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Phone bans are spreading across the US workplace
(www.independent.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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As always, loss of rights for children always spreads to adults in short order.
Wait a minute... Isn't banning phones from schools a good thing? I'm not trying to be difficult here, but aren't they a huge distraction from the learning experience?
Having a phone in school would have been incredibly helpful to me. My middle and high schools got rid of pay phones but did not allow students to use the office phone. I accepted car rides from strangers multiple times because I was unable to get ahold of my parents and also unable to walk home due to distance and not knowing any routes that avoided walking along a state highway.
I also sat through most classes with a genre fiction paperback book in my lap because I needed something to catch my interest and I'd already read ahead in the text book.
The point is regardless of if it's good or not. Removing the rights and privileges of ANY group of humans. Will spread to the rest of us. When you restrict something for children in school it almost always ends up in work places for adults. Because many companies consider the work place little more then school 2.0 when it comes to control. The employee is functioning barely more then a child as far as many companies are concerned
Children deserve rights and respect. If it's a problem you deal with it on a case by case basis. Just as you should in the work place. The sacrifice for freedom and self respect is that some people will try to take advantage of it and abuse it.
Blanket bans in all but the most extreme of cases are only considered smart by assfucks, shit stains, fascists and ignorant fuck muffins who listen to the other groups with out a second thought. And cellphones are NOT a extreme case.
For the rest of us we know how stupid they are and how many knock on problems they cause the rest of us. Or at a minimum ask and question things as to learn why there is a controversy.
So good on you for asking. Props for not being a idiot.
Hold up just a bit. It has little to do with infringing on someone's rights and more to do with ensuring our children have the best learning environment we can provide them. You can argue workplace rights in a separate argument. Children do not NEED these devices. Parents do not NEED their children to have them.
Am I the old fogey here? Do y'all not see how these devices are a detriment to their learning experience?
I may have agreed with this a year ago, but here’s what’s going on with my son school’s phone ban.
The school requires the children to bring in a laptop from home. The laptop mine brings is controlled via parental controls. My child is a stickler for the rules, so the phone is only used to let us know if parental controls need to be adjusted during school hours because of a change in lessons, or to let us know if there’s a problem on the way home (he has a disability and sometimes he needs a lift from a bus stop, and he’s also been late the bus after school before, so I’ll have texts going between me, him, and the bus driver). It’s never been an issue for him and I’ve never had a complaint from the school. One of the administrative personnel also told me that he’s really good about not using his phone and would never use it when he wasn’t supposed to.
The school banned phones because they wanted the children to be more social. I complained to the school about the above and that my son has already had many issues with bullies and taking away their phones might cause more incidents. The school told me not to worry, not many kids are really using their phones and a lot of them are either going to some sort of computer gaming room on their breaks or at lunch time, or they’re gaming on their laptops, and none of that is expected to change. So, what exactly was the point?
My son also raised a complaint about possible theft. They assured him that the phones would be securely stored in a safe. Within a week the kids knew the code and the school said, “well, it was inevitable”.
At this point, all of the kids on phones in school stuff seems mostly like theater to me. I’m sure it’s happening in some places, but it doesn’t seem to have been an issue at my son’s school. To some extent, I wonder how much of it has to do with teachers not wanting to risk being recorded, but they still have laptops so I don’t know what exactly they are doing this for. The whole thing seems like it could’ve been avoided by either giving more punishments to the children that are using their phones inappropriately or giving special dispensation to the students that never use it inappropriately.
I can see why you are pushing back, but I can also see their point of view:
In several schools I visited the children do not have their phones banned or taken away. They simply don't use them, as they are engaged and have expectations set by their teachers to respect the classroom and their peers. Admittedly these are small classrooms, about 8 to 12 to a teacher with a lot of engagement.
But it shows that children can learn when it's appropriate or not, without a blanket ban.
Similarly, if you are an adult and expected to perform at your work, do they need to treat you like a child and ban or restrict things?
Whoa, those are small class sizes, an ex-teacher friend had 20+ grade schoolers (6-8 iirc) to manage, most were underprivileged but still had phones and spent classes goofing off on them, even though the school and my friend had set rules stating phones were not allowed during class.
I would have to check, but I don't think phones arent allowed. Its just that the kids are occupied with each other and engaged so they don't use them.
I think that speaks volumes about the education system.
Oh and just because we are challenging norms: all three schools have implemented gender neutral bathrooms. They all have private floor to ceiling stalls with a common sink area that is open to the hall way. Extremely visible common area, extremely private single occupancy do your business area. They have had zero issues.
I like that bathroom idea, private is private, washing your hands doesn't need to be private though (IMO obv.)
Politicians are mad that kids have access to information like "it's OK to be gay" and "the Gaza genocide is wrong" so they're pulling every lever they can to remove that free access. Schools are already prison like environments where vague unproven "it's for education" can be asserted, so they are. So.it the freaky surveillance they're doing now. Are microphones in the bathroom "ensuring our children have the best learning environment" because they're doing that in Beverly hills now
Don't worry, you're right.
There's a very vocal subset on Lemmy who think that any issue children have must be the parents/teachers fault, and that no blanket rules should exist. It's weird.
The funny thing is the schools are the parent while the child is there.
We're reacting to extreem oversteps aginst rights which are numerous these days
Children not being allowed to have a phone in class isn't an extreme overstep against rights.
Access to a pocket size computer whenever you want isn't an unalienable right.
If you own a pocket sized computer than you should be able to use it when ever you want.
It's not an extreme overstep, but as we can literally see right now in this thread, it normalizes the loss of rights.
There's another solution to banning phones without needing to ban phones; Fund our school properly so that our children get the attention and proper classrooms that they need. Of course it's easier to ban phones in classrooms of 30 - 50, because then they don't need to actually pay the teachers to care, or provide the resources necessary for creating a productive classroom.
It's like peeing in one side of a pool and expecting it to not spread
No, it's not. It's being done for censorship.
Children are banned from using phones?
They're using the same products they sell to schools to enforce phone bans (which are about censorship, not education)
Banning children (which means anyone under ~~18~~ 25) from using phones is the goal
In many schools now, yes.
Now? It was a rule for me 20 years ago.