I pay whatever is needed to get the features I need, within reason. My current phone was ~$500 CAD (XPeria 10 V). It was the only narrow phone with good battery life at a reasonable price with 8 GB RAM at the time.

Out of curiosity, why do you need so much storage on mobile? Massive music library in FLAC or something?

I am totally content with 128GB. It’s enough that I’ll never run out of space for my usage. (Well, aside from photos, but those get backed up in full-resolution to Amazon Photos as part of my Prime subscription).

Granted, most of my media consumption is ebooks, which are tiny.

The actual analysis itself makes it clear that the research specifically on cell phone bans is lacking. In particular, of the 1317 studies, only 22 were relevant, more than half of which were Master Degree research projects, not peer-reviewed studies. It’s fair that the evidence for cell phone bans in schools is inconclusive, but that’s because there isn’t enough quality reach yet to draw conclusions.

I was actually referring above to studies on cell phones in general for task success, non-specific to schools.

You’re missing the point entirely, I think.

If you want to learn about the research, Jonathan Haidt’s book includes links to studies on the effects of cell phones. I don’t have time to find the sources for you right now, but you can look there if you want to learn more.

Seriously… I’ve downloaded 2TB in a week before.

I get that it’s not about the bandwidth, though; it’s about needing to upgrade their security since they scraped the site without needing to log in, so obviously their site wasn’t secure. They’re claiming IT costs as damages.

It’s a shame your child’s teacher used the tool incorrectly. That was unprofessional of them.

If it helps, there are people like me running training sessions for educators to let them know what LLMs are (and are not) capable of. The main point I was pushing this year was that LLMs don’t know or understand anything. “The I in LLM stands for Intelligence.”

By age 16, there’s reason to think that youth can handle the addictive nature of phones, with support. Same for adults.

That said, yes, we probably should make dark patterns illegal, in general.

Smart phones in pockets being a problem is supported by robust psychology research. People do the worst at tasks when phones are on the desk in front of them, worse when phones are in their pockets, and best when phones are left in another room even if the devices are turned off, in all cases. It’s even worse if phones are on even without any sort of notification, like vibration. (And, obviously, notifications make things increasingly terrible.)

The research is not at all unclear or anecdotal; it is very strong. Phones are damaging to attention, task completion, and learning. This is established; the only disagreement is to the degree of the effect.

Re: phones in “class”, I think we’re misunderstanding each other due to terminology. Here, “a class” means a single instruction period. I thought you were for banning use during instruction time, but against phones being fully banned at school, but if you mean “class” to be the entire time from first bell to last bell, then we’re in agreement. No smart phones at all during school hours would be a good step.

Hopefully, that might also make parents more aware of the damage smart phones are causing and support a societal move away from giving youth addiction machines.

You’re only considering one narrow use of LLMs (which they’re bad at). They’re great for things like idea generation, formatting, restructuring text, and other uses.

For example, I tend to write at too high a writing level. I know this about myself, but it’s still hard (with my ADHD) to remain mindful of that while also focusing on everything else that crowds my working memory when doing difficult work. I also know that I tend to focus more on what students can improve instead of what they did well.

So ChatGPT is a great tool for me to get a first pass of feedback for students. I can then copy/paste the parts I agree with for praise, then “turd sandwich” my suggestions for improvement in the middle. Or I can use ChatGPT to lower the writing level for me.

For tests, it’s great to get it to generate a list of essay questions. You can feed GPT 4 up to 50 pages of text, too, so the content is usually really accurate if you actually know how to write good prompts.

I could go on. LLMs are a great tool, and teachers are professionals who (I hope) are using it appropriately. (Not just blindly copying/pasting like our students are… But that’s a whole other topic.)

To add to your last point, academics aren’t even the biggest problem: it’s youth mental health that’s in a crisis right now. Focusing on academic “success” itself is a problem. Academics will come if students have mental health and resilience.

Yes, that’s why I specified above that “home schooling” usually comes with lots of extra funding.

In my jurisdiction, an autistic student gets ~$30K of funding, half of which is earmarked for education specifically. In a public school, that gets maybe 45 min of EA time + being on a learning support teacher’s caseload. With “home schooling”, that $15K can pay for enrollment in a specialized small-group part-time program for academics.

The other $15K funding can pay for respite workers, if parents need more time for work, or lots of other things.

Also, parents are much better equipped to follow their children’s interests with authentic experiential learning than any public school can be. Schools can’t afford 1-to-1 attention, and parents know their children best. With academic support covered, parents can focus on following their children’s interests.

These students are also followed by a teacher (like me) and a learning support teacher to help coordinate resources, support workers, and other planning. There are layers of support.

It’s an incredibly effective educational model.

I don’t know if something similar is available in the US. I imagine it varies by state, and I would not expect Red states to support programming like this.

I’m certified to teach in my jurisdiction. I have a teaching degree, and I have completed additional professional training specific to this topic through conferences, books, and other professional development (PD).

I can’t source conference talks or teacher PD groups, so I sourced a popular press book that’s approachable to laymen.

Phones in pockets are damaging, too, FYI. Children 15 and under shouldn’t have smart phones at all, ideally, but definitely not at school

A dumb phone can do that without the damage caused by smart phones.

You seem to care about this, but just FYI that it’s well studied at this point that having a smart phone at all during school hours is a problem.

It’s not about cyber bullying. Having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging. Children should have dumb phones exclusively until age 16.

Outside of class time sounds good, but it really means that students become fixated on checking all their notifications between classes. This is an experience blocker. Instead of engaging with their peers or teachers, they’re screen zombies caught in addictive dark patterns, generating anxiety constantly all day.

I’ve plugged it already in this thread, but The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt explains this really well , and he brings receipts.

The nice thing is that the education system has an answer for that: home schooling! At least in my jurisdiction, the autism funding parents get is enough to send autistic students to specialized small-class tutoring services during the day (using public funds), so the burden on parents isn’t that high. Parents then get to focus on experiential learning with their kiddos outside of tutoring time, following their interests (and regulation).

Regardless, cell phones in the classroom are a problem for everyone, but especially for AuDHD/ADHD students.

Also, dumb phones are fine. SMS and phone calls aren’t a problem, it’s smart phones that are addiction machines.

As an educator and parent, I couldn’t disagree more strongly. Smart phones are addiction machines and childhood experience blockers. Children should not have smart phones at all until age 16. Age 16 would be a very appropriate time to introduce smart phones after their harms have been explained in detail at ages 12 through 15.

Banning cell phones during instructional time doesn’t go far enough. Students having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging. (Dumb phones are fine—SMS texting and phone calls are great.)

There has been a precipitous decline in youth mental health globally in nations where cell phones were affordable starting in 2010. The evidence is clear. Smart phones (and, more broadly, addictive dark patterns in all apps/games) are a big problem.

If you want to learn more, read the first chapter of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. (I’d recommend the full book if you want details, but chapter 1 is enough to give you a grounding in the data and the broad strokes of the argument.)

Indeed. As a silly example, I had a Pacman clone game that ran based on CPU cycle speed. I needed to turn the in-game speed setting way down and toggle turbo off to make it slow enough to be playable.

Sentencing hasn’t happened yet; 48 years is the maximum, according to the article.

Whatever the sentence is will be ridiculous since it’s just copyright infringement, but hopefully the sentencing goes to a small fraction of the maximum.