Comment by lll-o-lll
14 hours ago
Smartphones are banned at school in Aus, for a strong net positive. Kids still sneak them into toilets and so on (and vapes), but the overwhelming impact has been positive.
14 hours ago
Smartphones are banned at school in Aus, for a strong net positive. Kids still sneak them into toilets and so on (and vapes), but the overwhelming impact has been positive.
It’s surprising that more schools haven’t done this. I suspect that we’ll look back in 10 years with it being common and ask ourselves what took so long.
> surprising that more schools haven’t done this
We have a depressing state in America where you can predict the parents’ income based on whether their kids’ school bans smartphones.
And the kids' future incomes as well.
In the US we've completely given up on stopping school shootings, and parents have instead decided that the better thing to fight for is their children having cell phones so they can hear the child's last words when the school shooting happens.
I think the phones are one thing. It was a bit distressing to hear that US schools have “school shooting drills” like Japan schools have “earthquake drills”.
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At least in Australia the phone ban doesn’t mean you can’t have a phone in your pocket, you just can’t take it out.
Taking your phone out when I was in school meant having it placed on the teachers desk until the end of class, and possibly some other kind of penalty if they particularly didn’t like you. But you always got your phone back before leaving the class.
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It’s not actually about school shootings in the US, as much as that might be cited as justification. Some parents just want to be able to text their kids all day.
I’m not sure what ‘the US’ means here. In California it’s now required (as of next year) for schools to limit or restrict student phone use, and several other states have done similar things as mentioned in the article [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/24/california-s...
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People who claim that as the reason they want to allow phones are simply lying.
> parents have instead decided that the better thing to fight for is their children having cell phones so they can hear the child's last words when the school shooting happens.
What's a ridiculous appeal to emotion. Between 2020 and 2022 there were 131 school shooting deaths, including suicides. Let's put those all in 2022, and assume that there were actually 0 suicides.
That means you have a 0.0026% chance to be killed (at most) in a school shooting. This is too much, but this is not the reason to allow cell phones in schools. Come on.
I am more worried about dogs in school. Many teacher are fine to blame 11 years old for "provoking" dog attack! It is ok to send a kid to hospital, for eating a sandwitch!
Teachers at my school do not believe allergies are real! If there is asthma attack, it is an uncorrelated event! School will stab my kid with epipen, call ambulance and send me hospital bill! Avoiding it is too much work!
Once school brought unrestrained police dogs to school for a demonstration! Those had a record of attacking and torturing suspects!
Being able to call help is a basic human right!
You could give them a shitty flip phone for that.
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In Australia all the private schools have done it for ages, it’s just only recent that public schools did it.
Sure we still did sneak in a bit of phone usage in the bathrooms and behind secluded buildings but it’s a huge difference from being able to freely scroll social media all day.
Most schools in the Eastern Hemisphere have always been doing this. It is basic common sense to not allow phones in classrooms.
How do you know that it has had an overwhelmingly positive impact? Can we, for example, see a marked increase in PISA scores for Australia from after the ban?
Or is this one of those "I hate phones, therefore banning them must be good for kids" things?
These are the key findings from the UK research which was part of the reason we started banning phones in schools here in Denmark.
> our results indicate that there is an improvement in student performance of 6.41% of a standard deviation in schools that have introduced a mobile phone ban.
> Finally, we find that mobile phone bans have very different effects on different types of students. Banning mobile phones improves outcomes for the low-achieving students (14.23% of a standard deviation) the most and has no significant impact on high achievers. The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of whether phones are present.
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1350.pdf
I believe OECD and Pisa results have also pointed towards banning as a net postive since their 2022 report.
I think it's fair to say that it's not a "black-and-white" thing. As the research points out, digital devices aren't the only factor in the equation. I believe OECD research has also found that using a digital device with a parent can be a benefit while using it alone will most certainly be a negative for children aged 2-6. I'm sure you can imagine why there might also be other factors that make a difference between parents who can spend time with their children and those who can't.
Aside from that there are also benefits from digital devices for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia. In most class-rooms this can be solved by computers + headphones, but for crafts people (I'm not sure what the English word for a school that teaches plumbers, carpenters etc. is), having a mobile phone in the workshop can often help a lot with insturctions, manuals and such.
So it's not clear cut, but over all, banning phones and smartwatches seem to be a great idea.
6% of a standard deviation sounds like very little to me, but it's hard for me to grok what that actually means.
