Where is your hard evidence?

I’m sure you scrolled past plenty of studies that agreed with me when searching for your cherry picked example.

Extremely happy with this one. I understand everyone’s worries about surveillance and all that, and I agree with a lot of it, but I think in this case it’s worth it. Social media is just that bad.

From my own point of view, I hate hate hate Instagram/Facebook/Tiktok. When my kids get to that age I’d be facing a binary choice of either letting them use it or turning them into the “one weird kid in the class who isn’t allowed insta”. Even if this law is only 25% effective, that’s good enough for me. My kids will be in that 25% not using it, and I don’t have to worry about them being social pariahs.

From a wider point of view, social media is severely fucking up the entire world. I think it’s too much for most adults, let alone kids. No way should kids be on there.

Kids have always been scared of being awkward and not fitting in, but I can understand why the internet has sent it into overdrive for gen Z. I’ve had younger people use “cringe” as an insult at me, but I’m too old for that to affect me. I just feel pity that they’re so scared of being themselves.

On a more positive note, I know a secondary school teacher who got good results out of saying “Well that’s embarrassing” whenever her pupils were being twats.

Obviously kids will still try and get round it, but an outright phone ban makes it a lot easier for teachers to police. If you see a phone, it’s confiscated.

Vs

“Put your phone away in class”

“Sorry Miss”

5 seconds later

“I said put it away!”