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A teachers union says it’s fed up with social media’s impact on students::The nation’s second-largest teachers union said Thursday it was losing patience with social media apps that it says are contributing to mental health problems and misbehavior in classrooms nationwide, draining time and money from teachers and school systems.
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Here in the Netherlands the government gave the strong advice to schools to ban the use of phones in classrooms. They did not go as far to make it a law, but schools are free to enforce the rule however they want. Some ask that students have to put their phones in their lockers. I believe this is a good step by the government, being someone who grew up in the starting era of mobile phones during high school. I for sure think it has rotted my brain, as I find it hard to stay away from my phone if I am even slightly bored.
That’s not an unusual policy for schools in the US either. But the reach of social media extends far beyond kids using their phones in class. That’s part of the problem. Now you can be bullied at 10pm while lying in bed.
My kid’s school here in the UK banned them, but the kids all take them in anyways and the teachers don’t care.
I had banned YouTube in the house, but then the school started assigning homework to watch YouTube videos.
The dependence of our infrastructure on private social media companies is shocking and needs to be stopped immediately.
Someone close to me is a HS teacher. During covid, the schools changed their policy from “no phones in class ever” to “you can have your phone in class but you’d better only use it to help with classwork or in an emergency.”
They’ve been trying to reverse the policy back to how it was, but it’s hard to get all the kids to believe that they can’t do this anymore. They don’t take the threat of punishment seriously because everyone is doing it now.
Even if you manage to deal with the phone issue, the school gives kids chromebooks now to do their work on. The student wifi network seemingly has no restrictions, since the teachers sometimes need to have them watch something on YouTube or Netflix.
So kids, during class, watch Netflix on their Chromebook instead of paying attention.
Banning smartphones in schools is stupid, unless you have other alternatives like laptops (where you can block social media). The thing is, the internet is basically a huge library and kids learn how to solve problems on their own. I sometimes see 20-30 year olds who literally don‘t know how to use google and if they don’t know something, they don‘t know how to research it.
Yeah, there needs to be a balance with tech and education. The internet and smartphones are a part of everyday life now, as ingrained as electricity, running water, and literacy itself.
Trying to ignore technologies because education systems can’t or won’t figure out to integrate them doesn’t seem a great idea.
Digital literacy is as important as literacy itself in todays world. The computers and the internet have become interwoven with just about every facet of everyday modern life. I don’t see how we can educate people for that same world if education system tries to pretend we are still in the pre-digital era.
If we want to equip children with the skills to navigate a digital world we need to figure out how to thoroughly integrate digital skills into education.
I went to school in the time before mobile phones were really a thing at all. We still still had plenty of ways to goof around and plenty of ways to be pressured. Part of being educated is being taught how to behave and how to handle life’s challenges.
I went to high school before smartphones were really a thing (pre-iPhone) and we weren’t allowed to have phones during the school day. It seemed reasonable at the time, but it’s probably harder to pry phones out of high schoolers’ hands these days.
Also, at least as the US goes, it might be a bad idea - take ways away from students to sound the alarm about a school shooter…
They’re not wrong. Social media has been almost as destructive to my mental health as MMO games.
Social Media is much worse than MMOs. How many people have played World of Warcraft & Co? Meanwhile everyone and their grandmothers are on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc.
I’m not sure about that. Personally, I’m sick of kids running through the hallways screaming “For the Horde!” and painting “The people called Alliance, they go the house” on the walls.
All then Boomer yelling Leeeeeeroy Jenkins
I’m so glad to see this. There have been several studies that show social media is terrible for the mental health of minors.
Of all ages.
Opening para from a NYT article on the Waldorf School in Silicon Valley:
"The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home."
The behavior is seen by everyone everywhere. I’ve seen signs in places banning the filming of tiktoks.
For worse or better social media isn’t going away and kids will always be exposed to it, but if it could be limited or find ways to reduce its harm that would be great. I wish it was an easy solution.
