This is extremely sad.
My kids limit time w/tech devices for their children.
However, once they hit a certain age, they find ways around it and want to keep up with the crowd.
I don't think internet use is the problem understanding the technology and how and when to use it or not is important. Part of the problem is everything should be used in moderation.The other part that can cause issues is unmonitored access especially when not given the mental tools to handle online
As a parent of 3 this is so concerning. Mostly for the mental health aspect (as a GX I was raised on TV so that part doesn’t worry me as much, altho the instant gratification of the internet is causing problems in general and in classroom behavior)
Best things I have to manage it is systematic limit of social media time (forget about screen time I’m happy if they watch Netflix’s or play games) school districts use Yonder and are strict no phones
Screen time (Apple version) is so monumentally frustrating I give up for months on end. Maybe it works if everyone is on the latest iPhone running the most current iOS but I can’t afford that.
My son got his phone conf @ school today. He lives w his dad, who can’t pick it up until Monday 😈
Have you been inside a high school classroom lately? Well let me tell you what it looks like if phones aren’t banned. 27 kids looking down the whole time and 3 looking up. Then parents complain their kid is failing when they are the ones paying for it lol.
I've been talking to the tops of their heads for about 8 years now.
Take a phone away from a kid and watch them withdrawal like a junky. It's real -- and almost immediate.
As Jonathan Haight has rightly pointed out, the first societal agreement we must make is banning phones in classrooms. I teach at a school that does and kids DO adapt. Until we all do this, education is utterly hobbled.
Completely agree with ya. However getting districts to do what’s right versus public pushback aka school board members not getting reelected will cater to their wants. I think the parents need it more than the kids do.
I don’t disagree. This is extra tragic - & extra frustrating - since this is one of the few large scale actions that would cost practically nothing & would have one of the most profound pos impacts. W budget constraints as such a driver, WE are the only impediment to this game-changing improvement.
Are you aware of any research on this? It may be too soon. But anecdotally, every local news story I've seen where a district nixed phones ... both teachers AND kids said it was worth it.
Please encourage your fellow educators to band together and force administrators to set some concrete & meaningful ground rules, lest our kids be reduced to mere fodder for big tech companies. If we lose our kids' minds to them, we lose our future.
That’s what has been done and here’s the issue. It goes to the local school boards really quickly because the parents argue what if there’s a shooting I need to know my kid is okay. Everyone in the room looks at each other and goes ya us too. Keep the phones. Crime is we don’t get paid by them yet.
Apparently, a lot of parents don’t see this as a problem. I see so many problems with it-social skills, critical thinking, work ethic, isolation/mental health issues to name a few. Jen Garner took her family to help serve Thanksgiving meal to homeless. It’s not hard to teach kids to help others.
pretty horrific Mark. With all it's plusses, I think in the long run, it'll dumb us down. Our memories have already taken a hit, lies and misinfo have taken over the air waves because they're more interesting. Now everyone has a soapbox, to scream "factual" absurdities into the atmosphere.
The teens I work with openly admit having a negative relationship with their phones. While they wish it wasn’t so, they can’t control/limit their time on it.
We call that addiction.
They’re addicted to dopamine. BY DESIGN!
And so are the adults in their lives. They do what we do not what we say.
When you're on the internet, especially on your phone, every place is the same place. This is a real problem for younger people who never put their phones down.
We really didn't think this technology thing through very well. Think of how much energy, creativity and mental resources our youth are wasting on social media.
Absolutely, I have a set of beginner drums collecting dust. I can only imagine what our Arts will look like in a few decades. These tech companies rake in billions while funding for Arts in schools continues to decline.
Mark, though not a control freak when it comes to our kids, agree with the Aussie ban on social media under 15. TikTok? Ditto, trash it. These things are a big factor in how TF we got Trumpy again. Idiocracy arrived half a millennia earlier than Mike Judge predicted.
Literally reading this article to my son, while he’s desperately trying to watch a YouTube video on his phone. He sighs and tells me, “I really do not care about this.”
Frustrating. These behavior patterns from out of the womb assuredly must be rewiring their brains.
I really don't think that is the case. Any kid ordered to sit still and parse information won't engage with the debate or remember it fondly. I'd reserve these lectures for the dinner table when he's open to chatter, I also urge you to set ground rules on internet usage.
Australia just passed a social media bill will will supposedly prevent those under 16 from being able to use social media. The bill has a few problems.
Oralè Resisters
The Junk Drawer
Vivek Ramaswamy wants the
Elimination of FERS
Federal Employees Retirement System!
