I do think an underrated part of mental health management is learning to distrust your own first instincts or impressions. In many cases, the way you understand people, pick up their social cues, react to their actions, can be misunderstood through the warping lens of mental illness. The modern solution of the world being more accommodating is important. But in the process the equal responsibility of the sufferer to acknowledge his impaired judgment, to second-guess himself, to apologize when misjudging, seems to have been absolved. It’s now referred to as “masking”, and the expectation is regarded as almost an abuse of the sufferer. But if you refuse to acknowledge where your behaviour has crossed a reasonable social norm, all you are doing is declaring a Victim Olympics, where the rules of engagement are always set by whoever is suffering the most.
The other day, I started crying when the cafeteria guy accidentally added sauce to my meat. I’m anxious, depressed, pregnant, heat-addled. I have every diagnostic justification for my reaction. But it was still an overreaction and a shitty way to treat a server, so I apologized. I don’t think mental-illness-indentitarian approaches encourage understanding where you have overstepped.
I'm really confused by the phones thing. I don't know a school that doesn't effectively ban phones. They're confiscated if seen outside of bags in the classroom. Yes, some kids inevitably find ways to bypass that. But it doesn't seem to be a consistent problem at my kids' (inner city comprehensive) school. It's not something the school is constantly talking about or asking for parental assistance with in the thousand letters a week (in the form of PDF attachments to email - grrr) they send us. My kids mention that someone had a phone out in class now and again, watching videos. But usually when there was a sub in who had already lost the class because they were teaching them the same lesson for the fourth time. A formal policy banning them just seems like increasing sentences rather than increasing policing. It makes for great headlines but doesn't actually change anything.
Not so much! To quote you: "This feels like the most obvious no-brainer policy to me; the fact that Labour won’t adopt it (when British voters demonstrably love soft authoritarianism) seems like a sad reflection of the lobbying power of Big Tech." One of the rare occasions I disagree with you. I just think it's a nonsense to have this as a national policy when schools are perfectly capable of handling it. It's the opposite of 'the lobbying power of Big Tech'. A policy that agrees with the general sentiment 'tech is bad' would likely be very popular but make very little difference in practice. A waste of parliamentary time and effort delivering nothing but a PR win.
American here. 👋 I completely agree with you that it comes down to enforcement rather than policy (a principle that I'm finding is true in almost every problem arena in life, the older and more experienced I get). Prior to there being widespread device bans, there were a handful of schools—both public and private—which managed this problem just fine on their own because the administration was clear and supportive. But with many schools, it hinged on the same issue as other disciplinary problems: there were no teeth in the policy.
So for example, in our inner-city school system, a middle schooler could come in, harass other students verbally and physically, threaten the teacher with death, etc. but the teacher would usually not do anything about it because they knew what would happen ultimately: they wouldn't be backed up by the school or the school district. The kid's parents would be called but immediately blame the school or teacher (turns out a lot of the kids who act this way come from extremely entitled households where respect and discipline......aren't even a thing), and if the school suspended the student, they'd be raked over the coals by the school district and made to rescind the suspension because "if we take these poor, troubled kids out of schools, we're just adding to their misfortune." So what that means is that kids who want to be violent or want to stay on their phones all day can just do it, and they know darn well they'll never experience any real consequences from it. The kids who actually do want to learn and excel with this level of distraction going on next to them are the ones who lose out.
Now, with bans such as the state-wide one here in Virginia, there has at least been a concerted effort to consider how the policy will be *enforced* as well as what the policy even is, and what it covers. I agree that teachers shouldn't be made to navigate the shark-infested waters of pleasing every parent and never offending a soul while somehow maintaining order in their classrooms. They should be able to simply focus on teaching well! Knowing that they will be backed up has made all the difference in whether or not teachers enforce the ban, and in our school system at least, it's been massively helpful.
We could get into why it even needs to be this way, and why schools are afraid to enforce anything even remotely discipline-related, but that's a can of worms for another day! 😄
I can see that argument for a country-wide policy, but as you hint, it's not exactly ideal. Better that school leaders and local authorities can make policy and get pupils and parents to buy into it because it's effective and right for them, rather than just because the state says so. As you also highlight though, that's far from easy.
Tom Cruise is endlessly compelling to me. Completely devoted to entertaining others -- no ambivalence, no resentment around his fame. Just enthusiasm, drive, and determination.
Headteachers have the power to ban or limit mobile phone usage in schools, and most do so. Something like 80 to 85 per cent of secondary school teachers work in schools with some form of proscription. The guidance from government under the previous administration, and I assume under this one, was that headteachers should regulate and limit their use (there will always be necessary exceptions). The powers are there, in the hands of those best able to judge their implementation according to individual circumstance. It doesn't seem to me that imposing a uniform policy from Whitehall, which is already largely in place anyway, is the best answer to the problem.
