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‘Close to zero impact’: US study casts doubt on effect of phone ban in schools
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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Technology
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Keep in mind the paper is a white paper (not peer reviewed) and it is sponsored by the Bezos Family Foundation and Walton Family. Personally taking it with a grain of salt and waiting for some experts to weigh in who are not economists (like most of the authors are) since I don’t feel like combing through this 100 page document.
it gets even stupider than that:
an American company that is the philanthropic vehicle of billionaires John D. Arnold and Laura Arnold
who is this John Arnold guy anyway...let's see...and....oh
since February 2024, is a member of the board of directors of Meta.
oh, and fun fact, it's not even a real fucking charity:
so he's on the board of directors for Meta, which among other things owns Instagram...and he has a side business that pretends to be a charity even though it's not, and it funds publication of a "study" saying no, teenagers having cell phones 24/7 is totally fine actually.
the tobacco industry used to pay people to wear white lab coats and say cigarettes didn't cause cancer. it's tempting to think of ourselves as more savvy than they were, and look back in hindsight and say "how could people have fallen for such obvious bullshit?"
well...
This paper is of the same caliber as all of those cigarettes are safe papers from the 70s. Funded propganada with a PR firm plying it to a willing news source.
As an aside, is the Guardian becoming a shit rag? Lately (last year or two) I've noticed a huge dip in their quality.
what I've heard previously is that the Guardian's UK edition sucks, and that the US edition is somewhat better, but at this point I'm comfortable lumping them together.
the article that flipped the "assume everything they publish is bullshit" switch for me was Number of AI chatbots ignoring human instructions increasing, study says from a few months ago.
it's written with the tone you'd expect from "serious" journalism:
but if you read carefully...it's tweets. it's just fucking tweets. they released a "study" that is a graph of "tweets over time" and claimed that it says something about the prevalence of AI "going rogue".
and in particular, they take the one story about the Meta executive who allowed an AI "agent" to delete all their emails, notice that there's a bunch of tweets discussing it, and conflate that with an increased occurrence of it happening.
it's the equivalent of saying that there were 10,000 moon landings in 1969 because you looked back at newspaper archives and found 10,000 "man lands on moon" headlines. just complete fucking amateur hour data analysis, and for the Guardian to publish it uncritically is shameful.
That is an excellent breakdown. I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing these posts. Poor data analysis being published or claims taken at face value.
I interacted with the Guardian editorial team once in the UK. I had a dataset on academic censoring and we were focusing on sharing the qualitative responses. All seemed on the up and up but we never moved forward for a variety of reasons with the story. Editors and the journalist were great. Tough questions, good insight, etc. Seemed like a good outlet. But that was earlier 2025 and in less than a year, I read that trash we are discussing.
Wow that casts a healthy dose of doubt on the entire study. Thank you for pointing it all out so thoroughly!
I had seen the LLC thing and raised my eyebrows at the projects listed on their wiki, but didn’t see the META board thing, good catch. Everything is both awful and exactly as expected.
wow. I was just gonna say doubt based on my experience substitute teaching.
The Fox Family Institute for Poultry Studies determines that hen house doors should be left open
Interesting that Guardian didn’t see fit to mention it was a white paper unless I missed something.
Just on the epistemological tip, how is it being a white paper more relevant than having Bezos, Waltons, and more (of the same) sponsors?
Typically when a news article mentions a “study” it’s a peer reviewed research article. If it’s a white paper or a working paper that is typically pointed out. Leaving that detail out is notable and probably a purposeful decision by my reckoning.
Generally they don’t mention conflicts of interest even if they’re listed so that bit isn’t especially atypical here to me.
Okay. Again, from the standpoint of how to get at what's knowable - my complaint here with The Guardian is that they aren't pointing out the things they should be, at all, and that the white paper nature (from such "sources") merits exactly nothing. No further draft on any such topic from such sources could ever be credible.
Your "typical / atypical" is you getting to my point for me, or maybe we just agree.
I think we agree! I was the original commenter in this comment thread and posted the screenshot of the sponsorship issue
Maybe we do, and I appreciate you pointing out what you did! I'll be the first to acknowledge I never would have known those things had you not posted them (and I'm sure that's true for tons of folks who saw your comment, so truly, thanks).
