For my seven-month-old daughter, getting a hold of mommy’s things is a delight. Grabbing my wallet or my hairbrush, or my hair itself, sends her into fits of glee. But getting a hold of my mobile, well, that makes her euphoric.
What is it about mobile phones, and by mobile phones I mean smartphones? Before she was born, I was certain I had a plan around technology, so she wouldn’t become one of ‘those’ children whose parents provide too few boundaries around technology and end up with kids addicted to their mobile and social media. Now, just seven months in, I’m afraid I’m failing already, and the worst is yet to come, because even if I do manage to up my parenting game, I will still have to deal with ‘all those other parents’ who have not and whose children’s influence makes my daughter desperate to be on social media with her cell phone.
To be honest, what I’m really hoping for is a tectonic cultural shift before my daughter reaches the age of reason so that by then mobile phones and social media will simply be considered not appropriate or necessary for children in a civilised society. I had thought that the adverse secondary effects of social media, smartphones, and even the plain old internet on everyone, and particularly on children, were so obvious and well-known by now that such a cultural standard would fall into place almost on its own.
The parents of Finland give me hope that the change is underway.
A citizens initiative gathered 30,000 signatures in support of banning mobile phones in schools. Additionally, the newly elected conservative government is taking them seriously and has pledged to enact laws to satisfy the request.
The Finnish government announced Monday that it “will reinforce the powers of teachers and principals to intervene in activities that disrupt teaching during school hours.”
“We will make the necessary legislative amendments to enable more efficient restrictions in cases such as the use of mobile devices during the school day so that pupils and students can better concentrate on teaching,” it added.
On the one hand, that this should happen in Finland may seem amazing given the country is the home of the mobile phone company Nokia and one of the first to adopt widespread use of the technology. On the other hand, that it was the first to adopt the technology may also be the reason it could become the first to initiate a cultural paradigm shift around cell phones, having had the longest experience with them.
Finnish children were once the best educated and smartest in Europe, according to their scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment, which tests 15-year-olds in mathematics, science, and reading. The national performance peaked in 2006 but results have since declined. Likely, not everything can be blamed on cell phones and the things we do on them these days such as scrolling social media. But the practice is linked to anxiety, depression, and loss of concentration—all of which usually reflect in other areas of life such as school performance. At the same time, wide use of digital technologies such as social media and smartphones is perhaps the clearest difference between the generation of ‘digital natives’ and this writer’s generation.
We have long heard that our culture has a difficult time keeping up with technology, in reference to establishing ways and mores and ethical guidelines around tech. By technology we really mean Big Tech, whose production and even regulation are largely beyond the capabilities of families and hence genuinely human communities. These tech titans infiltrate society as much through manipulative marketing as through genuine need. But I suspect that the problem is not the pace of the human ethical response so much as the power of Big Tech to override our ethical instinct, even our humanity.
The evolution of cell phone use provides a good example.
True confessions, it took me 12 years to complete my first university degree. I started in 1998 and finally graduated in 2010. Needless to say, almost no one had a cell phone when I started my college studies. Those were the days when you had to ask someone if they had an email address, too. By the time I graduated, basic cell phones were not only a standard-issue personal item in civilised society, but smartphones were also becoming popular and texting had begun. Still, in the face of temptation, it was ethically obvious enough that students shouldn’t use cell phones in class that university professors, at least in the U.S., could and did make it clear that texting during class was strictly prohibited and would be punished. Only one time did I see anyone dare play on his cell phone during a lecture, and true to his word, the professor reacted, giving the offending students a swift, strong yet calm reprimand at the end of class. Now I’m married to a scientist who recently made the switch from full-time research to university teaching, and the situation is very different. Professors either don’t dare or don’t bother to reprimand students who play on their cell phones during lectures. And some do, constantly.
In Finland, too, this is not the first attempt to rein in mobile phone use in schools. In 2019, a school principal in the city of Espoo, in southern Finland, sent a letter to parents on the first day of class notifying them that disruptive smartphones would be removed from students, even forcefully if necessary. Some parents complained that such a move was illegal; a ridiculous reaction, as the current government wants to make clear. If primary school teachers don’t have the power to not only prohibit but actually stop behaviour that is distracting, including confiscating an item if necessary, what authority do they have to educate?
But cell phones are, at least for some people apparently, in a category of their own, so closely linked to their personality and personal integrity that removing them from students is more like forcing them to take off their clothes in class than temporarily remove a mere tool.
This is bad. Again, what is it about our relationship with cell phones that we let them invade and twist part of our humanity? There is much that can be said about their addictive qualities, but I think the fundamental problem lies in the designs of Big Tech. While cell phones do indeed have some very helpful functions, they are designed not so much to serve us humans; to alleviate toil and suffering; to assist us in the creative task of work. Rather, cell phones put us, the consumers, at the service of the tech investors and multinationals that profit from every 10-year-old playing Candy Crush on a cell phone he got for his birthday.
Against the background of this Finnish backlash, my hopes are now rising. Perhaps even beyond parenting struggles, the problematic presence of cell phones will make us think more deeply about technology and how we can realign both ourselves individually and collectively and our instruments to once again make us, the masters being served by technology.
