9 ms·

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My b

by RegW 10mo ago

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wasteful time sink, so I resolved to completely stop using the social media of its time, and have avoided most incarnations of it ever since (but here I am). As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves. I know that some simply won't finish school without strong guidance, but delaying exposure to this might just be worse in the long term.

bigC5560 10mo ago
As someone who graduated from high school in 2025 I completely agree with this. I am glad I had to work it out on my own, and I don't think this is a place that a school should take control. If I had to figure this out along with the stress of college, I don't know if I would be able to handle it. I also think that it has helped with my overall time management skills and prioritizing my time. I know not everyone will have the same experience as me, but I just feel like learning to manage it on my own was overall beneficial for me in the end.
- kelnos 10mo ago
  I think the problem is that most students, (as this study shows) are not figuring it out on their own, at least not in high school. It feels like you're one of the outliers, not the common case. Having rules about what you can and can't bring into school is nothing new. I went to high school in the 90s, and there were plenty of things we weren't allowed to bring with us into class; back then, the closest analogue to smartphones would have been pagers, probably. It seems entirely reasonable to ban smartphones (and dumb phones, even) from schools. Frankly, I think it's absolutely insane that they were ever allowed. And sure, maybe these students who go to high schools where smartphones are banned will get to university and go nuts, sitting in lecture halls with their phones out all the time. They'll learn very quickly that their grades will suffer, and will clean up their acts or fail out of school. But this is like everything else: the first year of university is the big year of independence, of being away from parents for the first time, and college students do plenty of dumb things in the name of that independence. That's always been the case; I'm no stranger to that phenomenon myself. They either work it out on their own, or they fail out.
- mghackerlady 10mo ago
  Similar situation as you, I switched to a flip phone and now use my old iPhone as a glorified youtube machine when I'm too lazy to go to my desk or don't feel like dealing with my tablets poor wifi range
testing22321 10mo ago
> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies. What makes you think this is different?
- Muromec 10mo ago
  That approach works more often than it doesn’t — outside of certain spiraling situations most people don’t became alcoholics and drug addicts. Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree.
  - somenameforme 10mo ago
    They weren't always. In fact it took many centuries for this to happen. The history of cocaine in the US is quite interesting. It was being used everywhere and by everybody. Factory owners were giving it to their laborers to increase productivity, it was used in endless tonics, medicines, and drinks (most famously now Coca-Cola = cocaine + kola nut), and so on. You had everybody from Thomas Edison to popes to Ulysses S Grant and endles others testify to the benefits of Vin Mariani [1] which was a wine loaded with cocaine, that served as the inspiration for Coca-Cola. So probably part of the reason it was so difficult to realize there is a problem is because everybody was coked out of their minds, so it all seemed normal. And I think the exact same is true of phones today. Watch a session of Congress or anything and half the guys there are playing on their phones; more than a few have been caught watching porn during session, to say nothing of the endless amount that haven't been caught! I can't help but find it hilarious, but objectively it's extremely inappropriate behavior, probably driven by addiction and impaired impulse controls which phones (and other digital tech) are certainly contributing heavily to. I find it difficult to imagine a world in the future in which phones and similar tech aren't treated somewhat similarly to controlled substances. You can already see the makings of that happening today with ever more regions moving to age restrict social media. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani
AuthorizedCust 10mo ago
> As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually… Fellow Scouter here. Lots of Scout units in the USA have cell phone bans. That’s such an obsolete policy. We need to help the Scouts model good choices, and that doesn’t happen when decision opportunities are removed. Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback on how much fun they are[n’t] having in your Scout unit.
- emil-lp 10mo ago
  > Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback on how much fun they are[n’t] having in your Scout unit. You are misunderstanding the addiction part here. It's not about not having fun. There are tech companies spending literally trillions of dollars on one goal: ensuring that kids keep looking at their phones. Your framing this as a question of boredom is really naive.
  - AuthorizedCust 10mo ago
    I speak from experience. They aren’t on their phones when they are doing adventures.
    - emil-lp 10mo ago
      Of course, but they can't be on adventures 24/7, that's the point. Kids aren't supposed to have fun 24/7. It's impossible. The problem is what happens the moment the "fun" stops. If everybody reaches for their phones, then that's an issue that cannot be fixed by your "just have more fun" mindset. These kids are set up to fail.
sapientiae3 10mo ago
The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25. The problem with that is without some explicit instruction or guidance or invention before they have full control of their impulses, not everyone tames the beast unscathed.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  > The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25. This factoid has been repeated for decades but it’s essentially a myth. Brain development continues into your 20s, but there isn’t a threshold at age 25 where someone goes from having poor impulse control to being capable of good impulse control. 18-25 year olds are not children and are fully capable of having impulse control. That can continue to develop as they age, but it doesn’t mean age 25 is when it happens. I would agree that actual children need some more explicit boundaries, which is also why we don’t allow children to do a lot of things that people over 18 can do.
  - kelnos 10mo ago
    I don't think anyone is saying impulse control goes from 0% to 100% on everyone's 25th birthday, like flicking a switch. But is it not reasonable to say that a 25-year-old will have significantly better impulse control than they had when they were 18? (And that their 30-year-old self probably has a similar level of impulse control as when they were 25?)
  - assimpleaspossi 10mo ago
    I owned a string of fast food restaurants. I had the ability to not hire anyone under age 20 if I didn't have to. When I did, the requirement was that they be in college but, in every case, I found that these kids, who returned for summer work every year, did a lot of growing up between the ages of 18 and 20.
  - skeeter2020 10mo ago
    I think this persists because in most studies, 25 - and other specific ages for further stages - comes from plotting a distribution of the traits being analyzed and pulling averages from that. We like precision and fixate on the numbers but they really mean "the majority of the observed change under study appears to occurr within a specific range" but that does not make catchy headlines for the public.
Aurornis 10mo ago
> As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. In my experience with mentoring juniors and college students, it’s common to have some wake-up call moment(s) where they realize their phone use is something that needs to be moderated. For some it comes from getting bad grades in a class (college in the age range I worked with) and realizing they could have avoided it by paying attention in lectures instead of using their phone. I’ve also seen it happen in relationships where they realize one day that their social life has disappeared or, in extreme cases, get dumped for being too into their phone. For others it shows up in their first job when someone doesn’t hold back in chewing them out for excessive or inappropriate phone use. In the context of high school students, I don’t see this happening as much. A big component of high school social structure is forcing students a little bit out of their comfort zone so they can discover friends and build relationships. The default for many is to hide, withdraw, and avoid anything slightly uncomfortable. For a lot of them, slightly uncomfortable might be as simple as having to make casual conversation with people around them. A phone is the perfect tool to withdraw and appear busy, which feels like a free license to exist in a space alone without looking awkward. So while agree that most people come to terms with the problem themselves as adults, I do also think that middle and high schools deserve some extra boundaries to get the ball rolling on learning how to exist without a phone. The students I’ve worked with who came from high schools that banned phones (private, usually, at least in the past) are so much better equipped to socialize and moderate their phone use. Before anyone claims socioeconomic factors, private high schools generally have sliding scale tuition and a large percentage of students attend for free due to their parents’ income, so it’s not just wealthy kids from wealthy families that I’m talking about.