I’ve read of instances of children who have caring responsibilities, I think, and so may need to be contactable. The exceptions may well be very, very few, and should be pretty strictly scrutinised (not “Miss, I get anxious if I can’t play Minecraft”). But headteachers, I think, are better judged to accommodate them. There may also be problems with enforcement, and there is certainly anecdotal evidence from teachers of pupils ignoring the rules. Again, that seems to me a problem individual schools are best placed to handle.
I have an instinctive anxiety that the government legislating for a blanket ban (which governments should do as rarely as possible on anything anyway) would allow Whitehall to break out the “Mission Accomplished” banners, move on, and leave things at least no better than they are, and possibly worse. My sense is that the real challenges are, first, enforcement in schools, and, second, phone usage outside school hours, which can only be the responsibility of parents and guardians.
Not seen, not heard policies on phones are ineffective in reducing distraction in lessons.
It relies on a huge amount of willpower to not have a quick look if your phone vibrates with a notification- many adults would struggle with that, let alone teenagers mid friendship drama. The effort of not looking is distracting in itself. Phones are also at hand when out of site - in the loo or behind the bike sheds! Schools with this policy are either accepting this distraction or have stopped noticing it.
Slightly better would be a ‘lock away’ policy from beginning to end of day.
Even better, non-internet phones only on site. Many of the private school in our area, who are more able to be directive, have that policy.
That would reduce phone use to and from school as well as shift the norm away from everyone needing one.
One genuine exception is children with diabetes who have monitors on their device. But adjustments to rules for particular needs are the norm in schools.
My son's school is bringing in a 'lock away' policy after half-term. He's up in arms about it, but I've tried to explain that yes he and his friends don't have problems with phone use, but they're good kids who (usually) behave in class. The rule is mainly for the kids that don't behave. Will see how this goes with the school.
What's the problem with them looking at phones when out of sight?
And with them using phones on the way to and from school?
This doesn't sound like an issue with distraction in the classroom. It sounds like an attempt to change broader behaviour. And that's a very different issue.
The more opportunities to check a phone, the more chance of seeing a message or post on your phone or a friend’s that will distract you in the next lesson.
But yes, to be fair, I would like to see broader behaviour change. Having a smartphone with them constantly has a lot of negative implications for children and teens. No time to list them all but Johnathon Haidt’s book Anxious Generation or his After Babel Substack are good places to start.
We definitely come from different positions on this. I've read Haidt's arguments and don't buy them. Unfortunately, it's a paid-only episode but I'd recommend episode 12 of The Studies Show, which is a good critique of the (lack of) evidence behind Haidt's work on this. You could just as easily read Pete Etchells or Dean Burnett though, both of whom have very effectively critiqued the popular view expressed by Haidt and others (arguably Susan Greenfield started all this, but also the likes of Johann Hari) that smartphones/social media are destroying kids brains/causing a mental health crisis etc. For me it's an argument packed with truthiness but very little real evidence.
That's not to say there are no ill effects. There are good reasons why my own kids have very restricted digital access. But those profiting from the moral/medical panic are to my view going against the weight of evidence.
Question: who's your dream guest for Strong Message Here? I'd love you and Armando to pin A. Campbell to the wall, but perhaps he's making too much money in his own echo chamber for that.
My son’s special schools have banned smartphones from the start, because, quite rightly, children with learning disabilities are considered especially vulnerable. But I would argue that all children and younger teenagers are vulnerable, and smartphones have no place in schools. I think future experts will describe this mass experiment: giving children almost unfettered access to the internet, especially violent porn, as reckless and damaging to an extraordinary degree.
Mental health services have been slashed so far to the bone that many systems around the country are simply working without adequate secondary community provisions. It is driving A&E admissions, social care costs, and local authority spending. It’s a national scandal that no one seems to care about.
Yep - I've had friends desperate for help with their kids' mental health and I think the over a year long delays made the situations a lot worse than if they could have gotten help as soon as possible.
Just also to note as I have a personal interest in this - NHS England has had to cut PsycInfo the main journal database for mental health and psychological research.
The Emma I want to be: Has already read the New Yorker piece rather than adding it as an 'I will get to that tab'
The Emma I actually am: Has already watched the Tom Cruise clip twice.
Same....
