and a gift link to The Atlantic article: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

mikemales.substack.com/p/new-figure...

the danger is that adults claim victory and believe they have saved the children, when in reality they have just kicked down an already open door and did nothing to support youth mental health (oh, and by the way, we are in the midst of an adult mental health crisis but keep pointing only at youth)

with phones in backpacks, lockers, or in holders at the back of the room. So the bans are doing little to change access to phones, are costing us lot of money (with these bizarre yonder pouches), time, and resources and are not solving any of the real problems that young people are facing - so...

Not surprisingly I have lots of thoughts on this. But in a nutshell, Yes, we should support teachers and no students should not be on their phones in class (unless they are integrated into the class plan or supporting learning), but, most teachers and schools had already solved this problem...

Welcome to the methodical disaster that is the “impacts of tech” on kid’s brains/bodies/ learning/ mental health field where “preliminary findings” or sometimes just vibes are front page headlines

This does not sound like “addiction”, instead it sounds like a child who is turning to online games and communities to distract from or cope with challenges in their life.

But, sadly we can predict the headlines already from this paper..

is not surprising to learn from this study that, for example, young people who repeatedly report that they “play video games so I can forget about my problems” also report experiencing worse mental health.

…yes, AND we have also known that young people with mental health problems often report spending more time gaming and online. Instead of calling them addicted because of it, we should ask what they are searching for and what we can do to help them find what they need.