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Comment by sodality2 | Hacker News Reader

Parental supervision only works if the parent cares enough to even monitor digital usage. Instagram kids is quite possibly the worst idea for society I've seen in a while. The correlation between social media use and mental health issues, dropping grades, etc, in kids that are getting younger and younger, is stunning in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience. I hope this is legislated against, heavily.

Seriously, I'm seeing kids that are as young as 12 years old, spending hours on TikTok or the Instagram explore page, IN CLASS. It's just a terrible, terrible thing to see.

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It's kind of sad just seeing people glued to smartphones 24/7. I guess I started noticing it when going out again after lockdown restrictions were lifted where I live.

Yes, there needs to be a larger conversation about the level of addiction exhibited by adults. Kids are also an issue, but it doesn't help when adults are setting the expectation that phone addiction is okay.

At least my generation of adults has had smartphones since middle school now. People have neck problems from craning over. The minute there is a lull in the conversation the addicted and hungry brain seeks to fill the void with dopamine, and a phone appears open to some infinite scrolling app before the user can understand what even just happened. Oh and people rip juuls like there is no tomorrow either, so there are physical addictions among my generation. You have older millenials now in their mid thirties who are hiding in the bathroom stalls at their workplaces to hit their juul. All that effort getting generation X off of cigarettes and the work is undone within a few short years with a single company from san fransisco.

Unbelievable that we always foolishly go after the vice of the day (when I was a kid it was flavored cigarettes, look at all the good banning that did) instead of outlawing using the science of addiction for profit in the first place and nipping all of these dark patterns in the bud in one fell swoop.

It is absolutely as pervasive as you say, I can confirm. It takes a LOT of discipline to not fall in the pit. The algorithms truly are that hard to resist especially at a young and impressionable age.

I’m super guilty of this. I don’t take a piss without scrolling Reddit

Which is why it's especially troublesome when we see _kids specifically_ being targeted with dopamine-addictive services like this. Get 'em when they're young and stupid, and they'll be your recurring revenue for the rest of their useless wretched lives. Why useless and wretched? Because they got hooked on dompamine hits from this, and never had the time to develop any skills which we, adults, lucked into developing due to not having these "services" which consume 5-8 hours of our kids' days, every day, for years on end. Quite simply I'm a software engineer today because I was bored out of my mind when I was 10 years old. There were only 3 TV channels (USSR), only about 30 minutes of children's programming a day, and no internet, let alone smartphones or Instagram. If there was all that, I'd be literally cleaning pig shit between dopamine hits from my smartphone.

If they're doing that in class it sounds like a failing of the school itself. They can confiscate phones if they're being distracting or disruptive.

Whatever happened to rules in class?

I have to agree here. It is no different then any other distraction, toy or whatever in class. If the teacher is unable to get control over those, there is larger issues in there - either with teacher or with the school not empowering teacher.

It's far worse than that. You take a toy, they're done for the day. Kids have been known to bring iPods, old phones, etc to sacrifice to teachers. Plus, laptops are mandatory to have in my district (though not mandatory to use), so it takes about five seconds to cheat or get distracted in class.

When I was going through High School in the early 2000s teachers had a box you had to put your phone into at the beginning of each class. Worked fine then, can't see why it wouldn't now.

When I've worked in classified environments, they'd have an array of phone-sized lockboxes right outside the classified area. Put your phone in, take the key (which is on a springy lanyard to go around your wrist).

I assume high school students would immediately invent The Key Eating Game or something, where you swallow the lockbox key for TikTok clout

When I was in highschool about a decade later we figured out we could just hand the teacher some ancient flip phone and keep our actual iphones in our pocket.

Teachers have large class sizes and limited ability to give each student individual attention. A student can whip his phone out for the 5 minutes the teacher is on the other side of the room, and even if they do catch phone usage it becomes a liability to physically take and store the device even with the support of administrators.

Back in my day most of us could t9 text without removing the phone from our pocket, so you just needed a few seconds of the phone up your sleeve to read the responses. If anything, the need to physically look at the screen to use it should increase the window for the teacher to detect it?

In a case near me, I know a middle school teacher who has to negotiate with students for lectures: "We'll do 20 minutes and then you can do 5 minutes for a phone break." Without this, the classroom cannot be controlled. She says without knowing when the next phone break is makes them very nervous, and very difficult to retain their attention. This is a classroom in a "good school" area, extremely high funding, all kids claim learning disability to get advantages, and parents come down on the teachers. The school bureaucracy is deeply anti-teacher, and allows parents to treat them this way. I definitely agree that it is a failing of the school itself.

I have another friend who is a science teacher, but he doesn't have exciting stories like this.

Parents freak. The. Fuck. Out. If you touch their kids' phone, these days. You can maybe keep it to the end of the day (and some parents will still complain, "what if I needed to reach them?" Gee, I dunno, maybe call the office, just like all of history since schools got office phones) but past that, phew boy. No.

