Should students be allowed to use their phones during school? The answer seems like it should obviously be no. But apparently this is has become a difficult subject for school districts to grapple with. Across the country, school boards and administrators recognize that phones distract students from learning, diminish attention spans and affect students’ mental health. But few have the gumption to remove personal devices entirely from schools.
Consumer technology is, usually, profoundly dull. I love technology, but even I must concede the undeniable. A new pair of light gray, plastic cupped, noise-canceling headphones are functional, and often great, but they hardly get the blood rushing. Yet another gray Windows notebook has released! I struggle to stifle a yawn. And then — worst of all — are the phones. In the sixteen years since the first iPhone debuted, smartphones have become ubiquitous; the market is so large and flooded that innovation is no longer worth the risk. Phones are not cool new devices, but tools. You don’t care how a hammer looks; you care about the price and if it can hit a nail. The latest iPhone is a tool for accessing the internet and taking selfies. Most Android phones are the same but cheaper.
Arlington, Virginia Wandering through suburban Washington, DC's National Airport — I always liked the libertarianish ex-congressman from South Carolina Mark Sanford for voting against renaming it Ronald Reagan Airport on the grounds that the nomenclatorial decision belonged to locals, not Congress — I was refused service when trying to buy a bagel. It wasn’t because of my race, gender or vaccination status; rather, the eatery in question, which had no cash registers, accepted orders only from smartphones. As I have never owned a cell phone of any kind, let alone a smartphone, I was outta luck. I couldn’t plead food insecurity, to borrow the silly euphemism of our day, for soon enough I would be dining on the nine almonds that constitute an airline repast.
Silicon Valley parents are famously strict about their children’s screen time, even as they dish out their ‘crack cocaine’ technology to the rest of the world’s youth. Last week, however, Tucker Carlson upped the ante: he called on Congress to step and ban children from smartphones, as they do with alcohol. Researchers have demonstrated a link between hours spent in front of a screen and depression and anxiety levels in children. But screen usage damage isn’t just in our heads; increasingly, it’s also in our hands. ‘Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior pediatric doctors have warned,’ reports the Guardian.
