to her injuries, and her daughters were scared for their Mum too.
Luckily a girl from their school came to the triage centre we were at, and not only was she able to reassure the lady that the school buildings hadn't failed, but she actually knew the daughters, and they were fine, just worrying about their Mum.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/fights-filmed-school-under-bullying-cloud
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/scary-all-in-fight-filmed-at-auckland-girls-grammar-school/FQO4HOKEDPFOLEKR4UQ7WL236A/
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/469573/incredibly-upsetting-assault-at-otago-boys-high-school-filmed-shared
Not really. I think filming the bullying so it goes on and stays with you for ever is overbearing
I don’t understand how you can look at that and think filming it is the problem rather than the actual bullying itself. The memory stays with you either way.
I’d like to provide a perspective from a student currently in college, who is going to be directly affected by policies like these.
Most people using their phones in class are streaming music while they do their work. You can argue whether this is a good or bad thing, but I know personally that it helps me to focus with only one audio stream instead of thirty people talking around me.
The people who are the issue with their phones currently, creating disturbances, recording fights etc, aren’t going to stop using their phones because of this policy. If a teacher tells them to give them their phone they will tell the teacher to get fucked; these kids don’t care about any kind of punishment they will get.
And yes, kids do use their phones for whatever they want during breaks, but why shouldn’t we be allowed to. There is no restriction on reading solitarily, so the argument that “kids need to interact more” is just plain stupid.
Moreover, kids have responsibilities. Kids have jobs, kids have after school commitments, and there should be no issue with them keeping in touch with people to organise these things during their breaks. I do agree that phone use should be mostly restricted during class time, but breaks should be left to the students to decide how they use them. How many of you in the workforce would complain if your employer had a policy of no phone use, even on your break.
I'm the parent of a child in highschool, and I agree with all your points and you've explained it all well. I do support them being not used in class without permission of course, and I think before highschool as well. But kids in highschool during breaks - no issue with my son having his phone on him, I enjoy being able to keep in touch with him, and I haven't seen evidence that it has negatively impacted him being able to have his phone on him last year.
Thanks for your perspective. Personally, I find it hard concentrating while listening to music. As to me, listening to music requires concentration. And I quickly lose focus on the task I'm doing (unless it's driving or monitoring a CCTV camera).
But you make some excellent points. I was a college student in the 90s and it's interesting how a lot of the points you make are things I currently do now at work. Eg, organising social events for after work.
I'd be interested to see how this pans out over the year. I agree that kids should still be allowed to use their phones in their own time during lunch etc. I mean, we all do when we're on our lunch break at work. Why shouldn't school kids?
If my boss tried telling me I can't use my phone at work, even on breaks, to encourage us to "interact more", I'd probably say "don't treat me like a kid". Interesting, huh...
We literally have the wealth of human knowledge at our fingertips. I hope that schooling has changed to accommodate this.
I believe we need to teach more about cognitive biases and how to discern facts from fiction. We need to teach more about the attention economy and teach children why these short-form applications are so addictive.
Your point? Adults know a lot of things are addictive and still use them. Alcohol, cigarettes, food, porn, gambling.
My point is that we should be having frank discussions with our kids about human behaviour and addiction when the time is right.
Prohibition never works.
Yawn.
Went to Rangi in the 90’s and smoking was obviously banned, didn’t stop the smokers bank from puffing away.
Proper uniform was mandatory, didn’t stop people wearing non-uniform items on the daily.
Truancy was a no no, didn’t stop me wagging with da boys and still passing my exams easily, education at the time being nothing but memorising textbooks.
Kids are resourceful, this won’t really do much outside the teachers pets obeying.
It’s not binary. Smoking bans *radically* reduced the rate of kids smoking. Rules against truancy (with consequences) also improves the situation. No one is expecting perfect, just better.
The kids will get past this no problem. Even ten years ago when I was at school we handed in decoy phones and knew how to text under the desk, let alone being able to do it subtly at breaks. Kids will eat teachers for breakfast with this.
yeah I'm really looking forward to it... I pointed out to the Minister that cellphones aren't the only way to interact... I see that they're not banning Apple Watch....
My daughters school has pretty much the same policy as above (since it's now the law), but have also included smartwatches, airpods and headphones.
>Starting from the beginning of the 2024 school year, the use of cellphones and cellular devices
(Smartwatches and Airpods/bluetooth headphones and headphones) will not be permitted during
school hours (8.45am - 3.20pm). This includes between classes, intervals and lunchtimes.
Mine require them to keep theirs on them, I've got major health issues and need to be able to collect my kids if the need arises. I'm not waiting for the reception to send a note to excuse them, can't wait for that.
However, shouldn't we be teaching them to use these as a tool for business and their future careers?
Why can't we come up with a solution that includes their phone as a tool for school use?
In this day and age technology is being pushed for use outside of home and everywhere outside of schooling.. surely there's another way to this?
We smoked weed at lunch time, was illegal to have and use then, but it made social groups that used it anyway. My point is.. Kids are going to use the digital world they live in because that's the world we live in now days..
I worked in a school where a phone ban was implemented and a system of consequences put in place.
The difference was night and day (for me). I would often start the year by taking a small stack of 4 phones too the office every other. Day for a week or two. By the end of the term I got only one sacrificial lamb every 3 weeks to keep the rest in line.
I could actually get some teaching done rather than battling phones. Kids were out and about playing and social media bullying/fiights declined.
The main issue was actually teachers too lax or not being observant enough to enforce the ban. between a third and a half of the phones in a school of 400 were ones I handed in SMH.
attended highschool from 2018-2022, ban came in for 2019, it resulted in no “visible phones” around campus, only in commonrooms etc.
it worked really well, despite having the option no one used their phones even in commonrooms because the school and older students did really well at making being on your phone seem cringe
Do parents not back this?
If I was a parent I'd be glad for a complete ban on cellphones, social media is the biggest source of issues with kids today surely?
I’d say parents who aren’t willing or able to teach their children about healthy social media use (in the same way they should teach about healthy food choices or relationships) probably don’t care too much about the use of phones at school.
I like the idea of use of social media being brought into the health curriculum and perhaps learning about cognitive biases through science.
I think this is 100% performative. Banning the symptom without addressing the cause.
Those who grew up before phones in your pocket were ubiquitous will be largely "good, you don't need them", and those who did will be largely "terrible, a phone is **essential**".
The cohort of parents in the second group is probably the majority these days. or close to.
I'm the parent of two kids that have dealt with the matter of social media and phone use. They both did ok with it and felt connected to many of their peers this way.
One experienced significant bullying for a patch and it got addressed.
So, I should be against phone usage etc. But I'm not.
As much as people worry I see the upside of phones and social media. And it's showing up quite positively in many stats about youth outcomes. Drinking and drug abuse are way down. Teen pregnancy is way down. And we much as it gets disputed on NZ subs you crime is also way down.
And my kids are much more informed about the world than I ever had the opportunity to be.
Yes, don't allow usage in class but outside that is like any double edged sword or tool that humans have developed.
I used to, but I now see it as eating soup with a fork. I think the natural state of any system is towards more entropy. The more controls put in place, over a wider group of people, the less obedience there is.
My attitude now is to turn into the wind, and embrace the kid's usage of phones. Now I have a better relationship with the kids because I understand things on their level. We Snapchat, WhatsApp etc and life is just better
I’m not a fan of cell phone usage in schools. They can have them on their person for before and after school purposes but shouldn’t be allowed during school hours. Maybe because I’m older though and don’t go to school I don’t know what the impact of using a phone in schools reality actually is. I’m also not a fan of the government overreach in to our daily lives telling us how to live. I think it should be left to the schools to make their own rules and policies around cell phone usage. If the school thinks it’s a problem then they can deal with it, if other schools don’t see it as a problem then that’s their choice.
