Middle school removes bathroom mirrors to stop kids from making TikToks::Southern Alamance Middle School in Graham, North Carolina has taken drastic steps to reduce the time kids spend outside of class.

  • doylio@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Why not just ban smartphones in school? There’s ample research now that they’re harmful to teen mental health

          • Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            For anyone that doesn’t know, Forgotten Weapons YouTube channel is one of the best channels relating to guns. But it’s a historical, educational persepective on guns, mostly guns from WW1,WWII, and anything up until the 1980s, though he does deal with some rare and some modern guns from time to time. Overall it’s a fantastic channel, the main guy Ian breaks down a guns history, mechanics, how it handled in production or war time, he really does his research, so it’s not your typical “I like muh guns big and loud” type of channel, it’s legit informative and educational, 100% check him out if you have the slightest interest in guns and gun history.

      • space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        They could just watch on the security cameras. I’m pretty sure they exist in every class and parents can access them at any time.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There aren’t security cameras in classrooms, at least in the schools I’ve worked. They are in the hallways though. I wasn’t allowed to record my class (despite that being good practice - watching yourself teach!)

    • AccmRazr@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I know a few schools in my area tried to institute zero tolerance no phones rule and the screaming from parents was loud enough that they gave up. One of the big sticking points was because of school shootings. Another was that schools have been bad about getting kids on the bus, that kids are getting lost or even ending up in bus depots at the end of the day.

      • doylio@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I think a good middle ground might be to ban smartphones but not phones entirely. If you want your kid to be able to call you, buy them a nokia or something without internet capabilities

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          I mean the real reason is that parents are almost as bad as their kids with their phones. They have become accustomed to texting their children throughout the day.

          • papertowels@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Wow, that is eye opening. I can’t imagine how bad helicopter parents can be these days…

      • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        There are better tools these days than blanket prohibition.

        The signals that voice and data go over are different from each other, so not all modern cellphone jammers jam the entire spectrum. Some can be set up to allow voice calls over the traditional channels while jamming data. This forces students to use the school’s wifi network for any Internet connectivity, whereupon their connectivity to apps and services can be whitelisted/blacklisted as deemed necessary by system admins.

        Ergo, a system that keeps students off of their smartphones while allowing parental connectivity.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I proposed a Faraday cage once 😂. But running a jammer would be a good way to get the FCC involved (hint: massively illegal). And if you think dealing with the FCC is fun, ask your local ham operator…

          Also they all know how to find proxies or unblocked sites. I watched severely intellectually disabled children teach other out to install VPNs. The smarter ones could install shit like Dolphin and would be playing Pokémon in class.

        • Kevin@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I feel that might be an issue from 4G onwards, considering VoLTE and VoNR are intended to avoid the use of a separate voice network to their existing data network

        • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          You’ll be so popular, with your dictator-like censorship of an organisation! How come no one even treats children like people, you wouldn’t find it acceptable to jam the mobile data of adults’ phones. Talk to the kids and encourage them to want to work at school, don’t be autocratic.

        • bamboo@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          How do you only allow parent connectivity without allowing most everything else? Would this require schools to build an app specifically for them to allow through and make parents and kids use that? It sounds awful for everyone involved. A mildly determined and clever kid would probably be able to figure out how to circumvent the censorship anyways, and now you’re back at square one but with a bunch of useless infrastructure to maintain.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This but unironically. In my neck of the woods, we are hemorrhaging kids to private or charter. That means losing money. Superintendents and administrators view parents as customers. They don’t want a parent to get pissed and move districts because the dollars follow the students. If education is babysitting - if a teacher allows students to do nothing but watch videos on their phone - parents hear nothing and assume everything is fine. If a teacher is calling home about behavioral issues, or a school has “high” discipline rates, then that becomes a visible issue.

      • skulblaka@startrek.website
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        1 year ago

        I spent 12 years in American public school during which greater than 70% of the student body had cell or smart phones and 100% of them were successfully banned. If the phone is visible during the school day and you aren’t currently receiving a phone call from the President or from your parents on their way to the hospital, phone goes in the teacher’s desk. You get it back at the end of the day.

        Its not that difficult at all.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        What’s the difficulty? If they’re being used they’re out in the open, and if they’re out in the open they can be confiscated.

    • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Good luck with that, the highschool I went to had a hard enough time getting students to stop vaping at school and during class, smartphones would be a much bigger battle. I graduated in 2019 and I still remember when they would try to crack down on cell phone use, never really affected me that much cause I only ever used my phone during class if I was done with everything but I still saw it go the same way every time. It would always only ever last for a month or two before the teachers just gave up because in the end if someone doesn’t wanna pay attention during class taking away their distraction isn’t gonna make them. They’ll just find some other distraction like talking to people or just zoning out. The problem is school just isn’t engaging and sure you can blame cell phones and social media for making it harder for people to pay attention to things that they don’t wanna do. But that doesn’t mean the solution is to not allow them during school, cause I’ve seen from experience that doesn’t help even if you manage to take away the phones, which already is really hard without impacting students who are following the rules negatively.

    • catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Is there research consensus on when children should be given phones? I would personally be very conservative about it, honestly.

      • doylio@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I agree! There’s a campaign pushing to avoid giving kids phones until 8th grade, but I think even that seems a bit too young