by RegW 10mo ago

bigC5560 10mo ago

As someone who graduated from high school in 2025 I completely agree with this. I am glad I had to work it out on my own, and I don't think this is a place that a school should take control. If I had to figure this out along with the stress of college, I don't know if I would be able to handle it. I also think that it has helped with my overall time management skills and prioritizing my time. I know not everyone will have the same experience as me, but I just feel like learning to manage it on my own was overall beneficial for me in the end.

kelnos 10mo ago
I think the problem is that most students, (as this study shows) are not figuring it out on their own, at least not in high school. It feels like you're one of the outliers, not the common case. Having rules about what you can and can't bring into school is nothing new. I went to high school in the 90s, and there were plenty of things we weren't allowed to bring with us into class; back then, the closest analogue to smartphones would have been pagers, probably. It seems entirely reasonable to ban smartphones (and dumb phones, even) from schools. Frankly, I think it's absolutely insane that they were ever allowed. And sure, maybe these students who go to high schools where smartphones are banned will get to university and go nuts, sitting in lecture halls with their phones out all the time. They'll learn very quickly that their grades will suffer, and will clean up their acts or fail out of school. But this is like everything else: the first year of university is the big year of independence, of being away from parents for the first time, and college students do plenty of dumb things in the name of that independence. That's always been the case; I'm no stranger to that phenomenon myself. They either work it out on their own, or they fail out.
mghackerlady 10mo ago
Similar situation as you, I switched to a flip phone and now use my old iPhone as a glorified youtube machine when I'm too lazy to go to my desk or don't feel like dealing with my tablets poor wifi range

testing22321 10mo ago

> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies. What makes you think this is different?