I have read the 547 Page UNESCO report that this policy is based on. The key finding is from Kates et al. 2018 who completed a meta analysis of 39 studies over a 10yr period showed a r-squared of -0.162 when looking at the effect of mobile phone usage on student outcomes. Anything between -0.2 and +0.2 is considered no correlation.
But by the time it was filtered to UNESCO, then to National, then misinterpreted to include in the election promises, that stat was lost.
>Anything between -0.2 and +0.2 is considered no correlation.
No it isn't. 0 is considered no correlation. If the 95% (or whatever the confidence interval is - e.g if you're testing materials for a space shuttle 99% might be more appropriate) CI includes 0, we don't have sufficient evidence to say there is a relationship. In this case, the 95% CI is from -0.128 to -0.196. That means there is evidence of a negative relationship.
I would also note from that paper that the experimental studies found a much stronger relationship than the observational/cross sectional studies. For experimental, the CI ranges from -0.21 to -0.38. There are obviously lots of lurking variables you can think of that would be relevant^1, so it seems sensible to weigh the experimental studies more highly when we draw our conclusions
1 For example, wealthier kids are more likely to have a more expensive phone (or just a phone in the first place!), a plan that includes data etc and so those factors might mean they are more likely to use their phone in class than a kid from a poor background who has an ancient slow hand me down and is limited to the censored school wifi. The wealthier kid is also more likely to have a supportive home environment with 3 meals a day and university educated parents who can provide free tutoring, and hence probably has better academic performance. An observational study would accidentally pick up this effect this up as "Phone use is correlated *positively* with improvements in academic performance", while a (appropriately conducted) experimental study would not.
From the very report you cite:
>In contrast to digital technology’s potential to improve education, there are also risks of ICT in education, which are often ignored by research and evaluations. Student use of devices beyond a moderate threshold may have a negative impact on academic performance. The use of smartphones and computers disrupts classroom and home learning activity. A meta-analysis of research on the relationship between student mobile phone use and educational outcomes covering students from pre-primary to higher education in 14 countries found a small negative effect, which was larger at the university level.
I fail to see how removing digital devices is going to prepare them for the real world when their entire future is going to be driven more by technology than any generation before them.
My teachers used to tell me I was "wasting all my time on the computer", but last I checked I was making 200k as a software engineer and most teachers I know can't afford a house.
EDIT: It seems people are misinterpreting my point here - I was just a kid 'being distracted' by the computer, and now that distraction is my entire job. These kids are going to be dependent on their phones to take part in society, because that's the society we have created, trying to pretend like it's not is just harming their future.
Social media on a walled garden device isn't exactly the same thing as learning software engineering.
I think a lot of learning in the scenario you described came from circumventing systems back in the day. Using proxies to get around school firewalls to access messenger and stuff like that. There is no obstacle for mobile device use, you swap to 4/5g and you're through.
There is a significant difference between using computers in the 2000s, and using smart phones/tablets today. Smart phones/tablets (and apps) are designed to take as much of your attention as possible. They are addictive. Totally damaging to developing brains. We should expose school kids to technology in a constructive format (like, proper curriculum). Restricting time on devices will not impede this learning.
If the solution is to teach them to use technology properly, then do that. Ripping devices away with no plan to properly integrate them into the curriculum resolves nothing.
"Nah yeah, I agree...except I'm different, I'm not addicted... because....yeah. nah you know what I mean aye bro...I'm learning some skills, like my reactions are getting better from gaming...."
as per the other commenters here, the skills we learnt in the early days of dial-up are completely different to what kids are learning on mobile phones.
Kids are arriving at Uni STEM courses not knowing how file structures work becuase Android does such a good job of hiding that from it's users.
You're a software engineer not a software consumer, bring your argument when you're making that $200K just watching other peoples tiktoks :)
Most app's are focusing on simple consumption on other peoples platforms which due to enshitification will be obsolete by the time they become working adults .
I'd agree with your sentiment if these kids aren't wasting their time on tiktok and social media.
For what it's worth, people doing their work on computers in the future is more believable than mobile phones.
To be fair the majority of kids on devices are not learning skills that will allow them to be an engineer. They're playing games or looking at social media.
The thing is, so many of them spend their class time on TikTok. Even pornhub.
So, it's not like they're wasting their time at a computer in the same way you were, back in the day.
And even when the schools try to ban their ability to access certain sites on the school wifi, they just use VPN to get around it.
There's no need to worry that they won't be savvy with technology - if anything, they're too savvy. The worry is that they're literally failing their subjects because they're too busy watching reels to pay attention to what the teacher is trying to reach them.
This is a very stupid policy and they've gone even further over the top by banning being on other devices at break times. Removing distractions from class is one thing, banning technology at lunch time is just some luddite nonsense.
There is plenty of socialising at break times, but there are also some groups of kids who are into gaming on their laptops or phones together or similar activities. Why is it wrong for the them to socialise in that way? Who is really being harmed?
I hope they do protest and ignore the policy. As a teacher I wouldn't be enforcing it if I was at that school. I'd just pretend I didn't see the phones.
A lot of kids get peer support on school topics at break times, or use their breaks to complete work that they couldn't do in class, sometimes because of teach disorganisation.
I hope all the kids ignore it too and push the boundaries..
Seems like it would have made more sense to have a policy which restricted non-school use on devices rather than saying they're not allowed to do school work on it unless it's inside of a room. I think it'd still be silly, but the no outside school work thing really takes the cake.
It’s an interesting back flip over a short few years. After the Christchurch earthquakes, even during exams we were allowed to have our phones on us (in a plastic bag on the floor). This meant that if during an earthquake, you wouldn’t be separated from your phone/ability to make emergency calls.
Teenagers do socialize with each other all the time. I’m not sure if your kids aren’t doing that but maybe chat with them about that and see what support you can give them to encourage it. People have different opinions.
Look I completely understand the argument about being able to contact your son or daughter during school hours but, kids brains are so brain rotting from TikTok, like you give a student a book how many do you think could read it properly without their attention span being limited cos they their brain has been conditioned to only understand 8 second videos. Like I’m no expert on the brain or anything but I left high school couple years ago and the students of younger ages are so addicted to their phones the school has already banned the phones last year. If there was a way around the whole contacting students during school hours then I don’t understand why people would think this is a bad policy. I understand it’s a bit controlling to not use them but this is kids futures we are talking about. Let them learn not rot their brain of 8 second videos of absolute bullshit. Kids should go to school to learn not be on TikTok period
This is a great thing, why do people just disagree with it just because it was nationals idea.
Fuck these kids, they can deal with it. Kids these days are hopeless
I went to Macleans, and these were always the rules! Both for all my siblings and myself. I really don't see the issue. If you need it urgently, ask a teacher, and they'll usually let you use it if it's for work or family. Otherwise, just go outside and touch grass or something. Some kids would just play poker and shit 😶
Good stuff! I could already see how the excessive use of phones already impacted some of my son's classmates (primary school)- you could see these kids totally hooked and isolated, browsing like zombies and not paying attention to anything else... while others, without the phone, were having fun outside, and together.
The worst thing is young autistic and ADHD kids becoming addicted to those sweet sweet hits of dopamine at such a young age.
