IP Laws that Enable Enshitifcation.

Man. I read the article. You all seem to be taking what I said as “I think students should have cell phones in schools”. In actuality I don’t think there’s any reason for students to have cell phones in schools.

So my argument isn’t that I think the ban is bad. My argument is that this is a piss poor way of going about it that doesn’t really add any benefits (especially when you consider that the law preventing students from using cell phones in schools has been on the books since 2018).

So this is not an argument about what researchers found as far as differences in the mental health of students allowed to have phones (which is a big jump because at best the phones are tolerated in students pockets or bags not allowed to use them in school during lessons), vs those that aren’t. That part of what has been said up and down this comment section is irrelevant. It has nothing at all to do with my original comment.

I don’t care what governments recognize about a correlation between student mental health or well being and cell phone use. That’s not got anything at all to do with what I said.

If you’re disappointed it’s literally because you didn’t read.

The article gives little to no detail about the law or what’s changed. It makes claims that this was a pilot program implemented in 180 schools whereby students were required to place cell phones in a pouch or locker they couldn’t access during school hours. It makes claims that this was successful, and therefore a ban will be implemented. It doesn’t say if this ban will use the same protocol (having students place phones in a locked pouch or locker they don’t have access to for the school day). It doesn’t state how this differs at all from previous laws that prohibit students from using mobile phones on school premises which were implemented in 2018.

It doesn’t explain what the “separation of student from phone” looks like, or what the repercussions will be for students found with a phone. It says nothing about protocols to properly store the devices (and what will happen in the event of an emergency where the device is a danger to students or property).

It gives literally no details, and doesn’t even link to the law in question.

A further guardian article I found says it is receiving criticism for some of the problems I have previously detailed (though not all of them). That same article strongly advances the idea that cell phone use is a detriment to children’s health and inference can be made that this is the main reason for such a ban, but this ban does not fundamentally solve this problem in any way.

It doesn’t say they are expanding the implementation used in the trial nation wide. That is an assumption you made that the writer likely also made and didn’t follow-up. This is just a poorly written article full stop.

Your argument is terrible, and poorly defended. You only went and read the article after you started making arguments to me. I read the article before I made my first comment because I had a lot of questions that were not answered and still haven’t been answered. That’s literally because the media is doing a poor job of explaining this situation and the law in question.

This is wasteful. It is short sighted. It does not fix or mitigate the problem and makes the problem worse for a lot of reasons that I can detail if you would like (but I doubt that will matter to you at all because you seem to be misunderstanding everything I’ve said).

This can be enforced. It will be detrimental to the school system as a whole. It is not a fix for any of the problems detailed. It doesn’t change anything as far as I can tell and literally nobody has been able to come up with anything to validate what it would change, how it would change it for the better, or why the current rule structure and protocols in schools would benefit from it in any way.

So I’m saying it’s shortsighted and either needs to be reworked, or criminalizing parents allowing their children to bring such materials into schools should be implemented instead.

They trialed 180 schools, forcing the student to hand over or otherwise stow these devices in a place they couldn’t access for the duration of the school day. And they have “evidence” that it helps with the “child well-being, and focus”.

So now they are making it mandatory for all schools? How? What protocols are they putting in place? I’m really curious. The article says nothing. It’s basically a really poorly worded press release.

Are the schools providing a place to house these devices? That would be a liability.

Are the schools banning the devices in the premises? If so, what are they doing with the ones that are going to be confiscated?

Is this law going to hold the parents accountable in any meaningful way (besides the potential inconvenience of having to pick up the phone at the school in person)? If so, that would be the only potentially beneficial part of a law like this.

What does the school do with such contraband? Can they turn it over to an authority like the police? This could also potentially be a beneficial part of making such policy into law. Depends entirely on how it’s implemented.

Why do people always assume criticism is " we should just do nothing? " What is wrong with looking at something and seeing that it might be flawed and speaking up?

So when one of these phones start a fire because it’s been improperly kept and the battery has a thermal runaway event?

If the phone is always returned then literally the law does nothing. The phone is being given back to the student? That’s a failure in the implementation of protocol or policy. You can’t use that to claim my argument is invalid because it literally does not make sense in this context.

Flip that argument around for me and tell me what that argument is. Because what it seems like it boils down to is a version of favoritism which will still exist and be taken advantage of under the law. What does this law fix exactly? How does this law prevent favoritism?

I compared it to previous tech because that tech was also considered a distraction and labeled with a similar brush and handled in a similar way to the way phones are likely handled today and it’s important to understand and take into account what schools are likely already doing in order to facilitate learning and prevent such “distractions”. This isn’t about unsupervised access. This was never about unsupervised access. This is about the distraction that phones and other materials play in a child’s ability to learn. And as that it stands to reason that A. Schools already have implemented protocols to deal with this situation when it arises. And B. That this law doesn’t really do much to fix the problem, but does add additional liability because now regardless of whether or not the phone is being a distraction it must be confiscated and then held for a parent to pick up. Meaning that A. It must in essence remain in the same condition it was in when it was confiscated (and it won’t because it would have to be charged at regular intervals and with new phones logged into occasionally to prevent media on the phone from being wiped). So this adds liability for the school. What protections does the school and school administration have under this law?