Finland Moves Against Cell Phones in Schools
For my seven-month-old daughter, getting a hold of mommy’s things is a delight. Grabbing my wallet or my hairbrush, or my hair itself, sends her into fits of glee. But getting a hold of my mobile, well, that makes her euphoric.
What is it about mobile phones, and by mobile phones I mean smartphones? Before she was born, I was certain I had a plan around technology, so she wouldn’t become one of ‘those’ children whose parents provide too few boundaries around technology and end up with kids addicted to their mobile and social media. Now, just seven months in, I’m afraid I’m failing already, and the worst is yet to come, because even if I do manage to up my parenting game, I will still have to deal with ‘all those other parents’ who have not and whose children’s influence makes my daughter desperate to be on social media with her cell phone.
To be honest, what I’m really hoping for is a tectonic cultural shift before my daughter reaches the age of reason so that by then mobile phones and social media will simply be considered not appropriate or necessary for children in a civilised society. I had thought that the adverse secondary effects of social media, smartphones, and even the plain old internet on everyone, and particularly on children, were so obvious and well-known by now that such a cultural standard would fall into place almost on its own.
The parents of Finland give me hope that the change is underway.
A citizens initiative gathered 30,000 signatures in support of banning mobile phones in schools. Additionally, the newly elected conservative government is taking them seriously and has pledged to enact laws to satisfy the request.
The Finnish government announced Monday that it “will reinforce the powers of teachers and principals to intervene in activities that disrupt teaching during school hours.”
“We will make the necessary legislative amendments to enable more efficient restrictions in cases such as the use of mobile devices during the school day so that pupils and students can better concentrate on teaching,” it added.
On the one hand, that this should happen in Finland may seem amazing given the country is the home of the mobile phone company Nokia and one of the first to adopt widespread use of the technology. On the other hand, that it was the first to adopt the technology may also be the reason it could become the first to initiate a cultural paradigm shift around cell phones, having had the longest experience with them.
Finnish children were once the best educated and smartest in Europe, according to their scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment, which tests 15-year-olds in mathematics, science, and reading. The national performance peaked in 2006 but results have since declined. Likely, not everything can be blamed on cell phones and the things we do on them these days such as scrolling social media. But the practice is linked to anxiety, depression, and loss of concentration—all of which usually reflect in other areas of life such as school performance. At the same time, wide use of digital technologies such as social media and smartphones is perhaps the clearest difference between the generation of ‘digital natives’ and this writer’s generation.
We have long heard that our culture has a difficult time keeping up with technology, in reference to establishing ways and mores and ethical guidelines around tech. By technology we really mean Big Tech, whose production and even regulation are largely beyond the capabilities of families and hence genuinely human communities. These tech titans infiltrate society as much through manipulative marketing as through genuine need. But I suspect that the problem is not the pace of the human ethical response so much as the power of Big Tech to override our ethical instinct, even our humanity.
The evolution of cell phone use provides a good example.
True confessions, it took me 12 years to complete my first university degree. I started in 1998 and finally graduated in 2010. Needless to say, almost no one had a cell phone when I started my college studies. Those were the days when you had to ask someone if they had an email address, too. By the time I graduated, basic cell phones were not only a standard-issue personal item in civilised society, but smartphones were also becoming popular and texting had begun. Still, in the face of temptation, it was ethically obvious enough that students shouldn’t use cell phones in class that university professors, at least in the U.S., could and did make it clear that texting during class was strictly prohibited and would be punished. Only one time did I see anyone dare play on his cell phone during a lecture, and true to his word, the professor reacted, giving the offending students a swift, strong yet calm reprimand at the end of class. Now I’m married to a scientist who recently made the switch from full-time research to university teaching, and the situation is very different. Professors either don’t dare or don’t bother to reprimand students who play on their cell phones during lectures. And some do, constantly.
In Finland, too, this is not the first attempt to rein in mobile phone use in schools. In 2019, a school principal in the city of Espoo, in southern Finland, sent a letter to parents on the first day of class notifying them that disruptive smartphones would be removed from students, even forcefully if necessary. Some parents complained that such a move was illegal; a ridiculous reaction, as the current government wants to make clear. If primary school teachers don’t have the power to not only prohibit but actually stop behaviour that is distracting, including confiscating an item if necessary, what authority do they have to educate?
But cell phones are, at least for some people apparently, in a category of their own, so closely linked to their personality and personal integrity that removing them from students is more like forcing them to take off their clothes in class than temporarily remove a mere tool.
This is bad. Again, what is it about our relationship with cell phones that we let them invade and twist part of our humanity? There is much that can be said about their addictive qualities, but I think the fundamental problem lies in the designs of Big Tech. While cell phones do indeed have some very helpful functions, they are designed not so much to serve us humans; to alleviate toil and suffering; to assist us in the creative task of work. Rather, cell phones put us, the consumers, at the service of the tech investors and multinationals that profit from every 10-year-old playing Candy Crush on a cell phone he got for his birthday.
Against the background of this Finnish backlash, my hopes are now rising. Perhaps even beyond parenting struggles, the problematic presence of cell phones will make us think more deeply about technology and how we can realign both ourselves individually and collectively and our instruments to once again make us, the masters being served by technology.
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