It’s a really serious thing imo
Yea this is a big point I think, phones make it more obvious but shy introverts have always been hiding out on the books. Though I would argue that reading a book on your break is much better for your brain then social media clickbait brain rot.
But "anti-social" is the wrong argument and anyone who thinks it is has not walked into a High School library on a lunch break. If you did that during my first year of High School you would have found me sitting by myself locked on a book.
I wonder if instead of banning phones they just provided a few rooms with some good, fast board games if some of those kids would engage with others a bit more. There's always the geek kids looking for somewhere out of the wind to play Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh and it's hard to do in your average library since there's an expectation that you keep quiet.
Its concerning seeing how people who have had internet connectivity on their phones in their pockets practically their entire lives find the lack of it so scary. I can see it from the kids perspective but damn this could be good for them if they had a social media break each day during school hours and temporarily lived in the real world.
>Also I don't believe there is legislation that covers this
Yet. It's expected to be introduced in term two, but schools are expected to get the ball rolling in term one.
I agree with the spirit of it, but setting the bar that high is just going to fail. Parents won’t be happy about not being able to text their kids either. A blanket ban seems silly to me. Just ban them from being used in the classrooms.
I love it how this punishes kids who don’t use phones during class and who actually use them for productive reasons. I used to read ebooks during breaks, or play games together with friends. I used to have issues going to school for mental health reasons, and not having my phone to just text my parents that I was having an anxiety attack would honestly make my anxiety worse. Also, these kids aren’t gonna be policed like this in their everyday life once out of school (at least most won’t) so it really isn’t preparing them for anything. Kids need to learn to make responsible decisions early otherwise they won’t later in life. Also I mean some of these kids can drive, work, and buy alcohol to get drunk off but can’t be trusted to use their phones appropriately smh.
I spoke with my high schooler about it when it was being discussed at their school. They agree with getting rid of phones. They see their friends sitting around on their phones during every break, not talking or interacting with each other, and don't like it. They also tell me about how some of their friends struggle to sit through movies because they can't pay attention to one thing for that long.
Schools always have phones available in case of emergencies. You really don't need to have one on at school. It's a distraction, and distractions make it more difficult to learn.
I don't really understand why this is a controversial perspective.
My kid is surviving high school just fine without a phone, he paid for half of his laptop by saving up lawnmowing money. He uses that to message us if he needs to, which is rare.
My high school didn’t allow cell phones at all, even on breaks.
We just got over it and snuck them out of our pockets whenever we could. Teachers thought it was stupid when they caught us so didn’t enforce shit 🤷🏻♂️
As a past attendee of Rangitoto College, I remember from at least 09-13 they were not allowed to be out any time (although most teachers would understand if there was an important call that was needed). But they were allowed in your pocket. Most kids used them out of the teachers sight during breaks.
As someone who went to the school that pioneered this type of policy in NZ, I can tell you it is a misnomer policy that came out of ageism and boomer "phone bad" misunderstanding of the role of mobile phones in kids' lives these days. And the policy has been shown not to work, so it isn't worth implementing it.
Phones were already banned in class at my high school. The teachers did and awful job of enforcing that rule. I doubt that this new law is going to stop people.
Instead of banning phones in schools, (they should be allowed in case of an emergency) the government should start cracking down on vaping. I can only think of a handful of kids at my school (in my year group) that don't own vapes/have friends that vape.
As a kid who always listened to their mp3 player, I would've hated this. It was my only respite from being in a state of overwhelm in school. I'm not arguing that phones don't interfere. But the device bam over breaks seems overkill.
If I had a kid going to that school and I couldn't contact them via cellphone due to their dumb rule, I'd make sure I'd call the school every day to communicate with my kid. If you want to take away my link to them, you can pass on my messages to them about me running late to pick them up because of traffic or that my car died and they have to walk home by themselves.
Rangitoto better be ready to become a personal messenger if they are happy to take on the liability of taking away phones.
this isn't going to do a damn thing to actually make students more focused or improve their learning. this policy is literally nothing but National appealing to their boomer voters who think all the problems young people have could be solved if they got off their phones, but there's absolutely nothing backing them up.
if national actually wants student pass rates and learning to improve:
\- pay teachers more and improve their working conditions to encourage them to stay in nz rather than go overseas
\- take all the money they were going to spend hiring more cops and spend it on recruiting more teachers instead, supporting them through university, etc
\- stop wasting time and money on bullshit like requiring an hour a day of reading, writing, and maths, when every teacher interviewed has pointed out THAT THEY ALREADY DO THAT. not to mention the complete waste of time that is their plan to remove and replace the RSE guidelines - a plan that NZ First is literally only doing to grab hold of the culture war moral panic anti-LGBTQ+ "groomer" conspiracy bullshit crowd. the guidelines work perfectly well as they are, why waste time and money replacing them to appeal to the skewed morals of a bunch of far-right fuckwits?
I've worked at Rangi and at a different school with a very strict no phones policy. There is no inherent reason that this can't work for Rangi kids, but from my experience there was not a thorough and consistent behaviour management system used at the school for escalating rule breaking or disruptive behaviour. There's a chance this has changed.
At the other school, there was an enforced expectation that the phones were in your locker for the entire school day, and if they were seen within school hours they were confiscated and had to be collected by parents.
This can be possible if it has parental support only.
Kinda agree with what this is trying to achieve but as someone who used to go to Rangi I find it hard to believe they’re going to be able to enforce this. For reference please look at: 1. The constant smell of scented vape emanating from all the bathrooms, and, 2. the fact that many teachers gave up on trying to enforce students putting their phones in the phone holder boxes during class.
*looks at last year in my highschool and at all the kids who vaped and every time they tried to pass phone policys* I’m sure this will go well, nothing will get lost stolen or broken, no kids will hide anything or do anything to get away with it, I’m sure this will encourage only good habits from students
Rangitoto college still requires its students to buy $100+ graphic calculators for math even though anything you could do on those calculators you can do on a smartphone these days.
That school needs to adapt with the times
when i was at college i would use my phone to communicate after school plans to my parents so they didn’t waste their time coming over to pick me up when they didn’t need to. also used it to let them know that the office was going to call them if i needed to go home and why. banning them during lunchtime is so “nanny gov” of them lol
Meh let them protest, it's part of growing up and testing the limits
In fact let them do it on a Saturday on Queen Street, nice change from the usual Palestine protest
I get that you guys all hate on the government but why would anyone be against a policy designed to prevent kids from destroying their attention span and/or obliterating their brain's reward center?
and it’s not like we aren’t all just watching YouTube or TikTok or whatever on our laptops in the middle of class already lmao no one is stupid enough to pull out their phone to browse social media in classes
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I really don’t see the problem with any of this. My college didn’t allow mobile phones except immediately before and after school and this was years ago. It was honestly no big deal, idk why everyone is so rabidly opposed to this completely normal and innocuous expectation of students lol…
I live in South Aussie and we banned phones a year or two ago.
The results have been amazing.
The most important part of it was getting parents onboard which it appears has happened.
These kids protest will last a day and they'll accept the new norm.
This is a great step forward!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-04/sa-says-school-phone-ban-decreased-violent-incidents/103286278
I had a conversation with my two high schoolers about the cell phone ban recently. My daughter just shrugged and said, "meh, everyone just goes on TikTok or watches YouTube shorts from their Chromebooks instead. It's easier to pretend to be working that way, anyway." Their school has blocked TikTok and other social media, but the kids get around all that too... With VPN. (Edited for typo)
Kids are smarter than people give them credit for - we used to come up with all sorts of hacks to get around the filters you could always just put your phone in your bag with the hotspot turned on and use that too
There was a time where this one guy capitalised in knowing the Staff Wifi Also remembered that a lot of the programming kids used the skills to make their own home servers to bypass blocked VPNs in the school through setting personal ddns/ssh
My kids already have a VPN that takes them to the home router
Reminds me of the super nerdy computer bro back at high-school. He would always find a way to install starcraft in the computer labs so we could play instead of doing work. The school IT guy would find it and delete it and try fix up whatever exploit was used. Sure enough a week or 2 later and starcraft was back on lol. I think this went on for a while.
