So, Singapore will ban the use of smartphones for secondary school students from next year during school hours. It extends a current ban on smartphone use during lesson time, and is framed as a measure to cultivate healthier screen use habits among students.
I’m glad schools are doing this. As a parent of a 13-year-old teen, I often have to remind her not to use her smartphone at the dining table. My own children have also found creative ways to bypass parental controls on their devices, like using the experimental web browser on their Kobo ebook readers. So I’m sure some students will quickly find workarounds. But I hope I’m wrong, and we’ll see a revival of dumb phones or even Walkmans in schools.
But why stop there? Why not take away smartphones from those who are constantly falling for misinformation and online scams? In fact, why not implement something similar to the family exclusion order that bans inveterate gamblers from visiting casinos and online …