The effect of giving children smart phones is not going to be in any way mitigated by this law. This is not a ban on cell phones for children under the age of 18 full stop. It’s a ban on children being allowed to bring cell phones to school.

So, what (in France I know!) are you getting for said taxes that you were not getting before?

Because that’s exactly what I’m getting at. It is the schools responsibility to enforce the rules. The point is, it’s not the schools responsibility to take on the liability of what comes with that (ie. Holding onto thousands of dollars worth of tech with the ability to keep that tech in the same condition it was in when it was confiscated for an untold amount of time), it is the parents responsibility to make sure their children aren’t ringing such distracting material to school. And this means there are already likely protocols in place for distracting material. So what are you getting out of this ban?

Schools likely already have a policy about bringing valuables items to schools which applies here. They also likely have policies about objects that are distractions in class or not suitable for school environments with protocols in place to enforce and or deal with said objects. So tell me. Why is this different? I know the article is talking about France.

So, explain to me why this law is necessary? What does it achieve? What does it do that wasn’t already being implemented?

Are they going to allocate money to every school to employ technologies to prevent cell phone usage on the premises? Unlikely because, as I said, this law is to prohibit students from having cell phones, not teachers or administration.

So what happens when a school now has to confiscate and hold $1000 phones en masse? It makes them a target for theft. It makes them a target for lawsuit in the event that any of those phones are misplaced, stolen, damaged etc.

Teachers and admins didn’t used to have cell phones in schools either. What are they doing on a phone that they can’t use a landline and a computer for? Why is a cell phone so important for yard duty? Why is it a requirement? What does the cell phone do that a landline can’t do?

And the fault of the parent who is the only one who can do anything about that child having unrestricted access to the internet of a phone. This is adding to the responsibilities and liabilities of the schools without solving the problem in a meaningful way and this is exactly what I’m being critical of in my statement.

If nobody has a phone you can implement other technologies to alarm if such a device is brought into the property etc. You can actually jam cell phone use in the area too. There’s solutions that would mitigate a school having to take on hundreds of confiscated $1000 phones which would be a huge liability and make them a target.

And that is the fault of the parents who chose to hand phones to these kids. It is not the fault of the school, nor is it something the school should have to do anything about. (Edit for clarification: what I meant by “so anything about it” was schools aren’t responsible for teaching good and responsible phone use and self control, nor is it their job to step in when the parent is doing their job with teaching these skills).

I’ll also point out the argument that there was a push back then for outlawing video games and violent music because of its effect on young children and regardless of the validity of the danger to kids, it’s still the fault of parents who were allowing their children to listen to that music or play those games. Schools already likely have policies about cell phones, or at the very least policies about confiscating distractions.

You seem to have taken this as not support for banning phones in schools rather than what it really is. A criticism of this method for the deficiencies that it creates without solving the problem or even (more than likely) changing anything about the protocols already in place for handling distractions in schools except potentially creating a worse situation for the administration who have to now be responsible for these items en masse because students and parents are going to ignore this until it hurts them personally.

It also doesn’t teach students anything at all about moderation or the dangers of the internet, nor does it teach them anything about this tech which they will end up having to use as adults. And if you have seen adults with this tech you know it’s not just a danger to kids.

Does anybody but me remember when schools banned walkmen? What about portable CD players? Gameboy? This happens everytime a new technology becomes popular and schools don’t know how to regulate it they do this.

The downside is, a fair few student will have their phones confiscated by the school. But it won’t dissuade them from bringing them in. You make them better at hiding them instead of creating tools and protocols to enforce for when they can and can’t use them.

The crazy thing is, this should be about schools not wanting to be liable for or responsible for these pieces of tech. But Everytime I see legislation like this, it’s to do with “children’s mental health”, or these devices being a distraction.

Model it. Nobody should be allowed to have a phone in schools by this metric. No phones for students? No phones for teachers and administration.

Bill Gates doesn’t run Microsoft anymore. He’s not the CEO and largely not responsible for the change in their business model.

Also, I game on Linux more than I do on windows (though I do have a partition in my drive to run windows for games I couldn’t get working on steam OS/ Bazzite. It’s literally 4 games out of over 100.

You know. This sounds like some shit Terry Pratchett wrote about in “Making Money”. Product is making money hand over fist, but never turns a profit so they sell it to themselves with its own money or something.

I’m so tired of people who literally won’t look at their threat model and admit that this app could even potentially be a threat to them in any way.

So you don’t think having a mental illness or malady can detrimentally affect the physical wellbeing of the person with the malady despite multiple studies that say otherwise. Good to know.

So, are you one of the “mental healthcare isn’t real healthcare” people, or are you just butthurt and unable to be objective because some mod banned you one time?

Tell that to the man who was accused by Gen AI of having murdered his children.

Two car lengths on the highway is not enough car lengths to make a meaningful difference in the event of a crash or giving you time to react to an emergency situation up ahead.

That being said, I respect that you leave any car lengths at all and it’s probably better than nothing. Especially since other drivers see any more than that as a challenge to enter that gap. Which is dangerous as shit and they are wrong but won’t learn even after they wreck doing it.