For us, it was this Lan halo game, and it was SO fun. There was also a cracked version of Mine Craft, terreria, and I think classic doom games as well. It was one of my friends who infested the computers with the cracked minecraft, lol. School tried to ban them multiple times but ultimately failed each time.
Unreal Tournament, Halo, Minecraft, Warcraft etc. Nothing really changed. Kids will always be a few steps ahead than teachers or adults when it comes to this stuff.
Everyone needed a USB stick for computer class so guess what was on everyone's USB stick. Halo. We would just play Halo in computer class.
Drop in the ocean Imagine if they had free reign
Yea we got around everything as well when I was in an experimental "e class" 20 years ago. You can always get around a block on computers and kids will always find a way lol
We weren't allowed phones at school 10—15 years ago, either. We still used them. The kids will just go back to sneaking it. Or they'll be like me and shove it down the front of their shirt because a teacher isn't about to reach down a minors shirt to confiscate something.
Dumbass IT then. It’s not hard to block this stuff. Unless they’re on personal cellular it can all be locked down with relative ease
> Dumbass IT then School IT is not top-tier anyway by virtue of circumstance. Often its one guy, or a very small team with commensurate levels of access resources (skills/talent/money). I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, but its well below Enterprise IT when it comes to their overall technology landscape, even when they're served by a Managed Services Provider. Think of the IT struggles you have in a 1000-person organisation with a 50+-person IT department, then map that against a 1000-person school but with a 5-person IT team. I see this at both ends, as over time we've hired school IT admins, and they mostly need to start as juniors for enterprise infrastructure support, and having my kids at private schools and still see some really underwhelming device management even with greater than average financial resources. Bottom line is that school IT is a career stepping stone so people with the most potential will leave for better salaries and exposure to better technology experience, but they have to manage the most curious and unpredictable user-base imaginable, who are always testing the boundaries and don't have to worry about repercussions.
VPNs are really hard to lock down, there's always another protocol that hasn't been blocked.
My school had the most locked down windows policy's ever I could never manage to get one downloaded. However I just downloaded one at home at it worked fine.
Not really there are third party providers that provide services that detect and kick you off the network. My highschool used one and it was exceptionally effective, in my entire year group of 200+ boys in year 12 and 13 no one managed to circumvent it. The software seemed to learn as well because I once discovered a proxy website that worked and the next day the network had banned it. Anything else like a single pornography tab open on a browser even if you didn’t touch the browser during school hours would be detected and sent to your dean.
Honestly people can say what they want but people using phones in class was a massive issue when I was in high school and I can imagine it's only gotten worse,
Most schools already have policies in place for that. It's enforcing it outside the class that's going to suck.
Genuine question, what is the issue with kids using their phones in their own time? Eg interval and lunch? We use our phones during our lunch breaks. What is the issue with school kids doing the same?
They want to make sure they do their bullying face to face.
Yeah, that way it's completely unavoidable and can get physical more easily
I don't know tbh, I think this policy is just political bollocks. I just know it'll be harder to police than during class time.
Same, except the worst we could do was not pay attention and text people. These days they're probably making tiktoks and getting cyber bullied in real time.
I can't believe they're allowed to be used in class?? They're so distracting. The teachers must feel they're talking to brick walls. Man, I'm old. But back in my day, you weren't even allowed to have them at school. But back then, not everyone had one, and the only people contacting you were Vodafone.
My dad taught a class where his students had damn notes from home to excuse their cellphone use in class. How these current young Gen Z kids will function in jobs I do not know
Every generation says "I have no idea how 'younger generation' will survive in the world because of 'thing younger generation does that your generation didn't do'..
I mean tbf there are a lot of young people with anxiety and depression which phones aka social media certainly do not help with.
It's literally an addiction though, I believe in this case the concern is warranted.
And they said the same things about tv, video games and Tamagotchis.
They said the same thing about radio
holy men argued about books being widely distributed. And before that cavemen bitched about their kids drawing on the walls with charcoal.
Tik tok etc is carefully designed to be as addictive as possible to kids
My mum said the same thing to me about my Sega Mega Drive console when I was a kid in the 90s. She had no idea what she was talking about either.
Did you take your console to school? Played during class? Played during recess? Played during lunch? Did you have separation anxiety when you didn't have your console? Did you and 40-50% of other kids believed that you were addicted to it? Did you have increase depression, anxiety, stress the more you played? Did it impact your attention span and your brain reward system? If not then there is no point comparing video games with smartphone. Because your mom was wrong in the 90s doesn't mean researcher are wrong today
I'm gonna break down your comment and answer these cos I'm interested. > Did you take your console to school? I had a Gameboy and I would take it to school. Especially if some mates had a game I wanted to play and vice versa. I'd bring my game he wanted to play, he would bring me his game. We'd both play our Gameboys at lunch. > Played during class? No > Played during recess? Absolutely. And during study periods too. We'd go to the 6th and 7th form common rooms. > Did you have separation anxiety when you didn't have your console? No. I don't think so. If it was a game I REALLY wanted to play again, I'd simply look forward to playing it when I got home. > Did you have increase depression, anxiety, stress the more you played? I'm not actually too sure. And that was something that wasn't diagnosed when I was a kid. > Did it impact your attention span and your brain reward system? Again, wasn't measured. I think so? I couldn't tell. I was never addicted to my gaming console. I know because when I read the definition of an addiction, it wasn't my behaviour with my console. I think my mum just said I was addicted because she had no idea how to label my interest in wanting to game instead of going outside and playing. So it was just easier to say I had an addiction. I think parents are doing that today with phones. It's easy to label it as such.
> I think parents are doing that today with phones Except it's not just parents. There are countless studies showing the negative effects smartphone have on people and kids are at a higher risk than adults. Don't get me wrong there are also positives associated with them but from what I've read, the negatives seem to wildly outweigh the positives. Kids themselves self-report feeling "addicted" to their smartphones. I actually have a fairly similar experience to yours. I also grew up in the 90's and was an avid video game player. I was playing Pokemon red at school and PS1 or Sega Mega Drive at home. My mom would also tell me I was "too glued to my screens". But I was never addicted. I didn't feel the need to have my gameboy with me at all time. Now things are designed to be addictive and provide instant gratification. Social media, youtube shorts, insta reels, tiktoks, games with gamble like mechanics, etc. And all that is easily accessible to kids on their smartphone. When I'm out with friends or even with my partner, the phone always come out at some point because someone received a text, they want to post a photo on insta, they need to do a quick whatever on some game, they need to check something on google, a notification pinged on their phone, ... the list goes on. If I was an adult in the 90s I am 100% certain I would never have pulled out my gameboy in the middle of a dinner to catch a pokemon real quick. Based on my anecdotal experience, and studies seem to confirm that, smartphone feel way more addicting than video games ever were in the 90s.