But to me even "taking this with a grain of salt", though, that's just way more credulity than documents coming out of those orgs will ever merit. So I don't know, your comment struck me as really strange, you point out the bombshell facts you did, to me those utterly destroy any assumption of good faith investigation/analysis, and then you go essentially "so I'll take it with a grain of salt and wait for other experts to weigh in". But...why?
Apologies if you're simply using neutral language as a way to reach more readers. But the damning epistemological facts about the document make it ineligible for taking seriously. To make an analogy it's like you said "we can see this bread is half-baked (white paper), and it actually comes from a mold factory (Bezos, Waltons), not a bread factory. So I'll have a little, not a lot, and then see what other bread experts say about it too". Which would be a crazy course of action, given the preceding description.
Again, sincere apologies if I'm mischaracterizing your POV, that's how it reads to me though.
I guess I felt like the evidence spoke for itself, my aim was to communicate that Guardian was acting in bad faith in their reporting of this. “Grain of salt” was just colloquial language. I hadn’t read the paper so I couldn’t speak to the actual contents.
I’m also disappointed that Stanford, Upenn, and Duke would be okay with this (there are rules for putting your university affiliation on illegitimate research to make it seem legitimate). I would kind of expect it from Stanford (who also sponsored the research) tbh but not Duke or Upenn.
No wonder people are losing faith in the scientific establishment. If anyone reading this goes to one of those universities you should email the VPR/OPR office to complain. This is eroding your legitimacy too.
This whole thing is an excellent example of how corporations wield their ‘soft power’ to try to make their policies seem reasonable.
Edit: And U. Michigan! Good lord.
Okay got it, sounds like I just kinda jumped down your throat then. "How dare this person not dunk on those folks as hard as I think they should!" (that's me lol)
Cheers. Thanks for the info.
Edit: I will say, Guardian and lots of others remain able to coast on an assumption of good will and journalistic integrity that I don't believe is there. Maybe it once was earned, I'm not a journalistic historian. But it seems much like old school enshittification, where a brand builds up a lot of credibility slowly over time, then the things that made consumers like it get quietly swapped out for shittier "parts" and it takes a long time for consumers to update their understanding of the brand.
The Guardian is not a credible journalistic institution, I wish it were, but I'm glad folks like you are noticing.
Nah you’re completely right it merits an angrier tone, it’s just so exhausting!
Agreed on the lack of legitimate publications. Pretty much every mainstream news source is compromised. You just have to piece together the truth from independent sources and read between the lines.
They make their agenda kind of transparent just in what they do choose to cover (like Bezos’ papers hyping billionaires and AI) vs what they choose not to cover (perpetual and well documented rape murder and other war crimes by Israel).
Couldn't agree more, oddly enough to understand what they are saying you have to zoom way out, see what's not being said, see how phrasing is implicitly shaping their narrative, etc. All the subtle techniques eventually produce enough evidence to sum up one's observations into a really big and gross elephant. Standing right there. And somehow kind of invisible to many. Formerly to oneself.
It's difficult, and I mean, big surprise lol, they're basically engineered to be that way, it's all so tiring like ya said.
No hate to elephants, elephants are fucking great
That’s such a great description, you somehow start being able to see through the mist if you pay attention to a topic for long enough and the details coalesce into a clear picture of the situation.
I’m sure the wool is still over my eyes on some important things but my bullshit detector is constantly improving.
Also, agreed, let’s put the elephants in charge.
Thanks, it's at least a familiar metaphor (-ish), but I've always struggled to describe the feeling well. I do think something like "seeing a shape in the mist" does a good job capturing it too. How it's obviously there but still hard to identify, easy for others to dismiss, etc. It's all the things you should be seeing but don't.
Anyway, same, on the wool and BS detector. How do you like your instance btw, on precisely that topic? I don't know a lot of details about that one but I feel like I see good info and takes from y'all more often than not. What's your experience there been?
We are pretty small and I haven’t seen any real conflict play out within the community in my time here. The admins are anarchist and I think we agree on the things that matter most. The community isn’t explicitly anarchist (we want to be a good landing pad for all solarpunks). I haven’t seen misplaced hatred or bigotry coming out of our community. I’m a pretty happy camper.
Dope.