€9 million to be spent on “electronic pouches for schools”

is there any shred of evidence for this?

Yes a fair question but I would say that it could hard to police. Kids are crafty and will do anything to disguise phone usage, especially with a teacher busy trying to teach a class of 20 to 30. Handing in the phones is more proactive rather ran reactive so that the teacher can concentrate more on teaching.

For mental health - it looks like its any phone usage, independent of location.

Any links?

How is Jonathan Haidt NOT getting with the times? This is a modern problem that he is now researching.

Its not just Jonathan Haidt, there are numerous other researchers on this.

It's implementing a consistent solution across all schools

No it isn't. Again people need to read the article not just the headline.

It's 9m of funding for schools to come up with their own system.

I imagine the hoops a school will have to jump through to avail of any sort of money will be the usual bureaucracy and most of it will go unspent.

Agreed. 9 million works out at approx 3.20eu per working adult in Ireland. And hopefully its a one off payment to initially set up. Even if 9 million has to be spent every 10 years to repair / replacement lockers/pouches, thats 32 cent per year per working adult.

makes absolute sense in theory.

But how do you enforce this? I dont think the message is getting through to parents.

Everything.

You hardly expect parents to raise their children themselves!? They didn't sign up for that!

They want the government to help when it suits and when it doesn't, they say it's a nanny state.

Despite the fact my mother died 2 years ago and I was born 40 years ago, I wonder could I lobby my local TD to get that payment on her behalf?

Its not knee jerk. The USA and other countries have be trialing this in recent years with some success. I have links here.

As mentioned previously, if 9 million had to be spent every 10 years on this, it works out at about 32 cent per working adult per year.

How do you know teachers do not want to manage this? If it leads to happier kids who are more attentive, less depressed and anxious and hopefully getting better grades, maybe this is short term pain for long term gain.

I really don't know why you're using the USA as an example we should follow. They have regular school shootings. Maybe get evidence from country's that are similar to ours.

Education of both parents and students on aspects of social media, misinformation etc is key in reality. We really should be arming the next generation with as much knowledge and skills around this as possible. Social media is a complete shitshow and pretty much unregulated. I know a few people who worked as moderators for Facebook and they could only stick the job for a few months, they were provided councilling along with it. For me, that tells you everything you need to know about these platforms. Kids and adults are exposed to so much trashy, low quality content that is;

1) False

2) Creates the need for more by using short, highly stimulating formats

3) Promotes doomscrolling

4) Leads to anxiety, addiction and other mental health issues

There are endless studies on this topic and none of them show this in a good light. The reading ability of youngsters, especially in America has dropped significantly in recent years and there is strong corellation that low quality, highly stimluating content plays a huge part in this.

Online bullying is particularly viscious.

Anyone suggestin we just live with it, this is the way things are needs to have a hard look at what we're doing to ourselves and what is being enabled.

That's a non-sequitur. We aren't discussing gun violence in schools.

Again have you any studies for Ireland?This isn't America.

Social media is being tamed and controlled with rules. It's a relatively new addition to the world and it's taking time to iron out all the problems.

But it isn't going away. It will never go away. Children looking at their phones and scrolling is something adults will have to get used to.

Is there something so massively different with our brains that means we handle this differently from, say America, India, China, the UK or other EU countries where most of these studies are conducted?

"This isn't America" is your only retort and it makes no sense. We are all human and we are all supsceptible to the same addictions and problems.

I know this isn't going away, that's why I advocate for education and providing people with the tools and knowledge on how to handle it.

What rules is social media being tamed with? Facebook appears to be worse than ever, Twitter/X is just a dumping ground for misinformation. We are now subject to mass amounts of lies, propaganda and misinformation from both corporations and state actors through these platforms and the lack of critical thinking of many in the general population is alarming.

Allowing children and young adults to be exposed to this is a catastrophic fail.

Is it going away? No.

Can we do better? Yes, we can do a hell of a lot more to mitigate the negative effects.

The fact that someone could be sitting in class, with their phone locked in a pouch, still distracted by the phone because all they want is the next "fix" from seeing what some creator has posted on TikTok, or how much interaction one of their posts got or someone responded to a message. This is addiction and it is, without a doubt, a pandemic.

Every bit of "misinformation" which seems to be the buzz concern for the moment, is quickly countered with the correct information. Straight away.

That's social media and the Internet. It's fantastic.

That rarely happens, and we all know that by the time it is countered, the lie has spread and the truth no longer matters. Rage bait is what generates clicks and drives engagement, these platforms thrive on it.

I'm not really advocating for pouches as some sort of solution for everything. The issues run much deeper is my point.

Pouches might help with disruption in the classroom but they don't tackle the deep rooted issues we see in wider society as a result of phone addiction.

Everyone is missing the main point of this.

Back in the good old days, bullying was in the open, name calling, a tug of a shirt, a push to the ground.

Teaching staff could see it and generally dealt with it.

These days bullying has moved online. Disappearing snapchat messages and photos in particular. A lot of this is done during the school day so that the bullies can watch the effect they have. It not a tiny minority - its a substantial issue and its so difficult to prove that accusing someone of such bullying will have the parents up in arms threatening legal action because their precious daughter or son would never ever do such a thing.

Hence you will find most teaching staff and school heads will see this as a very very welcome move and go some way towards the epidemic of bullying in schools.

Certainly a principal I know of says it was the BEST announcement in the budget for him.

When I went to school it was fairly common to have an old phone to hand up to the teacher if you got caught.

I left school in 2011 and people were doing it before that.

Personally I think it will have little impact.

As I said earlier I think if the government was really serious they'd tackle the age you can join social media and how you'd join it.(IE needing ID.)

The money being spent isn't a problem. The problem is "here's €9 million to do something, go for it". Just throwing money at it with no plan. Bound to work. I known its pittance in the scheme of things, but it feels like pittance that's wasted. Not that any excuse will work for some parents these days.

Only way it would work in my opinion would be if caught in class using your phone whilst you've one in your pouch. Phones are taken and destroyed and parents fined. Other than that I think it will be fairly ignored.

From my experience teachers who spent ages giving out about phones caused more disruption than those who ignored it.