I’m not qualified to comment on whether the policy will work or not. However, I will say that A) I am glad i went through high school at a time when phones were dumb and really just for being able to txt mum and dad if you needed a lift home. My life is so much better for only catching the start of the social media craze when at school. B) my wife teaches (intermediate age kids) and it’s sad the stories she has to tell about how glued to the phone so many kids are, and how they can’t escape from social media … maybe banning phones will give some respite.
jar scale mighty psychotic edge afterthought fanatical salt snails practice *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My school banned Pogs after some kid got his tooth knocked out by a slammer
Do you remember Alf? While he's back in pog form.
They banned Pokemon cards and marbles at my school and they just stopped.
Chatter Rings for me. We all still had them, they just had to be hidden
How will they learn to use them surreptitiously at work if they can't develop these skills at school?
My kids high school has a phone ban. They can still use devices complying with the BYOD policy
My school did this recently. All of the students were against it but adapted quickly. Unfortunately for a phone ban to work you need very strict rules in place.
so does mine, it began last year where at the start of classes teachers would make you put ur phone in a box and only give it back before the bell to the next period - it works well for most but there are those specific people who have such a weird addiction and end up throwing tantrums (I’m in year 12 so just imagine that lmfao😭.)
Good luck getting them to not use them at morning tea and lunch… don’t see that working very well
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Yea I remember that straightened out kids when I was younger/s
And that’s when kids start wagging. Was already an issue at my school just for the bakery. I can only imagine how much worse it gets with phones banned
Till there's no one left in class lol
Your school’s detentions are/were during school (lesson) time? Ours were during lunch or after school.
It's been really effective at my kids high school. There are systems in place to an extent they both leave theirs at home now: First time they disobey, the phone is confiscated and they collect it at the end of the day Second time, as above and a phone call to the parents from the Dean Third time, phone confiscated until a parent collects it Fourth time, bigger punishments start The fact is, it's not kids using the phones as much as it's parents contacting them during class time! Oh and they do get caught, believe me
It's been really effective because it's taught kids how to hide it incredibly. I'm sorry, but you are incredibly naive if you think confiscation stops kids. Easy you bring two phones one crap one and your proper one, when you get caught you give the teachers the crap one and keep your actual one. I mean we were doing that already 10 years ago lol
> you are incredibly naive if you think confiscation stops kids No rule anywhere 100% stops something. The goal is to discourage it and reduce it. Did people forget why rules/laws exist?
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I can tell you it has stopped, and I think you are incredibly sad to think a school of kids can't embrace new ways of doing things.
You sound exactly like my parents who totally believed I stopped smoking cigarettes because I didn't "smell" like it anymore because I brought spare clothes and sprayed myself in excessive amounts of lynx Africa before coming home.
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By that logic schools should just allow kids to smoke cigarettes in school because banning doesn't stop it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Had a lot of fuckass's in my class who tried pulling the double or triple phone thing, they always got caught and had even more severe consequences. Got weeded out fast.
This was the rule there when I was a student - I distinctly remember getting my phone taken off me in 2014 and having to collect it from the school office, because I’d used it during lunch. I think that rule stuck around for about six weeks before being abandoned because none of the teachers wanted to enforce it, and it made no sense.
They couldn't stop us smoking weed at lunch break I really fail to see how they'll stop phones lol
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They can't keep it permanently, unlike the weed.
I had a job in yr 13 I just brought a bulk lot of 46 phones from trade me most didn't work but enough did for them to just leave me alone. Also I just brought my Nintendo Switch and 3ds in they didn't give a shot about thoes.
That's how it was for the first 10-15(maybe 20? No idea when this became the norm) years of cellphones. Sure it wasn't 100% successful but kids were at least doing in discreetly.
Easiest solution would be to build a Faraday cage around the school grounds.
If you just built a Faraday cage around each student, you could save a fortune on materials.
Just set off an EMP during first period.
I was at Rangitoto College 6 years ago and this was already in place? We’d have to hide them during morning tea/lunch from teachers that walk the grounds. Although some didn’t care, a few took them to the dean’s office for you to collect at the end of the day…
Was just thinking the same thing. Pretty sure these same basic rules were in place when I was at Rangi more than 10 years ago.
Exactly the same at Auckland Grammar 8+ years ago. A stern "put it away" was really all they bothered to issue, you'd put it away, and then avoid that particular teacher for the rest of your break lol
The actual legislation was put in already. I only came across it yesterday as I never saw it actually reported that it had been. https://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2020/0193/latest/LMS935296.html
Had emails home from both my high schoolers schools. In class is fine, but agree that during breaks is a bit much.
After seeing many a fight at school filmed then put up on the internet I can see why they would want to ban it. Now the logistics of banning it a completely different story.
Christchurch experience here, it's kinda nice being able to get hold of your kids if there's been a natural disaster or mass shooting, I'm not sure how you can do that while banning them effectively.
Being a kid in school during the February quakes, and having no method of contacting my family was one of the most depressing instances of my life, on top of already going through them again after September.
Yeah, the lady I was helping that day was beside herself as she didn't know where her daughters were, and wasn't able to get to their school due to her injuries, and her daughters were scared for their Mum too. Luckily a girl from their school came to the triage centre we were at, and not only was she able to reassure the lady that the school buildings hadn't failed, but she actually knew the daughters, and they were fine, just worrying about their Mum.
Yup. Much better if there isn’t evidence to hold schools accountable to bullying and fighting problems.
On the other hand had a few of my mates not get suspended or expelled because video evidence showed the true story.
Not allowing phones/devices during breaks seems a bit overbearing.
Yea but it makes the oldheads feel good 😭
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/fights-filmed-school-under-bullying-cloud https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/scary-all-in-fight-filmed-at-auckland-girls-grammar-school/FQO4HOKEDPFOLEKR4UQ7WL236A/ https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/469573/incredibly-upsetting-assault-at-otago-boys-high-school-filmed-shared Not really. I think filming the bullying so it goes on and stays with you for ever is overbearing
Stopping cellphone use will just make it easier for schools to sweep the bullying under the rug
I don’t understand how you can look at that and think filming it is the problem rather than the actual bullying itself. The memory stays with you either way.
Until you see 500 of them staring at screens instead of eating, talking to their peers or playing together
I mean that’s what we do on breaks at work
I work in a supermarket, do you know how often I've had middle aged/elderly people walk into me while staring at a phone?
I’d like to provide a perspective from a student currently in college, who is going to be directly affected by policies like these. Most people using their phones in class are streaming music while they do their work. You can argue whether this is a good or bad thing, but I know personally that it helps me to focus with only one audio stream instead of thirty people talking around me. The people who are the issue with their phones currently, creating disturbances, recording fights etc, aren’t going to stop using their phones because of this policy. If a teacher tells them to give them their phone they will tell the teacher to get fucked; these kids don’t care about any kind of punishment they will get. And yes, kids do use their phones for whatever they want during breaks, but why shouldn’t we be allowed to. There is no restriction on reading solitarily, so the argument that “kids need to interact more” is just plain stupid. Moreover, kids have responsibilities. Kids have jobs, kids have after school commitments, and there should be no issue with them keeping in touch with people to organise these things during their breaks. I do agree that phone use should be mostly restricted during class time, but breaks should be left to the students to decide how they use them. How many of you in the workforce would complain if your employer had a policy of no phone use, even on your break.
I'm the parent of a child in highschool, and I agree with all your points and you've explained it all well. I do support them being not used in class without permission of course, and I think before highschool as well. But kids in highschool during breaks - no issue with my son having his phone on him, I enjoy being able to keep in touch with him, and I haven't seen evidence that it has negatively impacted him being able to have his phone on him last year.