As much as mainstream social media is bad, there are online communities that are strictly necessary for some groups. Banning social media would stop closeted queer youth from participating in communities that would support them. Asking your homophobic parents about queer sexuality, for example, is a one-way ticket to getting your ass out on the street. Asking a community of fellow queer people anonymously is more viable. As toxic as social media can be, it can also be a refuge for good people who need to escape the real world and the consequences of it.
It really is an all-or-nothing approach. Either we make systems that are effective enough to stop everyone, or make them ineffective enough that they can be bypassed.
We should be helping young people navigate, and have a healthy relationship with it. The technology reflects and caters to the negative parts of the society it exists in. The best thing we can do is make the world better in the first place. Body-negativity isn’t here because social media decided it must exist, it’s because an algorithm decided that appealing to the existing negative thoughts and beliefs of people gets engagement. The only other way to deal with this problem is to dismantle capitalism so that organisations that run these platforms aren’t perpetually seeking profit at all costs.
I agree with your sentiment but how do you even go about this? From where I stand it feels like tech and social was sold out to the ad firms and tech overlords years ago. There is a measurable net negative impact to mental health among kids and adults from it. I’m all for allowing your kid to access the groups that make them feel valued and included, but at this junction phones and social in school is more harmful than helpful.
I’m all for allowing your kid to access the groups that make them feel valued and included, but at this junction phones and social in school is more harmful than helpful.
In the article, they’re talking about how social media affects students both in and out of school. Phones should be allowed in school as long as it isn’t disruptive to other students. Banning phones will just make people hide them more, instead of more openly using them and allowing discussions about how it might be harming them. Using your phone in a way that might harm your education in class is usually a sign of disengagement, lack of interest, or apathy to education, whether or not you have a phone. If anything, those same students will just do more disruptive things (talking, moving around, etc.) Banning phones is merely banning a symptom of the problem. I’ve experienced this first hand. Classes with students who didn’t give a shit? They just kept to themselves on their phone. Classes with those same students that had phone buckets? I had to leave because of my sensory issues, they were that loud.
I’m all for allowing your kid to access the groups that make them feel valued and included, but at this junction phones and social in school is more harmful than helpful.
I strongly disagree. The people who really need their phones should have them. They shouldn’t be punished because of a crumbling education system failing other people. If a student is using their phone because they don’t want the education they’re being offered, that’s ultimately their decision, you can’t help students who don’t want to help themselves. Listening to those students and funding programs where they might actually be engaged would do much more than that. Practising moderation and restraint is also an incredibly important life skill to learn at an age like that. You can’t do that if not having your phone depends on external factors.
Most of the harm from social media happens outside of class anyways.
People in education have a tendency of blaming everybody but themselves. Slapping a band-aid on the system and staff that fails students is going to create more and more problems down the line, and won’t even help in the short term.
Just to clarify are you saying that students should have access to their phones in classroom settings and should then feel engaged enough by the curriculum so as not to be on their phone or rather that while on campus they should maintain access, but be asked to keep them put away in class? At my school we had phones on us that we had to keep put away or it would be taken until after class. This seemed like a pretty basic and fair solution. If even a few kids are playing on their phone it is a pretty big distraction for everyone else.
Most of the focus on the article is in fact, on the external factors towards student behavior from social media use in general. I am not really sure what the answer is. My best friend is an ER nurse in a decent sized city and laments the amount of 12-14 year old girls that come in for both attempted and sadly often successful suicide attempts due to social media driven mental health crises.
As father to a young daughter I am constantly trying to better understand how to approach this topic as she ages.
Ah, we’ve found another scapegoat for the poor mental health of students besides, y’know, the schooling system itself.
Two things can be true.
The school system is far from perfect, but it’s been empirically demonstrated from many studies from many perspectives, that social media is terrible for developing minds and the mental and emotional well-being of children.
So, while you are right that there are many places for improvement in our education systems, dismissing what’s been proven already is foolhardy. More people need to trust evidence and stop just emotionally backlashing.
Nobody is denying that social media is awful, but decrying its harmful effect while students are doing active shooter drills is making a mountain out of a molehill while bigger problems are not being addressed.
