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Shop NowThe other day, I had to pick my niece up from school when my sister got caught in a work thing and needed my help.
Why not, I’m a good uncle or at least I would like to think so. Now, this kid is a shade over ten years old and goes to school from eight in the morning until about three in the afternoon.
Which might seem like a long time but when you look at the grand scheme of things that leaves a lot of downtime even after her homework is finished.
So anyway, on the ride home, I don’t think she said more than six words. She was on her phone the whole time. I mean, on the phone the WHOLE DAMN TIME,
Didn’t even look up at the television that I had running in the back. It was mind-blowing.
There are some people that are trying to curb cell phone use in children for a number of reasons. For the most part, they are good reasons. There are a lot of bad influences online that young children can get caught up in.
There are good reasons to limit smartphone use for kids, and plenty of solutions. One of those solutions shouldn’t be spending even more time in school.
There is a movement by some teachers in order to break the smartphone addiction that so many kids have to extend the school day to twelve hours.
A teacher named Andrew O’Neill is spearheading a campaign to increase the school day to twelve hours in order to keep kids off of their phones.
It’s a good idea in theory, but something that would never work in practice. First of all, the traditional school day length has been in practice across the country for so long I am having a hard time remembering when it wasn’t as long as it was.
The amount of time is a good primer for a workday when kids get older and get into the work force.
The other big thing is that people complain so much about schools taking away so many of the rights of parents that I doubt that any parent would let it happen.
If people want to keep kids off the phones, they need to leave that to the parents.