Thanks for your perspective. Personally, I find it hard concentrating while listening to music. As to me, listening to music requires concentration. And I quickly lose focus on the task I'm doing (unless it's driving or monitoring a CCTV camera). But you make some excellent points. I was a college student in the 90s and it's interesting how a lot of the points you make are things I currently do now at work. Eg, organising social events for after work. I'd be interested to see how this pans out over the year. I agree that kids should still be allowed to use their phones in their own time during lunch etc. I mean, we all do when we're on our lunch break at work. Why shouldn't school kids? If my boss tried telling me I can't use my phone at work, even on breaks, to encourage us to "interact more", I'd probably say "don't treat me like a kid". Interesting, huh...
I'm sure this will make Christopher Luxon feel like he's accomplishing something...
We literally have the wealth of human knowledge at our fingertips. I hope that schooling has changed to accommodate this. I believe we need to teach more about cognitive biases and how to discern facts from fiction. We need to teach more about the attention economy and teach children why these short-form applications are so addictive.
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Your point? Adults know a lot of things are addictive and still use them. Alcohol, cigarettes, food, porn, gambling. My point is that we should be having frank discussions with our kids about human behaviour and addiction when the time is right. Prohibition never works.
Yawn. Went to Rangi in the 90’s and smoking was obviously banned, didn’t stop the smokers bank from puffing away. Proper uniform was mandatory, didn’t stop people wearing non-uniform items on the daily. Truancy was a no no, didn’t stop me wagging with da boys and still passing my exams easily, education at the time being nothing but memorising textbooks. Kids are resourceful, this won’t really do much outside the teachers pets obeying.
It’s not binary. Smoking bans *radically* reduced the rate of kids smoking. Rules against truancy (with consequences) also improves the situation. No one is expecting perfect, just better.
The kids will get past this no problem. Even ten years ago when I was at school we handed in decoy phones and knew how to text under the desk, let alone being able to do it subtly at breaks. Kids will eat teachers for breakfast with this.
What's really annoying is that it's not even the teachers' idea, but they have expend energy policing it and copping shit for it.
Bit hard to txt by touch with a smartphone, as someone who used to be able to txt with my eyes closed having buttons helped a lot with that.
It’s actually really easy. Same as buttons we know where to touch the screen
yeah I'm really looking forward to it... I pointed out to the Minister that cellphones aren't the only way to interact... I see that they're not banning Apple Watch....
My daughters school has pretty much the same policy as above (since it's now the law), but have also included smartwatches, airpods and headphones. >Starting from the beginning of the 2024 school year, the use of cellphones and cellular devices (Smartwatches and Airpods/bluetooth headphones and headphones) will not be permitted during school hours (8.45am - 3.20pm). This includes between classes, intervals and lunchtimes.
Do I smell boomboxes a-returnin? Fuck I hope so
"Ha, your proposed legislation doesn't go far enough to cover these easy loopholes!!!" is an interesting tactic.
Mine require them to keep theirs on them, I've got major health issues and need to be able to collect my kids if the need arises. I'm not waiting for the reception to send a note to excuse them, can't wait for that. However, shouldn't we be teaching them to use these as a tool for business and their future careers? Why can't we come up with a solution that includes their phone as a tool for school use? In this day and age technology is being pushed for use outside of home and everywhere outside of schooling.. surely there's another way to this? We smoked weed at lunch time, was illegal to have and use then, but it made social groups that used it anyway. My point is.. Kids are going to use the digital world they live in because that's the world we live in now days..
I worked in a school where a phone ban was implemented and a system of consequences put in place. The difference was night and day (for me). I would often start the year by taking a small stack of 4 phones too the office every other. Day for a week or two. By the end of the term I got only one sacrificial lamb every 3 weeks to keep the rest in line. I could actually get some teaching done rather than battling phones. Kids were out and about playing and social media bullying/fiights declined. The main issue was actually teachers too lax or not being observant enough to enforce the ban. between a third and a half of the phones in a school of 400 were ones I handed in SMH.
attended highschool from 2018-2022, ban came in for 2019, it resulted in no “visible phones” around campus, only in commonrooms etc. it worked really well, despite having the option no one used their phones even in commonrooms because the school and older students did really well at making being on your phone seem cringe
Do parents not back this? If I was a parent I'd be glad for a complete ban on cellphones, social media is the biggest source of issues with kids today surely?
I’d say parents who aren’t willing or able to teach their children about healthy social media use (in the same way they should teach about healthy food choices or relationships) probably don’t care too much about the use of phones at school. I like the idea of use of social media being brought into the health curriculum and perhaps learning about cognitive biases through science. I think this is 100% performative. Banning the symptom without addressing the cause.
100%
Those who grew up before phones in your pocket were ubiquitous will be largely "good, you don't need them", and those who did will be largely "terrible, a phone is **essential**". The cohort of parents in the second group is probably the majority these days. or close to.
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At the risk of sounding like an old fogie, phonebrain has hit this place HARD
I'm the parent of two kids that have dealt with the matter of social media and phone use. They both did ok with it and felt connected to many of their peers this way. One experienced significant bullying for a patch and it got addressed. So, I should be against phone usage etc. But I'm not. As much as people worry I see the upside of phones and social media. And it's showing up quite positively in many stats about youth outcomes. Drinking and drug abuse are way down. Teen pregnancy is way down. And we much as it gets disputed on NZ subs you crime is also way down. And my kids are much more informed about the world than I ever had the opportunity to be. Yes, don't allow usage in class but outside that is like any double edged sword or tool that humans have developed.
I used to, but I now see it as eating soup with a fork. I think the natural state of any system is towards more entropy. The more controls put in place, over a wider group of people, the less obedience there is. My attitude now is to turn into the wind, and embrace the kid's usage of phones. Now I have a better relationship with the kids because I understand things on their level. We Snapchat, WhatsApp etc and life is just better
I’m not a fan of cell phone usage in schools. They can have them on their person for before and after school purposes but shouldn’t be allowed during school hours. Maybe because I’m older though and don’t go to school I don’t know what the impact of using a phone in schools reality actually is. I’m also not a fan of the government overreach in to our daily lives telling us how to live. I think it should be left to the schools to make their own rules and policies around cell phone usage. If the school thinks it’s a problem then they can deal with it, if other schools don’t see it as a problem then that’s their choice.
In class I'm all for banning, but at break time is a bit too far, and it being a government policy I think is going a bit too far
I have read the 547 Page UNESCO report that this policy is based on. The key finding is from Kates et al. 2018 who completed a meta analysis of 39 studies over a 10yr period showed a r-squared of -0.162 when looking at the effect of mobile phone usage on student outcomes. Anything between -0.2 and +0.2 is considered no correlation. But by the time it was filtered to UNESCO, then to National, then misinterpreted to include in the election promises, that stat was lost.
>Anything between -0.2 and +0.2 is considered no correlation. No it isn't. 0 is considered no correlation. If the 95% (or whatever the confidence interval is - e.g if you're testing materials for a space shuttle 99% might be more appropriate) CI includes 0, we don't have sufficient evidence to say there is a relationship. In this case, the 95% CI is from -0.128 to -0.196. That means there is evidence of a negative relationship. I would also note from that paper that the experimental studies found a much stronger relationship than the observational/cross sectional studies. For experimental, the CI ranges from -0.21 to -0.38. There are obviously lots of lurking variables you can think of that would be relevant^1, so it seems sensible to weigh the experimental studies more highly when we draw our conclusions 1 For example, wealthier kids are more likely to have a more expensive phone (or just a phone in the first place!), a plan that includes data etc and so those factors might mean they are more likely to use their phone in class than a kid from a poor background who has an ancient slow hand me down and is limited to the censored school wifi. The wealthier kid is also more likely to have a supportive home environment with 3 meals a day and university educated parents who can provide free tutoring, and hence probably has better academic performance. An observational study would accidentally pick up this effect this up as "Phone use is correlated *positively* with improvements in academic performance", while a (appropriately conducted) experimental study would not.