I am one of the 2.7 million retirees impacted immediately! #FERS #Retirees #FederalWorkers
#USDemocracy
Computer in the kitchen/living room where I could see it at all times. PREPAID phone calls only. When they could pay for their own great! HOWEVER, charged in kitchen o/n. In a cabinet during meals & gatherings. My house my rules PERIOD. They grabbed ‘tude - I was tougher than their angst.
It’s awful and I know better, but it’s so very difficult to get them to stop. For us it started in the pandemic… two working parents, a second grader, and a tween, we were just surviving. The tween now 16 has definitely been negatively affected. We keep trying, but jesus it’s hard.
I am more curious about polls since 11/5 because polls were so wrong. In this case, n=1,391 dyads (parent/teen) were sampled. Seem low to anyone else? I am no statistician, but I appreciate Pew Research’s transparency. Here’s their methodology for this. https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/12/12/teens-social-media-tech-methodology/
Most parents, myself included, used a tablet as free babysitter when we needed to shower or do something that required our young kid to be entertained, they grew up watching us as parents be on Facebook and Twitter constantly, we give and pay for their phone, teens aren't the problem.
Social media is part of the problem. Another part is that our kids are bored. There's not many public places for kids to hang out. Malls are failing, roller-rinks and bowling allies are fewer. What else is there that doesn't cost parents an arm and a leg?
My daughter Kristen Hawley Turner has been researching, writing, and publishing about this issue for twenty years. Check out her work. @teachkht.bsky.social
When I spend time with my grandkids, yes, they are on their phones looking at their social media all the time. Then I realized that years ago I was on mine alot too. Trying to get them now to put their devices down and eat pb&j with grammy.
Proud of my daughter who keeps phones out of the hands of her kids. The 12-year-old can only have the phone for two hours a night and Mom has everything on lockdown. She knows that things are deleted and she reads everything.
That's the parents fault dammit I didn't get my kid a phone till he went to college The computer had a time limit unless it was for research for school and he had to show me his work
Today's parents are lazy They allow their children to be abused online and think the government should be the parent
When you design a phone like a slot machine, you're gonna have addicts. Walk into a high school classroom on a Tuesday morning and it looks like a casino on a Tuesday morning. The hardcore addicts, hunched over and desperate. The palpable silence ...
Gosh, I am constantly in social media too and I’m way old! It’s either social media, pickleball, yoga, cycling, hiking, pottery, making yummy stuff in the kitchen or meeting up with friends. Well, I guess it’s not as much social media as I thought but I do love it. Oh, a bit of knitting on the side
This is why they're clueless on American, world history, dictators, hitler, Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, kjun, putin & trump's history - only what they see/believe on social media -and they represent the future of this country! When a potus can also be a convicted criminal-why would they care!
A terrible terrible statistic. I wonder, how many of them can tell anyone what the three coequal branches of government are? Or perhaps I should say supposed to be.
My kids, Mark: they whine if they have to get in the car... and there's no WiFi. Like where did the Wifi go?.. how could it just disappear
Driving 4 hours is a nightmare
My concern is screentime will stunt development. Just ask a kid what direction south is without a phone. kids need to get back outside. Using tech to promote hiking, history and science are good like #geocacaching ect. Children shoukd get lost in the beauty of the world not the glow of a screen.
Whenever I pick my daughter up from school, the first thing the kids do is check their phones immediately upon leaving the building. My daughter says the “FOMO is what is driving kids to being addicted to their phones.” It’s so sad & very concerning.
Our youngest just hit middle school & said the bus is boring because everyone is buried in a phone.
He has an older iPhone that is Wi-Fi only, so no reason for it to go to school. All a phone does is undermine the staff you are going to blame if your kid fails.
The potential negative effect on social development cannot be overstated. Need to help kids (and adults) develop reasonable limits on time spent on electronic media.
This generation are Guinea pigs in almost completely unregulated experiments done by corporations whose financial interest lies largely in their becoming addicted.
Social media can be great for teens to stay connected and informed, but it's important that they balance it w/ their education.
As long as they stay sharp & don't fall for fake news or misleading videos, they can enjoy the benefits of social media w/o compromising their learning & well-being.
My son and I discuss what news or information that he reads about or hears. I've educated him on the idea that people share misinformation, and so he checks in with me about new things he's heard, especially things that sound really amazing to him. I teach him how to think critically and verify.
