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Phones in schools discussion


Are they really bleeping serious? Banning a piece of tech because kids don't need it?

I know that this seems to be related to someone who unfortunately got killed by some idiots, but I don't see how a phone is going to make much difference. People can still browse the internet on a desktop which may be shocking to some people. Secure chatting applications like Matrix do not require a mobile phone.

I don't see how this is any good.
 
sigh. automatic UK position = ban it.
electric scooter? ban it.
self driving car? ban it.
want to smoke? ban it (but alcohol is fine).
got MS and want to smoke something other than tobacco ... ban it.
 
sigh. automatic UK position = ban it.
electric scooter? ban it.
self driving car? ban it.
want to smoke? ban it (but alcohol is fine).
got MS and want to smoke something other than tobacco ... ban it.
I wasn't even aware of the smoking one until I saw it in my article, about 15 months off not qualifying 😂
 
uh sorry im just a little frustrated at how this country works sometimes.
you see Americans driving around in automated taxis, and showing off full self driving. you see europeans whizzing about on scooters. But UK? hmm. we should definitely ban that, it looks like too much fun. Can't do anything without the nanny state intervening.

Take the scooter one. Ok I realise people are divided on this one, and I also am (hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time kinda) because I actually enjoy using the hire ones in Bournemouth, I think it's a good way to get people out of cars, less pollution etc but i've also seen 10 year olds on them who think the highway code is a youtube series. But the UK said we'd legalise them 2 years ago and still nothing. But it's somehow OK for ones that make money for councils in "trial" areas.

I'm derailing the topic. I'll stop now.
 
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I got a phone when i could afford one myself. That's just how it was in my household, I would like to say that it worked well because it meant i had to save up a good few quid which made me value it a lot more in the process and look after it, and my monthly plan was the base bottom bargain basement asda mobile plan, so i literally never used it unless i needed to or else my allowances would run out.
I bought an iPhone 3GS which couldn't play games or anything of that sort, but they were all the rage with iMessage etc.
 
I got a phone when i could afford one myself. That's just how it was in my household, I would like to say that it worked well because it meant i had to save up a good few quid which made me value it a lot more in the process and look after it, and my monthly plan was the base bottom bargain basement asda mobile plan, so i literally never used it unless i needed to or else my allowances would run out.
I bought an iPhone 3GS which couldn't play games or anything of that sort, but they were all the rage with iMessage etc.
That was my first phone when I was 5 😂 (long story, let's not go there)

Mine were all mostly presents for Christmas or Birthdays until the Pixel, had to buy it outright unfortunately (even though I have no income, most of my stuff is outright, includes my laptop, 3DS and Switch)
 
uh sorry im just a little frustrated at how this country works sometimes.
you see Americans driving around in automated taxis, and showing off full self driving. you see europeans whizzing about on scooters. But UK? hmm. we should definitely ban that, it looks like too much fun. Can't do anything without the nanny state intervening.

Take the scooter one. Ok I realise people are divided on this one, and I also am (hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time kinda) because I actually enjoy using the hire ones in Bournemouth, I think it's a good way to get people out of cars, less pollution etc but i've also seen 10 year olds on them who think the highway code is a youtube series. But the UK said we'd legalise them 2 years ago and still nothing. But it's somehow OK for ones that make money for councils in "trial" areas.

I'm derailing the topic. I'll stop now.
Those self driving taxis are known for going haywire and stopping themselves in the road, transforming into Robotic Just Stop Oil protests. They shouldn't be in the USA no mind here, but the USA allowing these kind of trials so that these companies can work on solving these problems in a real-world situation is why they are so far ahead in some areas.
 
Haven't looked at this thread lately but I was lucky enough to see my niece over the weekend. She's 9.

I've had people concerned about my usage habits on these forums but I think my niece is actually obsessed with her phone (a hand me down Samsung A9). I think she has the idea that she wants to become a TikTok star or something using dances that other people have done and over the weekend, she must have tried to create about 15 unlisted/private shorts to YouTube (most of which got rejected due to upload limits thankfully for new accounts). It scares me how much unrestricted access she has. Sure, when I was 9, I hardly had any parental controls but the worst thing I probably ever did was try to buy AVG Antivirus using my mum's PayPal 😂

When we were having lunch on Saturday before they went at a Korean restaurant, she wanted to try and find the WiFi password. Thankfully, they didn't have public WiFi, no real need for them to anyways considering mobile coverage is excellent (200mbps 5G from O2 a week or so ago) and there's BT public WiFi throughout the city centre. I would imagine if she was connected to WiFi, she would have just been scrolling through YouTube or playing Roblox.
Girls are much more affected by this, apparently.
It's the bloody disease of the century.

 
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Oh the days of calling the BT operator on the one school payphone, requesting a reverse charge phone call to the parents, "can you come pick me up now".
Try this one

- Starting Irish secondary school in the late 2000s (around 2008-9)
- Grandparents visiting from the UK, meant to pick me up
- They don’t, forgot or something, have number written down
- Ask teacher for phone, hands me a brick phone
- Hmm, this number looks weird, anyway dial 00 44 XXX
Try three times, forget to hang up voicemail on the 3rd try
- Leave a 56minute message

A few weeks later, that teacher was very pissed off about his phone bill that €125.83 more expensive than it should’ve been! I still remember that number even today!
 