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> I'm not sure what the English word for a school that teaches plumbers, carpenters etc. is
"vocational school"
Given that teachers are no longer competing for student attention in class, that is one single and quite important positive which doesn't require an academic study and referencing to demonstrate.
I'm not sure what you were hoping to achieve with the request for evidence, but what you're asking is not yet subject to a longitudinal study. The move has certainly been praised by educators, and that should be enough given it's the first or second year year of implementation in many cases, and what they are advocating for isn't a social taboo, nor draconian.
Meet kids who have smartphones in school. A lot of them aren’t able to maintain eye contact in a conversation. It’s a remarkably jarring change that looks like it will wind up stunting the development of low-income kids for a generation.
I wasn't able to do that either, and smartphones didn't exist back then
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There are neurodivergent people who have a low threshold for how long "normal" eye contact lasts. Using smartphones is also an excellent excuse to avoid eye contact.
Basic common sense? We are dealing with CHILDREN IN CLASSROOMS here. Leaving aside the obvious psychotropic properties phones and social media have on people of all ages, in what universe can preventing children from diverting their attention from live classes ever be good?
What sort of argument is that? Anybody who lived long enough anywqhere saw many times what a cancer screens are to kids and their development, the smaller the worse. You can't make any sort of strawman out of this topic, its proper cancer.
If you want to measure something for this measure happiness or strength of social circles. Good luck with that.
>What sort of argument is that? Anybody who lived long enough anywqhere saw many times what a cancer screens are to kids and their development, the smaller the worse. You can't make any sort of strawman out of this topic, its proper cancer.
That's not science, that's a demonstrably false assumption that everyone thinks smartphone usage is bad for kids.
In my experience with kids and smartphones, kids of the young generation (gen Z) are way better informed (and less brainwashed) than kids of their parents' generation were, whose only access to information about the world when growing up was through the captured, centralised legacy media.
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So what needs to happen to ban smartphone use while driving? I mean not "formally forbidden" but "thoroughly enforced".
Personally, I avoid phone use even as a pedestrian in busy city spaces - I think the time it takes to fully switch attention to be fully aware of things like a reckless driver running a red light is too long to not affect safety.
In the Netherlands we have 'focus cameras' now that specifically detect smartphone use while driving, with hefty fines of €430. These cameras are mobile as well, so they get placed on different spots over time.
> but the overwhelming impact has been positive
You definitely need a source for that comment given that it only just happened.
Smartphones are neutral pieces of technology. It can create the next Einstein or radicalise the next terrorist, the 1's and 0's don't mind.
Why not ban them at universities also? Are these kids suddenly protected the moment they leave high school?
Like your opinion I have my own, and banning smartphones in Australian high schools will turn out to be overwhelmingly negative for outcomes. I predict it will be reversed and looked back upon as a failure.
Khan academy taught me more than dozens of different teachers. Kids are now blocked from accessing it for their entire time at school and when they would be most intruiged to learn.
Just like terrible having internet, Australians seem intent on being left behind in a hypercompetitive world.
> You definitely need a source for that comment given that it only just happened.
I don't know a lot about the impact, but this happened about 2 years ago in multiple states. Here's some thoughts from those who have looked further:
https://thepostsa.au/education/2025/03/26/more-laughter-more... https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-all-the-recent-evid... https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/mobile-phone-ban-impro...
> https://thepostsa.au
Anyone can read that site and make up their minds about the scientific merit of it's claims.
I assume it's very intentional that it's right down the bottom in tiny text that's it state government owned media vehicle
> https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-all-the-recent-evid...
"Our team screened 1,317 articles and reports as well as dissertations from masters and PhD students. We identified 22 studies that examined schools before and after phone bans."
"Our research found four studies that identified a slight improvement in academic achievement when phones were banned in schools. However, two of these studies found this improvement only applied to disadvantaged or low-achieving students."
"In a sign of just how little research there is on this topic, 12 of the studies we identified were done by masters and doctoral students. This means they are not peer-reviewed"
Do you really want to keep wasting people's times here because I'm more than happy to debate it with someone who actually cares.
Nothing in that article suggests it's of overwhelming benefit. I'm talking much bigger than teachers having an easier job too, education outcomes like this take decades to be seen.
> https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/mobile-phone-ban-impro...
>gov.au/media-releases/
Mate you've spammed us all with the first things you've found on google. Correct?
Ohhh I assumed all countries did that. Like common sense.