We have to rethink how we educate the new generation after they have passed the initial years of learning to read, write, and arithmetic. We must know that we will need to pivot to another way of competing for their attention. Taking the phones away and turning off social media, is not it.
I've deleted all social media except Bluesky
No network or local news except ESPN since election
Put my phone on SOS only many hours a day now
My stress level greatly improved
I left town for five days following election (Fri-Tues) and deliberately left my cellphone behind. The first two days were hard. By Sunday I loved it. I was productive. I was relaxed. I was happier than I’d been in months. I regained perspective.
At the same time with have an epidemic of loneliness, unprecedented levels of mental health issues in teens and a rapidly decaying public discourse. Hard to see how these things could be coincidental. Social media is dissolving our societies from the inside.
Most schools have banned phones. You can't ignore technology in education. It needs to be utilized in the classroom. Why not have the kids text the teacher an answer, have them make a TikTok video on a topic? Young adults need to learn to use their phones without it hindering them. Tech is a tool.
There's literally way too much stimulation. My young cousins get constantly distracted and are unable to focus on mundane tasks. On the other side of it, they'll be able to lock in on a video game or on social media for hours on end. Not really sure where to go from here
Truly know how much young people are online? Go to any high school, stand in the hallway (with school’s permission of course) and watch students leave class to go to their next class.
Count 100 students and see how many who do not have their heads pointed down into their phone.Bob’s your uncle.
I’m probably showing my age here, but I’ve long been concerned about the social ramifications of technology on children. When I was growing up, ADD was a new thing, then it became ADHD. Thanks to smart phones, that’s no longer a diagnosis, but instead… the norm!
You know what I just figured out today on Zuckerberg’s Meta Facebook
The pages that are being run about patriotism and backing the police and supporting the military are all coming from foreign countries these two in particular art from Morocco
Some parents out there forget when we were all younger. We did fire drills and tornado drills and if you’re a little older nuclear fallout drills now children do monthly active shooter drills where kindergartners are taught triage.
They have never had a day of rest in their life
I don't agree with the research, not for its data on kids but the ignored adults affected by online addiction. Survivorship bias be damned, I've watched plenty of parental figures growing up become more addicted to smartphones than I ever did, some even developing short-term memory issues.
Parents who put that phone in their kids hands with no oversight are a big problem
Kids see parents on the phone
My granddaughter sees her parents reading a book, so that's what she likes
Hi Mr. Cuban, I just saw you on a blog with John Stewart today and hope that your encouragement will get him to come over to Bsky. I just signed on last week and am happy to be here and glad that you are here as well. Our country needs people like you.
As someone currently experiencing this in the very moment as I write this comment, it probably is a problem. What do we do? Kids don't care anymore because our society sucks. Do you blame them?
After 25 years, I left the Democratic Party in June of 2024. I could see the writing on the wall. Billionaires are capturing society. As planned and they're winning. I need all Dems to think about this truth and come to the realization and use that truth to move forward! If not, you'll lose!
Interesting - let me propose a glaring problem and a solution.
Problem: Critical thinking skills specifically addressing social media information
Solution: Develop a specific course for middle school student - 8th grade- to analyze articles, data and sourcing (as examples) from social media. ✔️
Then it wasn’t a good course… I am talking about one that is current, interactive and definitely starting where they are. This can be created with innovation, and peak their interest and teach them to pay attention
I think the information is only one important facet of this (which I agree should have classes).
The other part is that we now live in an attention economy where companies are optimizing their products to draw you in and keep you engaged. We need techniques taught on how to defend your mind/time.
Education would help on that front too. Students should learn how to identify that. What fun it would be to develop this curriculum! Definitely a project!
It's kind of weird to be worried about groomers when you put your kids out there with strangers who they spend more time with than they do you as a family.
Consider supporting Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), a grassroots org out of NY, now in 12 states and growing. Like MADD, they are bringing attention and pushing for legislation to counter the addictive tech algorithms targeting kids. 1/2
Sad. 😔 exposed to too much too early. Don’t know how to be kids. I’m from the last generation of playing outside home when the street lights come on. Playing kick the can til dark.
In addition, many of them are gaming online. Many have the ability to communicate socially. Games like Roblox have led children straight into the hands of pedophiles.
We need to get phones out of schools NOW. Kids can't focus on classwork because they are so enthralled with their phones. And, sadly, parents actually call and text kids while their in school. I'm not talking about emergency stuff, I'm talking about "what do you want for dinner" kind of texts.
