#nophones — Public Fediverse posts

From 2023... #TechExecs protect their kids from their own products. America’s children deserve the same

While #BigTech fights regulations that would protect children, its leaders apply a different standard for their own offspring.

BY Katie A. Paul, 5/24/2023

Excerpt: "As detailed in news reports in recent years, members of the tech elite have directed their nannies to keep their kids away from #AddictiveScreens and sent their kids to a private San Francisco school with a strict no-screens policy. 'I just wanted our kids to have a #TechnologyFree start, so that they would be playing and running around and picking up leaves and getting dirty, rather than sitting inside and watching a screen,' said one parent.

"This attitude extends to the C-suite. Susan Wojcicki, who recently stepped down as YouTube CEO, admitted in 2017 that she sometimes confiscated her kids’ phones. Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, revealed in 2018 that his 11-year-old son did not have a phone. The following year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that he didn’t want his young children sitting in front of a computer 'for a long period of time.'

"One former Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, put it more bluntly, saying that he felt 'tremendous guilt' about helping to build the social network and that his children 'aren’t allowed to use that shit.'

"These admissions have been largely forgotten with the speed of the news cycle over the past five years. But taken together, they reveal an industry that tries to shield its kids from the dangers of technology—while touting the very same products for everyone else. It begs the question: Why shouldn’t America’s young people receive the same levels of protection that Silicon Valley parents provide for their own?

While tech executives have gone quieter lately on the subject of how they regulate tech use for their offspring, there are signs that they continue to harbor private doubts about the products they market to the world. When tech-focused publication The Information surveyed more than 1,000 subscribers last year, it found that 'Silicon Valley’s children spend far less time on screens than the average American kid.'

[...]

By trying to shield their kids from the ill effects of the products they make, tech leaders are following a pattern seen in industries like #BigTobacco, whose executives, in congressional testimony 25 years ago, conceded that they didn’t want their children to smoke."

Read more:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90900166/tech-social-media-protection-children

#NoPhones #TechAddiction #BigTech #TakeThePhonesAway #BigData #SpendTimeInNature #AISucks #MoreGreenTimeLessScreenTime

Student #ReadingAbility Spikes After Removing Tech From Class

"Remove all the #distractions and we can get our kids back."

By Frank Landymore
Published Jun 15, 2026

"Would you believe it: a teacher and her students say their reading ability soared after banning tech in the classroom.

"Maureen Mulvaney, an AP Literature and English teacher at Washburn High School in Minneapolis, started the low tech experiment last year after becoming frustrated with plagiarism, distracted students, and plunging literacy rates.

"And so, with the enthusiastic support of parents, she banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done with pencil and paper. The turnaround was quick and resounding, and despite some initial resistance from students, they quickly fell in love with the old, analog ways of doing things.

"In September, before the experiment started, just 46 percent of Mulvaney’s students said they felt confident about their reading ability. By February, that share shot up to 95 percent.

" 'We’re having a lot of trouble in education and I think what my kids told us was that there is a solution and the solution is to go #LowTech. Go back to the old ways of doing things,' Mulvaney told local TV news station KARE 11. 'Remove all the distractions and we can get our kids back.'

"Mulvaney let her students ease into a tech free environment. First, they started with just ten minutes of silent reading and writing by hand. Still, the first day was 'rough,' she wrote in an essay in The Minnesota Star Tribune. Most students quit after just half a page of longhand composition.

" 'I told the kids this is like lifting weights,' she told KARE 11. 'You don’t go in and you don’t start with 80 pounds.' "

Read more:
https://futurism.com/future-society/students-reading-improves-no-tech-class

#LudditeClub #NoTech #NoPhones #NoAI #Reading #Writing #Humans
#Smartphones are #DumbingUsDown #SolarPunkSunday #Handwriting #NeoLuddites #SmartphoneBan #Longhand

📵 "Oregon Schools: Where students are now totally thrilled to not use their phones and teachers are over the moon, apparently. Because we all know teenagers love nothing more than engaging conversations about algebra. 😂📚"
https://portlandtribune.com/2026/03/18/oregon-school-cell-phone-ban-engaged-students-joyful-teachers/ #OregonSchools #EngagedLearning #NoPhones #HappyStudents #TeacherJoy #HackerNews #ngated