What is true, and what we know for sure, is the capitalist wants the phone and tablet in a child’s hand as early as possible. Google wants Chromebooks in schools to make students dependent on their tools. Apple wants the same and are less successful at it. Meta wants a comprehensive psychological profile of the child to hyper target products and reproduce capitalist social values in the minds of children. They want to be the 3rd and most permissive parent in the home. They want your child engaging with AI so they can use it as a wedge in the privatization of education. They undoubtedly see the phone, the tablet, and the internet at large as the single most influential and powerful tool for mass production and reproduction of culture. They want to read your inbox, your text messages, your voice calls, and mine them all for every ounce of insight into their psychological operations effectiveness.
I think it is completely reasonable to be of the position that less phone/tablet access is good. Especially since it would seem media consumption at a young age backdoors capitalist ideology into kids and shapes the way they understands the world. Considering that there has been a seriously uncritical implementation of technology in education, which I think is only now starting to change, I believe parents should petition their schools to take a more critical and proactive approach to device use, and that these prohibitions are actually not enough and parents should be demanding more oversight on the topic.
I’ve talked in the past about the fact that students live most of their academic life inside a panopticon, and in many ways I think this primes students to be uncritical and even embrace the surveillance state that we find ourselves in now. All of these forms of technology, under capitalist control, are part of the effort to shape and steer culture. There should be demands for schools to implement digital literacy programs coupled with a reduction in technology use, not just for students, but also for staff, administration, and faculty. One that recognizes technology as a potential tool, but that also highlights it’s corrupting influence.
I can’t give a lot of details without doxing myself, but I went to a school that restricted mobile phone usage a lot after an incident that students recorded and attracted a lot of negative attention from parents. After the crackdown, bad stuff kept happening (girls getting beaten by boyfriends, cruel bullying, kids yelling slurs and whatnot) but it just wasn’t recorded and publicized. The school’s security personnel would act like cops and confiscate your phone if you tried to record something like that.
On the other hand, you’re totally right about capital wanting better access to children’s data. And my anecdotal experience from going to university and using my phone during some lectures is that it definitely is an impediment to learning, I shouldn’t do that stuff (obviously there is no reasonable argument for regulating this on an organizational basis since university students are adults).
I don’t know if I have a firm position, yet, honestly.
After the crackdown, bad stuff kept happening (girls getting beaten by boyfriends, cruel bullying, kids yelling slurs and whatnot) but it just wasn’t recorded and publicized.
This thing of being able to easily record incidents of violence is provocative because it lends a lot of credibility and stability to an individual or small group account of specific events. 1 video is worth 1000 witness narratives, especially if the witnesses are devalued and mistrusted in their social context.
We’ve all felt protected in a dangerous situation because the phone was with us. Even in the dark, out of earshot, it tethers us. “I am not alone.” I am connected to my friends, family, the community at large. Whatever happens, there can be witnesses. Contrasting to CCTVs, you feel empowered because the device is physically in your hand, and under your control, rather than being an intrusive spy to catch you doing something wrong. It films from your point of view, not like god above.
But phones aren’t going to solve partner violence or racism or bullying. They often facilitate. If people are routinely getting beat up in public and the only thing that tips to any sort of action is a video, I have to wonder what sort of action comes of it and how helpful it was. Since your description is that everything was focused on not getting negative attention to the staff rather than helping the students.
Yeah you’re definitely right that letting students record the stuff wasn’t gonna solve the problem, if anything it might make a lot of those situations worse because it would add cyberbullying into the equation. But the school 100% didn’t care about the negative effects of phones on education, they just didn’t want the bad PR from incidents getting recorded and shared.
all in all, i disagree with nothing you’ve pointed out here. i think the issue becomes the assertion that varying forms of policing students mind and body is an appropriate and educationally productive way to engage the problem of student phone use. i think we’re way too willing to accept what amounts to violence towards children to keep them in line. we must build an education system that helps them put down the phone, makes them want to put down the phone. but as i pointed out, the issue here isn’t really the phone at all per se, not on its own. students that find themselves unable to detach from the phone but still desire to be educated are easily accommodated by giving them a place to put their phone during class with the teacher. when a student doesn’t want to engage with the class at a given time, this is not alleviated by taking away one object of concentration and substituting another (phone replaced by book/sleep/general dissociation). yet that is the result of the action. instead, we have to change society and education so that students actually desire to be educated, or can be motivated to be educated without explicit threat of force and violence, and can be allowed days off without being left behind.
when a student doesn’t want to engage with the class at a given time, this is not alleviated by taking away one object of concentration and substituting another (phone replaced by book/sleep/general dissociation). yet that is the result of the action.
Nah gimme a break. If a book is so easy to substitute for a phone, why don’t I see crowds of people hanging out all reading their books, showing each other their highlighted passages?
A phone isn’t “one object of concentration” it is 1 million objects.
instead, we have to change society and education so that students actually desire to be educated, or can be motivated to be educated without explicit threat of force and violence
Society is changed by changing society. This is what is means to change society. Collectively decide on a new norm and enforce it.
you are missing the entire point i’m making. the point is that if the student is not participating in education, they are not in that moment being educated. a phone is not a magic box that is inscrutable in its affect on human psychology and behavior. you can’t dismiss the reason that a student might want to escape schooling in a given moment just because the medium of choice is now the phone.