I’m 80 yo & use these sites daily, too. Being “YouTube certified” helps solve DIY needs, hobby info; TT for the fun😀 FB connects distant friends; Apple Pay’s really convenient. Love these technologies ❣️
As an artist, I find this disturbing. Creativity requires time to process information and foment new intellectual relationships. We are not encouraging enough time for reflection, and definitely not enough time for reading or physical play.
They just passed a law in Australia banning social media for people 16 years old and younger. Maybe they’re on to something. Enforcing it will be challenging, though.
Well, they're watching & learning from us. I cringe every time I see parents posting their kids/family pics. (yes, I know I'll get hate for saying that)
Mr. Cuban can I ask a serious question? How can we as a society tell all these young kids that the future is in computers, AI, robotics, etc., that has them online all the time, but then tell them to NOT be on social media? It's like telling someone to cook but not taste the food.
Are you onboard with those Australian Radical Left lunatics who actually want kids to play outdoors again? Who want to show kids that for 100k years of humanity we didn’t have our heads buried in a smartphone? Maybe we need to rename them stupid phones, because we’re definitely not getting smarter!
That is sad my kids are also in that group but I hope one day things change but not quite sure. Everything is digital and I try to keep up with changes but it takes time. But pretty happy that I understand blockchain. That to you and you tube. This has been a slow process 7 year.
Might as well be giving them liquor and drugs. Addiction is not good, regardless of what it is you're addicted to. That's especially true for children.
I'm no data expert, but it appears to me that almost all the trends are downward in the first graph shown in the article. I could be wrong, but wouldn't this be cause for some positive sentiment? Oh wait, just realised that positive sentiment doesn't exist on the internet...
Comments
People like Elon and Rogan are the SOURCE of the BS being fed into these kids' brains.
My kids limit time w/tech devices for their children.
However, once they hit a certain age, they find ways around it and want to keep up with the crowd.
My son got his phone conf @ school today. He lives w his dad, who can’t pick it up until Monday 😈
Take a phone away from a kid and watch them withdrawal like a junky. It's real -- and almost immediate.
We call that addiction.
They’re addicted to dopamine. BY DESIGN!
And so are the adults in their lives. They do what we do not what we say.
Frustrating. These behavior patterns from out of the womb assuredly must be rewiring their brains.
The Junk Drawer
Vivek Ramaswamy wants the
Elimination of FERS
Federal Employees Retirement System!
I am one of the 2.7 million retirees impacted immediately! #FERS #Retirees #FederalWorkers
#USDemocracy
As if it could get any dumber.
Look who they voted for Prez.
Feel like I'm watching Rome fall.
Sounds scary.
Thank you. I like hearing that during these tumultuous times.
Today's parents are lazy They allow their children to be abused online and think the government should be the parent
https://open.substack.com/pub/steveschmidt/p/american-news-media-is-becoming-propaganda?r=ct95&utm_medium=ios
Driving 4 hours is a nightmare
🙄
He has an older iPhone that is Wi-Fi only, so no reason for it to go to school. All a phone does is undermine the staff you are going to blame if your kid fails.
As long as they stay sharp & don't fall for fake news or misleading videos, they can enjoy the benefits of social media w/o compromising their learning & well-being.
No network or local news except ESPN since election
Put my phone on SOS only many hours a day now
My stress level greatly improved
I never regretted doing it. Made my life much better.
I watch ZERO news outlets.
Count 100 students and see how many who do not have their heads pointed down into their phone.Bob’s your uncle.
The pages that are being run about patriotism and backing the police and supporting the military are all coming from foreign countries these two in particular art from Morocco
They have never had a day of rest in their life
The human species has turned self plastic
Kids see parents on the phone
My granddaughter sees her parents reading a book, so that's what she likes
Problem: Critical thinking skills specifically addressing social media information
Solution: Develop a specific course for middle school student - 8th grade- to analyze articles, data and sourcing (as examples) from social media. ✔️
The other part is that we now live in an attention economy where companies are optimizing their products to draw you in and keep you engaged. We need techniques taught on how to defend your mind/time.
https://www.stpsb.org/uploaded/caps/Policies/GAMI-15.htm
https://www.stpsb.org/uploaded/caps/Policies/GAMI-15.htm
#Books
#BookChallenge
5/20
https://bsky.app/profile/sskorkowsky.bsky.social/post/3lcq3gjo3w22y
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/mad-moms-stigmatized-drunk-driving-their-next-target-social-media
#MAMA #kidsmediaaddiction #MothersAgainstMediaAddiction
The sad part is we adults are addicted too
I should have gone with they are....