Same…
I do think an underrated part of mental health management is learning to distrust your own first instincts or impressions. In many cases, the way you understand people, pick up their social cues, react to their actions, can be misunderstood through the warping lens of mental illness. The modern solution of the world being more accommodating is important. But in the process the equal responsibility of the sufferer to acknowledge his impaired judgment, to second-guess himself, to apologize when misjudging, seems to have been absolved. It’s now referred to as “masking”, and the expectation is regarded as almost an abuse of the sufferer. But if you refuse to acknowledge where your behaviour has crossed a reasonable social norm, all you are doing is declaring a Victim Olympics, where the rules of engagement are always set by whoever is suffering the most.
The other day, I started crying when the cafeteria guy accidentally added sauce to my meat. I’m anxious, depressed, pregnant, heat-addled. I have every diagnostic justification for my reaction. But it was still an overreaction and a shitty way to treat a server, so I apologized. I don’t think mental-illness-indentitarian approaches encourage understanding where you have overstepped.
I'm really confused by the phones thing. I don't know a school that doesn't effectively ban phones. They're confiscated if seen outside of bags in the classroom. Yes, some kids inevitably find ways to bypass that. But it doesn't seem to be a consistent problem at my kids' (inner city comprehensive) school. It's not something the school is constantly talking about or asking for parental assistance with in the thousand letters a week (in the form of PDF attachments to email - grrr) they send us. My kids mention that someone had a phone out in class now and again, watching videos. But usually when there was a sub in who had already lost the class because they were teaching them the same lesson for the fourth time. A formal policy banning them just seems like increasing sentences rather than increasing policing. It makes for great headlines but doesn't actually change anything.
This piece was by an American, so that probably answers your question!
Not so much! To quote you: "This feels like the most obvious no-brainer policy to me; the fact that Labour won’t adopt it (when British voters demonstrably love soft authoritarianism) seems like a sad reflection of the lobbying power of Big Tech." One of the rare occasions I disagree with you. I just think it's a nonsense to have this as a national policy when schools are perfectly capable of handling it. It's the opposite of 'the lobbying power of Big Tech'. A policy that agrees with the general sentiment 'tech is bad' would likely be very popular but make very little difference in practice. A waste of parliamentary time and effort delivering nothing but a PR win.
American here. 👋 I completely agree with you that it comes down to enforcement rather than policy (a principle that I'm finding is true in almost every problem arena in life, the older and more experienced I get). Prior to there being widespread device bans, there were a handful of schools—both public and private—which managed this problem just fine on their own because the administration was clear and supportive. But with many schools, it hinged on the same issue as other disciplinary problems: there were no teeth in the policy.
So for example, in our inner-city school system, a middle schooler could come in, harass other students verbally and physically, threaten the teacher with death, etc. but the teacher would usually not do anything about it because they knew what would happen ultimately: they wouldn't be backed up by the school or the school district. The kid's parents would be called but immediately blame the school or teacher (turns out a lot of the kids who act this way come from extremely entitled households where respect and discipline......aren't even a thing), and if the school suspended the student, they'd be raked over the coals by the school district and made to rescind the suspension because "if we take these poor, troubled kids out of schools, we're just adding to their misfortune." So what that means is that kids who want to be violent or want to stay on their phones all day can just do it, and they know darn well they'll never experience any real consequences from it. The kids who actually do want to learn and excel with this level of distraction going on next to them are the ones who lose out.
Now, with bans such as the state-wide one here in Virginia, there has at least been a concerted effort to consider how the policy will be *enforced* as well as what the policy even is, and what it covers. I agree that teachers shouldn't be made to navigate the shark-infested waters of pleasing every parent and never offending a soul while somehow maintaining order in their classrooms. They should be able to simply focus on teaching well! Knowing that they will be backed up has made all the difference in whether or not teachers enforce the ban, and in our school system at least, it's been massively helpful.
We could get into why it even needs to be this way, and why schools are afraid to enforce anything even remotely discipline-related, but that's a can of worms for another day! 😄
I can see that argument for a country-wide policy, but as you hint, it's not exactly ideal. Better that school leaders and local authorities can make policy and get pupils and parents to buy into it because it's effective and right for them, rather than just because the state says so. As you also highlight though, that's far from easy.
Tom Cruise is endlessly compelling to me. Completely devoted to entertaining others -- no ambivalence, no resentment around his fame. Just enthusiasm, drive, and determination.
The last pure movie star. Also clearly quite a strange person. Maybe the two are synonymous.
Headteachers have the power to ban or limit mobile phone usage in schools, and most do so. Something like 80 to 85 per cent of secondary school teachers work in schools with some form of proscription. The guidance from government under the previous administration, and I assume under this one, was that headteachers should regulate and limit their use (there will always be necessary exceptions). The powers are there, in the hands of those best able to judge their implementation according to individual circumstance. It doesn't seem to me that imposing a uniform policy from Whitehall, which is already largely in place anyway, is the best answer to the problem.
