Published on 12, July, 2020
Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/24/the-anxious-generation-jonathan-haidt-book-extract-instagram-tiktok-smartphones-social-media-screens?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb
Very interesting, I think.
From the article:
How do we escape from these traps? Collective action problems require collective responses: parents can support one another by sticking together. There are four main types of collective response, and each can help us to bring about major change:
1. No smartphones before year 10Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones with limited apps and no internet browser before the age of 14.
2. No social media before 16 Let children get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to an avalanche of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers.
3. Phone-free schoolsSchools must insist that students store their phones, smartwatches, and any other devices in phone lockers during the school day, as per the new non-statutory guidance issued by the UK government. That is the only way to free up their attention for one another and for their teachers.
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independenceThat’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.
Re No. 4 - I've been saddened to see how different the lives of children are now to when I was young, although my life was far from perfect.
I did however have a lot of independence, so much that perhaps it was neglect.
I went out to play from a young age and stayed out all day (I had one friend when I was under 12 and a lot of time was spent at his house in his garden) but when I was 12 we moved to a council estate and I used to just stay out all day with whoever I knew (a gang I seem to remember) and we would play on old bomb sites and building sites.
It's not ideal but it is incredibly different.
At school we played actual games like hopscotch, skipping and ball games.
A lot of rhymes were sung - I am trying to find a video of these - if I do I will post it here.
I thinking the 'self-governing' part of this is very true.
I grew up to be a pretty independent thinker.
My observations as a person in school 5 days a week*
Around a fifth of the kids are sufficiently compelled by their phones that they can't resist them. There's a 'no phones except at breaktime' rule, but it's ignored by them, particularly, and they're routinely asked to put their phones away.
A significant group in each class want to spend their time chatting, social peer interaction is at least as important to them as their phone.
The rest of them pretty much get on with it.
From experience, these behaviours are difficult to change by the timethey get to secondaryschool, and in general, they'll carry them all the way to their GCSEs.
There are probably multiple factors influencing behaviour, of which access to phones is just one.
There's talk nationally of banning phones in school, as if that would be a simple fix - I'm not sure it would.
*But not for the next 2 weeks!
What could possibly go wrong?
A new kind of ruler to use across the knuckles, eh?
IrishInManchesterUK said:if computers really must be used in schools, it should only be by the principal in their office only and under maximum security with multilayered pass-words, not taught to pupils at all
I'm exceptionally glad that you are not in charge of this country's education, religious or otherwise.
The whole schools should have signal jammers installed, not just classrooms - and the use of wireless wifi should be banned in schools as well - if computers really must be used in schools, it should only be by the principal in their office only and under maximum security with multilayered pass-words, not taught to pupils at all
Iain said:The simplest solution would be to have a signal jammer operating in the classrooms
That would work, assuming signal jammers were allowed.
Pegg said:There's talk nationally of banning phones in school, as if that would be a simple fix - I'm not sure it would.
The simplest solution would be to have a signal jammer operating in the classrooms - it would render the phones unable to connect so remove most of their attraction for that time.
Our grandparents generation went to great lengths to stop the internet and mobile phones coming into secondary schools, via boards of management, the local Catholic Priests and the Gardai and rightly so, for very good reason, as they correctly and accurately predicted - they did not want us children having any lessons on computer science for example and parents who allowed their children access to mobile phones or the internet were publicly condemned from the Pulpit and were harshly spoken to by the local police when I was growing up in Rural Ireland in my teens in the 80’s but sadly their efforts failed in the tide of “progress” (insanity) that followed so our grandparents were vindicated in their accurate and correct warnings about where all of this would lead to before their passing
Pegg said:There's a 'no phones except at breaktime' rule, but it's ignored by them, particularly, and they're routinely asked to put their phones away.
This is my experience with adults too.