I'm shocked that schools allow phones at all, and that they're not harsher on kids when they find one, but I gather messing with phones is a really good way to have pissed-off parents up your ass, and schools all really hate that, so they give in. Result: constant phone shenanigans.

> "what if I needed to reach them?"

What parent would call a child in the middle of class, rudely interrupting the entire class? And what would they possibly have to ask their child that so important that warrants interrupting their child's class?

It has been known to happen. And not for anything actually urgent. Yes, really. And not a one-off, but one of those "oh yeah, time or two a year that happens" sorts of things.

Apparently taking kids out of school to get their nails done or whatever is also A Thing for some folks. I'd never have imagined it, but some parents treat school very differently than the parents I (fortunately) had.

My spouse has taught for over two decades, I taught for 10 or so years before transitioning to gasp administration.

Kids miss school more often today than when we started; our original attendance books prove that, at least for our classrooms. Reasons now range from spa days, to the kid didn't feel like getting up, to, and this is p.e.r.v.a.s.i.v.e., 7-10 day long vacations in September and October.

This year, my spouse has not had a full classroom any single day due to family vacations. Pre-covid, it was not better, either.

I'm afraid that I come across as a grumpy old man, but this is a problem that did not exist in the past. Education is seen as a burden, and a box to be checked anymore. Take from that sentence whatever you want.

Interesting—my spouse has only been in a little over a decade, and has switched districts enough times that we hadn't put together any kind of pattern of changes over the years. I just know that the frequency with which kids are out for a week to visit family in another state (not even around a holiday!) or out for spa days / nails / haircuts et c., seems totally alien to me. I was only out for, like, funerals, or if I had a fever or was vomiting or was in the hospital. I think there might have been one or two times, in my 13 years of school, when we cut out one day before a break to get a jump on a long drive, but that is the entire extent of "optional" days off I had, for all those years. One or two days, total, in 13 years, and I'm not entirely sure we actually did that ever, or maybe my parents just discussed it but ended up not doing it. I grew up thinking that was the overwhelming norm for attitudes toward schooling. It blows my mind that quite a few parents think nothing of pulling their kid out for a whole day, or taking them out early, just to go hang out! Often several times every year!

> This year, my spouse has not had a full classroom any single day due to family vacations. Pre-covid, it was not better, either.

I've got some friends saying their schools are hovering around 80% daily attendance this year, between the usual stuff and COVID. And I think some of the more lax parents are using COVID excuses for their usual BS, making things even worse. Plus the too-frequent days when they can't find enough substitutes and just have to stick 3+ classes in the cafeteria or gym for babysitting. Educational outcomes for this ~2.5 years (once this school year's over, it'll have been about that much) are gonna be really bad. Online, in-person, barely matters, it's all bad. :-(

>Educational outcomes for this ~2.5 years (once this school year's over, it'll have been about that much) are gonna be really bad.

And depending on what grade the student is, that 2.5 years could have repercussions for anywhere from 6 months for the older students trying to be competitive in college, to the rest of their lives. I really, really, really am afraid for students who are just learning the fundamentals and are missing so much social/emotional/educational development.

My money says this is going to have repercussions for decades.

It really will have lasting repercussions and I'm afraid of what some of the administration is doing to band-aid it. I spoke to an IB coordinator last week and I was told that the finals grades had dropped so significantly that the curve system had to be reworked. Not just made stronger, but completely changed.

In fact, the in-class tests were curved according to this formula: 10sqrt(x). A 10% is curved to a 31%, a 25% to a 50%, a 40% to a 63%, a 50% to a 70%, etc.

I spoke to an AP World teacher and he said less than a quarter of students got a 5/5 and less than half a 4/5 compared to pre-pandemic.

> and this is p.e.r.v.a.s.i.v.e., 7-10 day long vacations in September and October

Any theory on why that happens so much nowadays?

My pet hypothesis is that travel got cheaper so more people do 1-2 weeks vacations abroad, and at most companies, summer months are overbooked for leaves, so people use September and October as backup vacation time.

It's not even vacations abroad. I worked at a poorer district, and it's really parents just not caring. They go when they can get off or get good deals and pull the kid with them. Sadly enough, they can often get it excused as a "learning excursion", even if the teachers don't sign off on it. There's no value being seen in education; it's seen simply as babysitting, and it shows in the students' attitudes as well.

No, I don't think so. We work in very low-income districts. These people are not taking vacations abroad. They're not really planning outside of "it's cheaper then". No thought put into the repercussions, or the absolute lesson they're teaching their kids about the value of education.

The other poster is correct. In a vast majority of cases, k-12 education is just seen as babysitting, so missing a week or two isn't that big of a deal.

It has gotten so bad that my spouse's district now allows 9 unexcused absences before getting the truant officer (who is useless) involved, because they had too many referrals to the officer three years ago.

It's just ridiculous.

I also hear technology is destroying what is left of their actual class time. Kids are now given laptops so they have plenty of opportunity to tune out class work and do whatever they want and the teachers just have to deal with it. When I was in school tech gadgets were confiscated be it a beeper, gameboy, calculator or walkman, and later on, cellular phones.