Try this one

- Starting Irish secondary school in the late 2000s (around 2008-9)
- Grandparents visiting from the UK, meant to pick me up
- They don’t, forgot or something, have number written down
- Ask teacher for phone, hands me a brick phone
- Hmm, this number looks weird, anyway dial 00 44 XXX
Try three times, forget to hang up voicemail on the 3rd try
- Leave a 56minute message

A few weeks later, that teacher was very pissed off about his phone bill that €125.83 more expensive than it should’ve been! I still remember that number even today!
This was Vodafone IEs charges btw, around the same time my dad managed to rack up a £450 bill calling Ireland from a VUK contract while he was working in the UK. It was around the same time his work was finishing up, so it never got paid and nothing ever came of it either. He’s had the same UK bank account the whole time so I guess if they ever got a CCJ it would show up now, but 16 years is a long time.

Would a VUK to VIE call even cost VF anything? That must be near 100% profit margins
 
Have spent the last half hour writing and deleting many replies to your post. In the end, I just gave up.

We'll drink a beer together at some point, then we can talk about it at length. :)
I'm not even going to try and go into the ifs and why of a ban being put in place, but I want to explain why I believe implementing a ban would be, in my opinion, impossible

I believe before parliment or anybody else spends endless hours discussing the IFs of banning kids from phones, they need to skip ahead and think about how they will actually implement the ban

To say though, I do think that social media is harmful to this age group, and clearly built to take advantage of parts of the brain they've studied to turn people into endless scrolling machines

1. What are you banning, phones, smartphones, tablets, tablets outside school times?
That's the first question I have, what are you actually going to restrict kids from using? Anything with a touchscreen or a keypad? Anything with internet access? Anything that connects to a cell tower? Like what's the ban?

A point i'd like to make is that, the recent news articles and "tens of thousands" of people coming together still make up a minimal amount of parents. Even though it's been advertised as "coming together for a phone free childhood" they probably make up 5-10% of kids in a Year 7 classroom, which is minimal enough that the problem of them being the odd one out will still be a big issue. And on top of that as soon as something like this is actually starting to be implemented, everyone else it inconviences will start to voice their opinion making much more noise than the "ban" crowd.

I heard somebody call into a TV Talk show recently where this was being spoken about, saying "why would the child have control over the parents? if the parents dont think a phone is appropiate then they don't get one", simply in blissfull ignorance not understanding the problem with their kid "being left out" and the issues they'd be in for when their kid reached that age

Let's say "smartphones" are banned, which is the only real possiblity I see on the "physical" side of banning things. Apart from the issue of defining what a smartphone is in the eyes of this law, I highly doubt it will be enforced. Whatsapp and pretty much every social media app has banned users under the age of 16 for a long time now, but they all still use it. So is the Police going to start taking the phones off of kids, or issuing fines to parents?

Are they going to ban a phone that connects to the internet? I heard this one proposed on a Talk Show aswell, but they didn't seem to understand that even all modern "dumb-phones" will access the internet to make calls over VoLTE, so where do you draw the line? O2's IMS server on the internet is okay, but some random foreign website that they'll never be able to block isn't?

When I have kids, I imagine as soon as they starting leaving the house on their own i'd want to give them one of those dumb phones, they're the price of what 2 pints with 12 Months service from Sky Mobile at the moment? The peace of mind is totally worth it, especially if theres some kind of GPS function (talking about 8-12years old here)

2. What's even harmful on the phone? Is it not an "everything-tech" problem?
I assume that we're usually talking about social media when we say phones are harmful to kids, I doubt a lot of harm would come from a dumb phone with a few contacts on it. But isn't a smartphone just an iPad with, in simple terms, the ability to "Get WiFi everywhere"? What's the difference between an iPad with celluar and a phone? Or even an iPad with a kid that knows how to login to the hundreds of public wifi hotspots?

So if you ban smartphones, but the kids still go to school everyday and spend atleast a few hours on screens either in the form of chromebooks or iPads - which granted will usually be much more locked down - and then they come home to spend time on an iPad, Xbox, Playstation or anything else that has just as much communication ability as a smartphone?

I'm pretty sure the harm being done to kids in terms to smartphones, would be at home endlessly scrolling, since kids spend most of their time between home and school. We ban the phone, but not the iPad, Laptop (which the school almost makes mandatory to use for homework) or the Xbox/Playstation which are arguably just as bad?

3. Enforcing a software ban is impossible from a government perspective
A parent generally would have much more control over a device than the government, the government simply cannot "ban" kids from social media sites because it just won't work.

How are you going to enforce a ban? If you make the social companies verify user age, the kids will find one that doesn't (very good alternatives are already open-sourced for anybody to spin up), and the actual "legal" users also turn to ones that don't. If not, these kids will just start using the normal call and SMS functionality built into their phones, RCS/iMessage has come on a lot

Can the government even get Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, Twitter/X, Snapchat, Discord, even Skype to enforce this? And what about Matrix, Signal, Session? All it takes is one kid in the school to find one app and tell everyone about it, and you've lost the whole point

People like to assume that if somehow there was a gateway block on Apple or Google's App Stores to verify users age that it would solve the problem, but I very much doubt that. A whole generation hacked android, even flip phones, to pirate music, games, apps. It would literally be more than trivial for a 10 year old to find a way to install apps outside of Google's play store even today, and that's before some company abroad decides to make a social media app designed to circumvent a law put in place and makes some super simple step-by-step guide or something.
 
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@jon1 I feel like you should also come for that beer. :)
Yeah sorry for that wall of text, it's impossible to even start to talk about that issue without ending up writing a block of text, and I didn't want to keep going back and rewriting the whole message every time I discovered a flaw with my whole thinking as I wrote it, but I think it makes the point I wanted pretty well

Something really interesting I read today, on a forum talking about AI generated Music somebody said along the lines of "well humans would always seek out other human creations to feel the connection etc etc", and another person replied "Would a kid who spent their entire life 6 inches from an iPad screen feel the same way?". Definitely made me think about where were headed...
 
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