r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TheAeroplaneBear2906 • Jul 16 '26

Unskippable ad Clear Backpacks + Pay to Keep Your Phone

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My freinds school is now requiring these items, and is also using AI to promote this 🫠

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u/HawaiiLife745 Jul 16 '26

Middle School teacher here. Whether its a Yondr pouch, or mandating cell phones be left at home, something HAS to be done about the smartphone distraction problem. It has gotten worse and worse over the years, almost perfectly tracking with the decline in test scores and average graduation rates. Smartphones destroy learning, plain and simple. If a student needs to contact a parent/guardian or the other way around, they can do so through the front office, as had been done for the century or so before the invention of the cell phone.

119

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

Genuine question - I guess I’m confused because I haven’t been in middle school in almost two decades, but phones have never been allowed to be used during school.

Why can’t the old rules still work? If a teacher sees you with your phone, they send you to the office. The punishments escalate from there.

I just really don’t understand how capitalism needed to be inserted in this equation by charging to lock phones up.

21

u/WhosThatDogMrPB Jul 16 '26

I went to a military middle school in 2006, before smartphones were popular but regular cellphones were already the norm.

I carried my Moto Rokr flip phone with me, but was always in mute unless I got a call from my parents, to which I'd call back at the end of the class. I'd mostly use it to listen to music on its mighty 256mb SD card on my way to/from school.

I think the problem is not the phone but the fact they're computers now. An old flip phone or current "dumb phone" could do the work of keeping someone communicated without the influence of social media. A teenager does not need social apps besides messaging and calling on their pocket.

We should be bringing that back.

3

u/LastLibrary9508 Jul 16 '26

Yeah I used my phone as a phone. I would turn it off during school because I didn’t need it and turn it on when the bell rang. If there was an emergency, the office would get me