Just last night I was talking about this with my brother who told me about his co worker who is a former NYC school teacher. He said he spent half of his teaching time telling kids to stop playing fortnight or browsing social media. After talking to my brother I called a friend who is a 4th grade teacher and said he also deals with social media browsing and gaming in class.

Feels like we're actively working on building an actual Idiocracy.

While I agree phones shouldn’t be allowed in school I can understand freaking out if the school takes a very expensive thing like a phone from a kid, especially like you said as it’s a means to reach the kid.

Why do you need to reach your child while they are in class? Why can’t you call the office?

I think a better question is why should parents not be able to directly reach their children when the technology exists. These kids aren’t in prison and parents have every right to decide whether or not their child has a phone on them.

Because children are taking them out in class. If a child actually keeps the phone in their bag that's fine, but if they take it out (and it's not a true emergency), the teacher has every right to confiscate it.

And I would argue that they don’t have the right just as your employer doesn’t have the right to take your phone. Apparently a lot of parents agree with me which is what spawned this comment chain.

Me, I'd be like, "huh, it sure was dumb of me to let my kid take an expensive electronic distraction to school. I probably shouldn't have done that."

But I think that puts me in old-man-yells-at-cloud territory, these days.

Hardly "old-man-yells-at-cloud territory". It's been only four years in our district since we were told to leave our phones in the lockers or at home, preferably. In those four years they implemented "Bring your own technology" policies to cut down on tech spending, and now everyone has their own laptop in our district. No one blinks an eye at using devices, except during assignments. "I'm taking notes" is the typical excuse.

I think it’s justified to be angry if the school kept your kids phone past the end of the day. That’s your property and they don’t get to keep that after hours.

Nowadays the kids are given laptops to perform their classwork on so there's no point taking the phones away when they have a more capable computer.

And it is concerning when you hear stories from teachers about how they spend half of the day telling students to stop playing fortnight or browsing social media in class.

They should install mirrors in the cieling like CVS has so the clerk can monitor the entire store for shoplifters from the front

Growing up whenever a teacher thought they were clever and would confiscate phones, kids got even wiser and started bringing in their ancient phones to offer up as a sacrifice, and kept their smartphones hidden in hoodie pockets.

Maybe it needs a system where the account locks if there isn't occasional parental monitoring. Then the kids would be the ones encouraging their parents to check. Maybe the parent has to take a selfie for facial verification or something.

Sometimes software isn't the answer. I think this is a good example. One of my child's friends plays Roblox nearly every waking hour outside of school. He's 5.

People naturally would ask "where are his parents?" ...she's a single mom working two jobs, and he's at home with a teenage sister as his only supervision most of the time.

This isn't uncommon in the US. I was a latchkey kid myself, my babysitter was TV. People say that parents need to pay attention to their kids more, but parents don't need more or better software, they need money and time.

This issue with this is that contemporary American parents are already spending more time with kids then used to be norm. Compared to past, even relaxed parents are helicopter parents. Maybe the expectation that parents will be constantly there, hovering over the young teenagers itself, micromanaging every aspect of their lifes on itself is unhealthy on itself.

I agree that this is a problem, albeit a different one.

The subset of people I'm talking about almost certainly don't fit into this category. There are still millions of kids with struggling parents who don't have proper guidance (note, guidance isn't necessarily supervision).

In the case of parents who are spending more time than ever with their kids, the problem could certainly be more related to aptitude. We live in a society where our lawmakers don't fully understand the technology most people are spending hours a day being manipulated by, so it certainly seems likely most parents don't understand the impact either.

Either way, to say that these companies will solve it themselves with better software for parents doesn't seem like a solution to either issue. It's kind of like "the factories are safer for children now because they're wearing hard hats" — it's the wrong conversation driven by the wrong people.

Most parents are unaware of the issues that are caused. Parent would often just be annoyed and press the approve button without thinking. Like the way no one reads the TOS.

Those selfies for facial verification would most likely be used for something unrelated and most people would be unhappy with if they knew. Think of the ways these could be misused.

This is going to end in a social media monitoring SaaS. Get curated alerts for "problematic" behavior. Completely transparent. Inevitable customer pressure will make current LGBT discrimination look quaint. Wonderful.

Jesus, that's dystopian. Get the parents in the system by hooking the kids?

Parental supervision only works if the parent *IS CAPABALE* enough to even monitor digital usage.

I mean both need to be true

You can “care” and be incapable.

Facebook figures parents don’t care about their kids privacy or letting the kids be manipulated. They just figure that parents want in on it, so they’re sharing their data and tracking.

Makes me wonder if its possible to install a faraday cage within the walls of the classroom in order to block signal.

In fact, a school I took my most recent SAT at did indeed have some sort of cell blocker. But they had in-school wifi, so I'm not quite sure what the reasoning is. (Apps like Snapchat and Spotify and Netflix are blocked, but Instagram and TikTok are not, so the firewall's not super well-made)

wow you figured it out parents don't care about their kids.

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