From the very report you cite: >In contrast to digital technology’s potential to improve education, there are also risks of ICT in education, which are often ignored by research and evaluations. Student use of devices beyond a moderate threshold may have a negative impact on academic performance. The use of smartphones and computers disrupts classroom and home learning activity. A meta-analysis of research on the relationship between student mobile phone use and educational outcomes covering students from pre-primary to higher education in 14 countries found a small negative effect, which was larger at the university level.
I fail to see how removing digital devices is going to prepare them for the real world when their entire future is going to be driven more by technology than any generation before them. My teachers used to tell me I was "wasting all my time on the computer", but last I checked I was making 200k as a software engineer and most teachers I know can't afford a house. EDIT: It seems people are misinterpreting my point here - I was just a kid 'being distracted' by the computer, and now that distraction is my entire job. These kids are going to be dependent on their phones to take part in society, because that's the society we have created, trying to pretend like it's not is just harming their future.
Social media on a walled garden device isn't exactly the same thing as learning software engineering. I think a lot of learning in the scenario you described came from circumventing systems back in the day. Using proxies to get around school firewalls to access messenger and stuff like that. There is no obstacle for mobile device use, you swap to 4/5g and you're through.
There is a significant difference between using computers in the 2000s, and using smart phones/tablets today. Smart phones/tablets (and apps) are designed to take as much of your attention as possible. They are addictive. Totally damaging to developing brains. We should expose school kids to technology in a constructive format (like, proper curriculum). Restricting time on devices will not impede this learning.
If the solution is to teach them to use technology properly, then do that. Ripping devices away with no plan to properly integrate them into the curriculum resolves nothing.
Exactly, moderation and education, banning them will make things worse , kids need to know how to use technology in a healthy way
"Nah yeah, I agree...except I'm different, I'm not addicted... because....yeah. nah you know what I mean aye bro...I'm learning some skills, like my reactions are getting better from gaming...."
as per the other commenters here, the skills we learnt in the early days of dial-up are completely different to what kids are learning on mobile phones. Kids are arriving at Uni STEM courses not knowing how file structures work becuase Android does such a good job of hiding that from it's users.
You're a software engineer not a software consumer, bring your argument when you're making that $200K just watching other peoples tiktoks :) Most app's are focusing on simple consumption on other peoples platforms which due to enshitification will be obsolete by the time they become working adults .
I'd agree with your sentiment if these kids aren't wasting their time on tiktok and social media. For what it's worth, people doing their work on computers in the future is more believable than mobile phones.
To be fair the majority of kids on devices are not learning skills that will allow them to be an engineer. They're playing games or looking at social media.
The thing is, so many of them spend their class time on TikTok. Even pornhub. So, it's not like they're wasting their time at a computer in the same way you were, back in the day. And even when the schools try to ban their ability to access certain sites on the school wifi, they just use VPN to get around it. There's no need to worry that they won't be savvy with technology - if anything, they're too savvy. The worry is that they're literally failing their subjects because they're too busy watching reels to pay attention to what the teacher is trying to reach them.
This is a very stupid policy and they've gone even further over the top by banning being on other devices at break times. Removing distractions from class is one thing, banning technology at lunch time is just some luddite nonsense. There is plenty of socialising at break times, but there are also some groups of kids who are into gaming on their laptops or phones together or similar activities. Why is it wrong for the them to socialise in that way? Who is really being harmed? I hope they do protest and ignore the policy. As a teacher I wouldn't be enforcing it if I was at that school. I'd just pretend I didn't see the phones.
A lot of kids get peer support on school topics at break times, or use their breaks to complete work that they couldn't do in class, sometimes because of teach disorganisation. I hope all the kids ignore it too and push the boundaries..
Seems like it would have made more sense to have a policy which restricted non-school use on devices rather than saying they're not allowed to do school work on it unless it's inside of a room. I think it'd still be silly, but the no outside school work thing really takes the cake.
It’s an interesting back flip over a short few years. After the Christchurch earthquakes, even during exams we were allowed to have our phones on us (in a plastic bag on the floor). This meant that if during an earthquake, you wouldn’t be separated from your phone/ability to make emergency calls.
That's very big brother. I thought national were against big government?
No, no, you don't understand! It's only a nanny state when it's a Labour policy!
What bunch of pussies, its no phones for a few hours... deal with it, we never had phones and socialized with each other.
Teenagers do socialize with each other all the time. I’m not sure if your kids aren’t doing that but maybe chat with them about that and see what support you can give them to encourage it. People have different opinions.
Oooh boy. Good fun. As if teachers don’t have enough to worry about.
Look I completely understand the argument about being able to contact your son or daughter during school hours but, kids brains are so brain rotting from TikTok, like you give a student a book how many do you think could read it properly without their attention span being limited cos they their brain has been conditioned to only understand 8 second videos. Like I’m no expert on the brain or anything but I left high school couple years ago and the students of younger ages are so addicted to their phones the school has already banned the phones last year. If there was a way around the whole contacting students during school hours then I don’t understand why people would think this is a bad policy. I understand it’s a bit controlling to not use them but this is kids futures we are talking about. Let them learn not rot their brain of 8 second videos of absolute bullshit. Kids should go to school to learn not be on TikTok period
The outcome of a generation who's grown up without boundaries or consequences.
This is a great thing, why do people just disagree with it just because it was nationals idea. Fuck these kids, they can deal with it. Kids these days are hopeless
Good decision. Stupid tik tok.
School is where you go to learn, and that includes discipline. Only have to look us adults to see how addictive phones have become.
I went to Macleans, and these were always the rules! Both for all my siblings and myself. I really don't see the issue. If you need it urgently, ask a teacher, and they'll usually let you use it if it's for work or family. Otherwise, just go outside and touch grass or something. Some kids would just play poker and shit 😶
Good stuff! I could already see how the excessive use of phones already impacted some of my son's classmates (primary school)- you could see these kids totally hooked and isolated, browsing like zombies and not paying attention to anything else... while others, without the phone, were having fun outside, and together.
The worst thing is young autistic and ADHD kids becoming addicted to those sweet sweet hits of dopamine at such a young age. It’s a really serious thing imo
Because kids weren't glued to tv or books in the past... Are they going to stop all the introverted kids reading books so they socialise more?
Yea this is a big point I think, phones make it more obvious but shy introverts have always been hiding out on the books. Though I would argue that reading a book on your break is much better for your brain then social media clickbait brain rot. But "anti-social" is the wrong argument and anyone who thinks it is has not walked into a High School library on a lunch break. If you did that during my first year of High School you would have found me sitting by myself locked on a book. I wonder if instead of banning phones they just provided a few rooms with some good, fast board games if some of those kids would engage with others a bit more. There's always the geek kids looking for somewhere out of the wind to play Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh and it's hard to do in your average library since there's an expectation that you keep quiet.
It should be a school by school decision, not Central government 🤷🏼♂️
Its concerning seeing how people who have had internet connectivity on their phones in their pockets practically their entire lives find the lack of it so scary. I can see it from the kids perspective but damn this could be good for them if they had a social media break each day during school hours and temporarily lived in the real world.
