← Back to context

Comment by rstuart4133

14 days ago

> The speaker suggested that the question’at what age do you give your child access to the internet’

Australia has also banned smart phones from schools. Here the ban had nothing do to with access to the internet or the effects of social media.

To paraphrase your question: at what age does constantly accessing the internet not interfere with work or schooling?

The answer is never, of course. All workplaces have policies limiting it. Schools have the same problem: there were always kids using phones hidden under desks to send message to each other. Workplaces enforcing their internet policies using monitoring software is rare thankfully, but expecting kids to exercise the same self discipline as a adult can is futile and so they moved to a ban. They ran studies on the outcome: https://theconversation.com/banning-mobile-phones-in-schools... TL;DR: Banning phones improved scholastic results.

I'd lay long odds the article is little more than click bait. My guess is a very well known result and the schools are actually banning phones so they can do their main job, which is teach kids. But rather than report that, the journo speculated in the most inflammatory way possible.