There is not yet a body of research that supports either side of this argument, and there might not be, since much of the research this professor was conducting is now dead due to Trump DEI policy.
What is true, and what we know for sure, is the capitalist wants the phone and tablet in a child’s hand as early as possible. Google wants Chromebooks in schools to make students dependent on their tools. Apple wants the same and are less successful at it. Meta wants a comprehensive psychological profile of the child to hyper target products and reproduce capitalist social values in the minds of children. They want to be the 3rd and most permissive parent in the home. They want your child engaging with AI so they can use it as a wedge in the privatization of education. They undoubtedly see the phone, the tablet, and the internet at large as the single most influential and powerful tool for mass production and reproduction of culture. They want to read your inbox, your text messages, your voice calls, and mine them all for every ounce of insight into their psychological operations effectiveness.
I think it is completely reasonable to be of the position that less phone/tablet access is good. Especially since it would seem media consumption at a young age backdoors capitalist ideology into kids and shapes the way they understands the world. Considering that there has been a seriously uncritical implementation of technology in education, which I think is only now starting to change, I believe parents should petition their schools to take a more critical and proactive approach to device use, and that these prohibitions are actually not enough and parents should be demanding more oversight on the topic.
I’ve talked in the past about the fact that students live most of their academic life inside a panopticon, and in many ways I think this primes students to be uncritical and even embrace the surveillance state that we find ourselves in now. All of these forms of technology, under capitalist control, are part of the effort to shape and steer culture. There should be demands for schools to implement digital literacy programs coupled with a reduction in technology use, not just for students, but also for staff, administration, and faculty. One that recognizes technology as a potential tool, but that also highlights it’s corrupting influence.
I can’t give a lot of details without doxing myself, but I went to a school that restricted mobile phone usage a lot after an incident that students recorded and attracted a lot of negative attention from parents. After the crackdown, bad stuff kept happening (girls getting beaten by boyfriends, cruel bullying, kids yelling slurs and whatnot) but it just wasn’t recorded and publicized. The school’s security personnel would act like cops and confiscate your phone if you tried to record something like that.
On the other hand, you’re totally right about capital wanting better access to children’s data. And my anecdotal experience from going to university and using my phone during some lectures is that it definitely is an impediment to learning, I shouldn’t do that stuff (obviously there is no reasonable argument for regulating this on an organizational basis since university students are adults).
This thing of being able to easily record incidents of violence is provocative because it lends a lot of credibility and stability to an individual or small group account of specific events. 1 video is worth 1000 witness narratives, especially if the witnesses are devalued and mistrusted in their social context.
We’ve all felt protected in a dangerous situation because the phone was with us. Even in the dark, out of earshot, it tethers us. “I am not alone.” I am connected to my friends, family, the community at large. Whatever happens, there can be witnesses. Contrasting to CCTVs, you feel empowered because the device is physically in your hand, and under your control, rather than being an intrusive spy to catch you doing something wrong. It films from your point of view, not like god above.
But phones aren’t going to solve partner violence or racism or bullying. They often facilitate. If people are routinely getting beat up in public and the only thing that tips to any sort of action is a video, I have to wonder what sort of action comes of it and how helpful it was. Since your description is that everything was focused on not getting negative attention to the staff rather than helping the students.
Yeah you’re definitely right that letting students record the stuff wasn’t gonna solve the problem, if anything it might make a lot of those situations worse because it would add cyberbullying into the equation. But the school 100% didn’t care about the negative effects of phones on education, they just didn’t want the bad PR from incidents getting recorded and shared.
all in all, i disagree with nothing you’ve pointed out here. i think the issue becomes the assertion that varying forms of policing students mind and body is an appropriate and educationally productive way to engage the problem of student phone use. i think we’re way too willing to accept what amounts to violence towards children to keep them in line. we must build an education system that helps them put down the phone, makes them want to put down the phone. but as i pointed out, the issue here isn’t really the phone at all per se, not on its own. students that find themselves unable to detach from the phone but still desire to be educated are easily accommodated by giving them a place to put their phone during class with the teacher. when a student doesn’t want to engage with the class at a given time, this is not alleviated by taking away one object of concentration and substituting another (phone replaced by book/sleep/general dissociation). yet that is the result of the action. instead, we have to change society and education so that students actually desire to be educated, or can be motivated to be educated without explicit threat of force and violence, and can be allowed days off without being left behind.
Nah gimme a break. If a book is so easy to substitute for a phone, why don’t I see crowds of people hanging out all reading their books, showing each other their highlighted passages?
A phone isn’t “one object of concentration” it is 1 million objects.
Society is changed by changing society. This is what is means to change society. Collectively decide on a new norm and enforce it.
you are missing the entire point i’m making. the point is that if the student is not participating in education, they are not in that moment being educated. a phone is not a magic box that is inscrutable in its affect on human psychology and behavior. you can’t dismiss the reason that a student might want to escape schooling in a given moment just because the medium of choice is now the phone.