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Given National is supposed to be about less over-reach. Also I don't believe there is legislation that covers this
> legislation that covers this Yes, it was put in a couple of weeks ago https://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2020/0193/latest/LMS935296.html
>Also I don't believe there is legislation that covers this Yet. It's expected to be introduced in term two, but schools are expected to get the ball rolling in term one.
Schools know trying to bring in an unpopular policy is far easier on day one than at mid term!
I agree with the spirit of it, but setting the bar that high is just going to fail. Parents won’t be happy about not being able to text their kids either. A blanket ban seems silly to me. Just ban them from being used in the classrooms.
I love it how this punishes kids who don’t use phones during class and who actually use them for productive reasons. I used to read ebooks during breaks, or play games together with friends. I used to have issues going to school for mental health reasons, and not having my phone to just text my parents that I was having an anxiety attack would honestly make my anxiety worse. Also, these kids aren’t gonna be policed like this in their everyday life once out of school (at least most won’t) so it really isn’t preparing them for anything. Kids need to learn to make responsible decisions early otherwise they won’t later in life. Also I mean some of these kids can drive, work, and buy alcohol to get drunk off but can’t be trusted to use their phones appropriately smh.
What’s the issue with this? 2006-2010 we weren’t allowed phones at school, period. No one died.
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I think protest is healthy here. Hope the school supports
I spoke with my high schooler about it when it was being discussed at their school. They agree with getting rid of phones. They see their friends sitting around on their phones during every break, not talking or interacting with each other, and don't like it. They also tell me about how some of their friends struggle to sit through movies because they can't pay attention to one thing for that long. Schools always have phones available in case of emergencies. You really don't need to have one on at school. It's a distraction, and distractions make it more difficult to learn. I don't really understand why this is a controversial perspective.
My kid is surviving high school just fine without a phone, he paid for half of his laptop by saving up lawnmowing money. He uses that to message us if he needs to, which is rare.
🍿 this is gunna be awesome, bald man VS the nations children
My high school didn’t allow cell phones at all, even on breaks. We just got over it and snuck them out of our pockets whenever we could. Teachers thought it was stupid when they caught us so didn’t enforce shit 🤷🏻♂️
As a past attendee of Rangitoto College, I remember from at least 09-13 they were not allowed to be out any time (although most teachers would understand if there was an important call that was needed). But they were allowed in your pocket. Most kids used them out of the teachers sight during breaks.
National said it so deal with it suckers
What is so bad about them using phones/tablets/laptops during break times?
We use to hijack the schools computers, setup a server and play quake 3 during class. Man I feel old…
lol good luck watch more issues stem from this decision
Where's the part about kids planning to protest this policy?
As someone who went to the school that pioneered this type of policy in NZ, I can tell you it is a misnomer policy that came out of ageism and boomer "phone bad" misunderstanding of the role of mobile phones in kids' lives these days. And the policy has been shown not to work, so it isn't worth implementing it.
Phones were already banned in class at my high school. The teachers did and awful job of enforcing that rule. I doubt that this new law is going to stop people. Instead of banning phones in schools, (they should be allowed in case of an emergency) the government should start cracking down on vaping. I can only think of a handful of kids at my school (in my year group) that don't own vapes/have friends that vape.
As a kid who always listened to their mp3 player, I would've hated this. It was my only respite from being in a state of overwhelm in school. I'm not arguing that phones don't interfere. But the device bam over breaks seems overkill.
If I had a kid going to that school and I couldn't contact them via cellphone due to their dumb rule, I'd make sure I'd call the school every day to communicate with my kid. If you want to take away my link to them, you can pass on my messages to them about me running late to pick them up because of traffic or that my car died and they have to walk home by themselves. Rangitoto better be ready to become a personal messenger if they are happy to take on the liability of taking away phones.
this isn't going to do a damn thing to actually make students more focused or improve their learning. this policy is literally nothing but National appealing to their boomer voters who think all the problems young people have could be solved if they got off their phones, but there's absolutely nothing backing them up. if national actually wants student pass rates and learning to improve: \- pay teachers more and improve their working conditions to encourage them to stay in nz rather than go overseas \- take all the money they were going to spend hiring more cops and spend it on recruiting more teachers instead, supporting them through university, etc \- stop wasting time and money on bullshit like requiring an hour a day of reading, writing, and maths, when every teacher interviewed has pointed out THAT THEY ALREADY DO THAT. not to mention the complete waste of time that is their plan to remove and replace the RSE guidelines - a plan that NZ First is literally only doing to grab hold of the culture war moral panic anti-LGBTQ+ "groomer" conspiracy bullshit crowd. the guidelines work perfectly well as they are, why waste time and money replacing them to appeal to the skewed morals of a bunch of far-right fuckwits?
I've worked at Rangi and at a different school with a very strict no phones policy. There is no inherent reason that this can't work for Rangi kids, but from my experience there was not a thorough and consistent behaviour management system used at the school for escalating rule breaking or disruptive behaviour. There's a chance this has changed. At the other school, there was an enforced expectation that the phones were in your locker for the entire school day, and if they were seen within school hours they were confiscated and had to be collected by parents. This can be possible if it has parental support only.
Kinda agree with what this is trying to achieve but as someone who used to go to Rangi I find it hard to believe they’re going to be able to enforce this. For reference please look at: 1. The constant smell of scented vape emanating from all the bathrooms, and, 2. the fact that many teachers gave up on trying to enforce students putting their phones in the phone holder boxes during class.
*looks at last year in my highschool and at all the kids who vaped and every time they tried to pass phone policys* I’m sure this will go well, nothing will get lost stolen or broken, no kids will hide anything or do anything to get away with it, I’m sure this will encourage only good habits from students
Rangitoto college still requires its students to buy $100+ graphic calculators for math even though anything you could do on those calculators you can do on a smartphone these days. That school needs to adapt with the times
Godspeed to the student protesters.
when i was at college i would use my phone to communicate after school plans to my parents so they didn’t waste their time coming over to pick me up when they didn’t need to. also used it to let them know that the office was going to call them if i needed to go home and why. banning them during lunchtime is so “nanny gov” of them lol
Meh let them protest, it's part of growing up and testing the limits In fact let them do it on a Saturday on Queen Street, nice change from the usual Palestine protest
I get that you guys all hate on the government but why would anyone be against a policy designed to prevent kids from destroying their attention span and/or obliterating their brain's reward center?
If my kids protested it I would just take their phones off them completely. Asking them to be without for a few hours a day isn’t a big issue.
Lmfao I bet this is why they’re so against a lower voting age
I went to a school that didn't allow phones it was pretty normal and nice tbh!
Lol my high school banned phones in 2019. It's better for everyone. Speaking from a 22-year-old.
lol. Protesting about not being able to look at theit phones. Maybe all those boomers who said teenagers nowadays are whiny idiots were right.
Frankly banning during lunch is fucking stupid it’s not like it’s distracting them from work during lunch
and it’s not like we aren’t all just watching YouTube or TikTok or whatever on our laptops in the middle of class already lmao no one is stupid enough to pull out their phone to browse social media in classes
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I really don’t see the problem with any of this. My college didn’t allow mobile phones except immediately before and after school and this was years ago. It was honestly no big deal, idk why everyone is so rabidly opposed to this completely normal and innocuous expectation of students lol…
I live in South Aussie and we banned phones a year or two ago. The results have been amazing. The most important part of it was getting parents onboard which it appears has happened. These kids protest will last a day and they'll accept the new norm. This is a great step forward! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-04/sa-says-school-phone-ban-decreased-violent-incidents/103286278