>I stand by my assertion. How many times in your 12 years in school was instant 24/7 communication for everyone in the school been of significant benefit, or would have been if they had it? It's zero in my case.
Yeah, there were no school shootings in my state in the 90s either. But since Columbine objective fact is there have been over 400 affecting almost 400k students [0], and the trend doesn't seem to be going down. Events like sudden wildfires going out of control in a real hurry are now also radically different then even 20 years ago. And yes, some of the scheduling and health features watches offer would have been very helpful to me in school thanks. The communication features of watches are pleasantly minimal and also almost necessarily public. They only work well 2-way with voice, which is not something one can do silently by definition and thus highly policeable in class. The information consumption capability is highly minimal. Watches also do not have cameras with all the associated issues. And it'd be possible to take the communication restrictions further with cellular restrictions in school and forcing everything through the school's firewall.
>Then look at the downsides, which are pervasive - inattention, disruption, distraction.
Out of genuine curiosity: can you show me some good studies on this with respect to watches, not phones? On the smart phone side yes, I've absolutely both seen studies and personally experienced the addictive and distracting aspects. But I have not seen anything like that with watches, and my personal experience is also that it's completely different in usage.
I stand by my assertion: you threw out a form of argument that is lazy, shallow, and constantly misapplied. Even if in this specific case the balance of factors weighs against any smart devices at all (which I both extremely doubt and think will become extremely problematic for other reasons longer term), the form of argument "how did anyone survive before X" is so regularly bad faith, aggressively stupid, or both that it coming out instantly makes me more not less suspicious of whichever side the person stating it is supporting.
Why does a health monitor need to be in constant connection with the internet? If there's a problem, it can just beep at you.
Yes, school shootings are a problem. But why does there need to be 30 cell phones in the classroom? The landline on the teacher's desk can be enough. Or even a button to turn off the jammer.
For wildfire, call the principal who then hits the fire button. We had tornado drills in elementary school. No phones were required, it was a siren mounted on a pole. It worked fine.
>Yes, school shootings are a problem. But why does there need to be 30 cell phones in the classroom? The landline on the teacher's desk can be enough. Or even a button to turn off the jammer.
A single landline isn't going to help 30 kids call their parents and say a final good-bye before the shooter kills them, while the town police force stands outside.
That's a rare circumstance that is made to seem more common by very wide media coverage. And even in that sort of situation, it seems doubtful that it actually helps anybody either. Some parents will show up and get in the way of emergence responders. Most kids who call their parents will end up surviving anyway, and the phonecalls end up increasing the number of people who get PTSD from the whole thing. If a modest sized school of 500 kids has an above average shooting which kills 20, then you have 480+ parents getting a premature ""last call""; all would have been better off hearing about the incident after they already knew their kid was safe.
These kinds of calculations aren't useful to a typical US parent who, after the Uvalde disaster, has absolutely no reason to trust law enforcement to handle such a situation competently, and every reason to distrust them. Why should they assume that the cops in their town are any better than Uvalde's? They're going to hear "your kid can't have their phone in our school" and think of this.
I don't understand, do you guys think the children's phones are being vaporized by the Phone Vaporizer 5000?
When people say "no phones in class" they don't mean kid's can't have phones. They mean they can't use their phone in class.
I think, probably, this rule does NOT apply during an active shooter. That's my guess. I would imagine the teacher isn't going to start enforcing that rule while under lockdown. What do you think?
> A single landline isn't going to help 30 kids call their parents and say a final good-bye before the shooter kills them, while the town police force stands outside.
I’ve had this scenario in training at work before deploying to certain global locations (Afghanistan, Gaza, Somalia etc)
That it even crosses your mind suggests that the US is a country broken beyond repair.
if you really want to optimize for a very-low-probability event, just don't live in a school district with cellphone bans
you'll trade for a near-guarantee that your kid will have some social anxiety or attention issues...but if you really want to make sure they have a phone available in the low-probability event of a school shooting, this is the tradeoff you will make
Yeah, there were no school shootings in my state in the 90s either. But since Columbine objective fact is there have been over 400 affecting almost 400k students [0], and the trend doesn't seem to be going down. Events like sudden wildfires going out of control in a real hurry are now also radically different then even 20 years ago. And yes, some of the scheduling and health features watches offer would have been very helpful to me in school thanks. The communication features of watches are pleasantly minimal and also almost necessarily public. They only work well 2-way with voice, which is not something one can do silently by definition and thus highly policeable in class. The information consumption capability is highly minimal. Watches also do not have cameras with all the associated issues. And it'd be possible to take the communication restrictions further with cellular restrictions in school and forcing everything through the school's firewall.
>Then look at the downsides, which are pervasive - inattention, disruption, distraction.
Out of genuine curiosity: can you show me some good studies on this with respect to watches, not phones? On the smart phone side yes, I've absolutely both seen studies and personally experienced the addictive and distracting aspects. But I have not seen anything like that with watches, and my personal experience is also that it's completely different in usage.
I stand by my assertion: you threw out a form of argument that is lazy, shallow, and constantly misapplied. Even if in this specific case the balance of factors weighs against any smart devices at all (which I both extremely doubt and think will become extremely problematic for other reasons longer term), the form of argument "how did anyone survive before X" is so regularly bad faith, aggressively stupid, or both that it coming out instantly makes me more not less suspicious of whichever side the person stating it is supporting.
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0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-...