Muromec 10mo ago
That approach works more often than it doesn’t — outside of certain spiraling situations most people don’t became alcoholics and drug addicts. Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree.
- somenameforme 10mo ago
  They weren't always. In fact it took many centuries for this to happen. The history of cocaine in the US is quite interesting. It was being used everywhere and by everybody. Factory owners were giving it to their laborers to increase productivity, it was used in endless tonics, medicines, and drinks (most famously now Coca-Cola = cocaine + kola nut), and so on. You had everybody from Thomas Edison to popes to Ulysses S Grant and endles others testify to the benefits of Vin Mariani [1] which was a wine loaded with cocaine, that served as the inspiration for Coca-Cola. So probably part of the reason it was so difficult to realize there is a problem is because everybody was coked out of their minds, so it all seemed normal. And I think the exact same is true of phones today. Watch a session of Congress or anything and half the guys there are playing on their phones; more than a few have been caught watching porn during session, to say nothing of the endless amount that haven't been caught! I can't help but find it hilarious, but objectively it's extremely inappropriate behavior, probably driven by addiction and impaired impulse controls which phones (and other digital tech) are certainly contributing heavily to. I find it difficult to imagine a world in the future in which phones and similar tech aren't treated somewhat similarly to controlled substances. You can already see the makings of that happening today with ever more regions moving to age restrict social media. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani

AuthorizedCust 10mo ago

> As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually… Fellow Scouter here. Lots of Scout units in the USA have cell phone bans. That’s such an obsolete policy. We need to help the Scouts model good choices, and that doesn’t happen when decision opportunities are removed. Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback on how much fun they are[n’t] having in your Scout unit.

emil-lp 10mo ago
> Also, if they are buried in their phones, take that as feedback on how much fun they are[n’t] having in your Scout unit. You are misunderstanding the addiction part here. It's not about not having fun. There are tech companies spending literally trillions of dollars on one goal: ensuring that kids keep looking at their phones. Your framing this as a question of boredom is really naive.
- AuthorizedCust 10mo ago
  I speak from experience. They aren’t on their phones when they are doing adventures.
  - emil-lp 10mo ago
    Of course, but they can't be on adventures 24/7, that's the point. Kids aren't supposed to have fun 24/7. It's impossible. The problem is what happens the moment the "fun" stops. If everybody reaches for their phones, then that's an issue that cannot be fixed by your "just have more fun" mindset. These kids are set up to fail.

sapientiae3 10mo ago

The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25. The problem with that is without some explicit instruction or guidance or invention before they have full control of their impulses, not everyone tames the beast unscathed.

Aurornis 10mo ago
> The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25. This factoid has been repeated for decades but it’s essentially a myth. Brain development continues into your 20s, but there isn’t a threshold at age 25 where someone goes from having poor impulse control to being capable of good impulse control. 18-25 year olds are not children and are fully capable of having impulse control. That can continue to develop as they age, but it doesn’t mean age 25 is when it happens. I would agree that actual children need some more explicit boundaries, which is also why we don’t allow children to do a lot of things that people over 18 can do.
- kelnos 10mo ago
  I don't think anyone is saying impulse control goes from 0% to 100% on everyone's 25th birthday, like flicking a switch. But is it not reasonable to say that a 25-year-old will have significantly better impulse control than they had when they were 18? (And that their 30-year-old self probably has a similar level of impulse control as when they were 25?)
- assimpleaspossi 10mo ago
  I owned a string of fast food restaurants. I had the ability to not hire anyone under age 20 if I didn't have to. When I did, the requirement was that they be in college but, in every case, I found that these kids, who returned for summer work every year, did a lot of growing up between the ages of 18 and 20.
- skeeter2020 10mo ago
  I think this persists because in most studies, 25 - and other specific ages for further stages - comes from plotting a distribution of the traits being analyzed and pulling averages from that. We like precision and fixate on the numbers but they really mean "the majority of the observed change under study appears to occurr within a specific range" but that does not make catchy headlines for the public.

Aurornis 10mo ago

> As a scouter working with teenagers, I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. In my experience with mentoring juniors and college students, it’s common to have some wake-up call moment(s) where they realize their phone use is something that needs to be moderated. For some it comes from getting bad grades in a class (college in the age range I worked with) and realizing they could have avoided it by paying attention in lectures instead of using their phone. I’ve also seen it happen in relationships where they realize one day that their social life has disappeared or, in extreme cases, get dumped for being too into their phone. For others it shows up in their first job when someone doesn’t hold back in chewing them out for excessive or inappropriate phone use. In the context of high school students, I don’t see this happening as much. A big component of high school social structure is forcing students a little bit out of their comfort zone so they can discover friends and build relationships. The default for many is to hide, withdraw, and avoid anything slightly uncomfortable. For a lot of them, slightly uncomfortable might be as simple as having to make casual conversation with people around them. A phone is the perfect tool to withdraw and appear busy, which feels like a free license to exist in a space alone without looking awkward. So while agree that most people come to terms with the problem themselves as adults, I do also think that middle and high schools deserve some extra boundaries to get the ball rolling on learning how to exist without a phone. The students I’ve worked with who came from high schools that banned phones (private, usually, at least in the past) are so much better equipped to socialize and moderate their phone use. Before anyone claims socioeconomic factors, private high schools generally have sliding scale tuition and a large percentage of students attend for free due to their parents’ income, so it’s not just wealthy kids from wealthy families that I’m talking about.