Thanks -- could you give me an idea of what those necessary exceptions would be? Are phones used as assistive tech for SEN pupils?
I’ve read of instances of children who have caring responsibilities, I think, and so may need to be contactable. The exceptions may well be very, very few, and should be pretty strictly scrutinised (not “Miss, I get anxious if I can’t play Minecraft”). But headteachers, I think, are better judged to accommodate them. There may also be problems with enforcement, and there is certainly anecdotal evidence from teachers of pupils ignoring the rules. Again, that seems to me a problem individual schools are best placed to handle.
I have an instinctive anxiety that the government legislating for a blanket ban (which governments should do as rarely as possible on anything anyway) would allow Whitehall to break out the “Mission Accomplished” banners, move on, and leave things at least no better than they are, and possibly worse. My sense is that the real challenges are, first, enforcement in schools, and, second, phone usage outside school hours, which can only be the responsibility of parents and guardians.
Not seen, not heard policies on phones are ineffective in reducing distraction in lessons.
It relies on a huge amount of willpower to not have a quick look if your phone vibrates with a notification- many adults would struggle with that, let alone teenagers mid friendship drama. The effort of not looking is distracting in itself. Phones are also at hand when out of site - in the loo or behind the bike sheds! Schools with this policy are either accepting this distraction or have stopped noticing it.
Slightly better would be a ‘lock away’ policy from beginning to end of day.
Even better, non-internet phones only on site. Many of the private school in our area, who are more able to be directive, have that policy.
That would reduce phone use to and from school as well as shift the norm away from everyone needing one.
One genuine exception is children with diabetes who have monitors on their device. But adjustments to rules for particular needs are the norm in schools.
My son's school is bringing in a 'lock away' policy after half-term. He's up in arms about it, but I've tried to explain that yes he and his friends don't have problems with phone use, but they're good kids who (usually) behave in class. The rule is mainly for the kids that don't behave. Will see how this goes with the school.
What's the problem with them looking at phones when out of sight?
And with them using phones on the way to and from school?
This doesn't sound like an issue with distraction in the classroom. It sounds like an attempt to change broader behaviour. And that's a very different issue.
The more opportunities to check a phone, the more chance of seeing a message or post on your phone or a friend’s that will distract you in the next lesson.
But yes, to be fair, I would like to see broader behaviour change. Having a smartphone with them constantly has a lot of negative implications for children and teens. No time to list them all but Johnathon Haidt’s book Anxious Generation or his After Babel Substack are good places to start.
We definitely come from different positions on this. I've read Haidt's arguments and don't buy them. Unfortunately, it's a paid-only episode but I'd recommend episode 12 of The Studies Show, which is a good critique of the (lack of) evidence behind Haidt's work on this. You could just as easily read Pete Etchells or Dean Burnett though, both of whom have very effectively critiqued the popular view expressed by Haidt and others (arguably Susan Greenfield started all this, but also the likes of Johann Hari) that smartphones/social media are destroying kids brains/causing a mental health crisis etc. For me it's an argument packed with truthiness but very little real evidence.
That's not to say there are no ill effects. There are good reasons why my own kids have very restricted digital access. But those profiting from the moral/medical panic are to my view going against the weight of evidence.
Ok thanks. I’ll have a look.
Some people use their smart phones for medical devices - like insulin pumps for example.
Question: who's your dream guest for Strong Message Here? I'd love you and Armando to pin A. Campbell to the wall, but perhaps he's making too much money in his own echo chamber for that.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, probably. I'd also love to talk to Jon Stewart or Pete Buttigieg.
As someone who loves the show, I’d love to hear any of those. Can I also suggest Andrey Kurkov
Especially loved the Altman piece today, thank you, very fun ! 😁
The FT piece is a delicious exhibition of world class bitchiness. I fahking luvved it
My son’s special schools have banned smartphones from the start, because, quite rightly, children with learning disabilities are considered especially vulnerable. But I would argue that all children and younger teenagers are vulnerable, and smartphones have no place in schools. I think future experts will describe this mass experiment: giving children almost unfettered access to the internet, especially violent porn, as reckless and damaging to an extraordinary degree.
Mental health services have been slashed so far to the bone that many systems around the country are simply working without adequate secondary community provisions. It is driving A&E admissions, social care costs, and local authority spending. It’s a national scandal that no one seems to care about.
Yep - I've had friends desperate for help with their kids' mental health and I think the over a year long delays made the situations a lot worse than if they could have gotten help as soon as possible.
Just also to note as I have a personal interest in this - NHS England has had to cut PsycInfo the main journal database for mental health and psychological research.