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‘Close to zero impact’: US study casts doubt on effect of phone ban in schools (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 days ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Strict bans on mobile phones in schools have “close to zero” impact on student learning and show no evidence of improvements in attendance or online bullying, a study has found.

Researchers at US universities including Stanford and Duke looked at nearly 1,800 US schools where students’ phones were kept in locked pouches and found little or no differences in outcomes compared with similar schools without strict bans.

The report concluded that among schools instituting a ban: “For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero.”

The results will come as a disappointment to teaching unions and campaigners in England who backed the government’s recent move to restrict the use of mobile phones in schools. A ban is likely to come into force next year.

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[–] spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

it gets even stupider than that:

We acknowledge funding from Arnold Ventures

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:

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation was initially created as a philanthropic organization, but was restructured as a limited liability company and renamed Arnold Ventures in January 2019. The organization's LLC structure is intended to allow it to operate with more flexibility.

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...

[–] its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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:

AI chatbots and agents disregarded direct instructions, evaded safeguards and deceived humans and other AI, according to research funded by the UK government-funded AI Security Institute (AISI). The study, shared with the Guardian, identified nearly 700 real-world cases of AI scheming and charted a five-fold rise in misbehaviour between October and March, with some AI models destroying emails and other files without permission.

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.

[–] its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org 2 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] Crotaro@beehaw.org 11 points 2 days ago

Wow that casts a healthy dose of doubt on the entire study. Thank you for pointing it all out so thoroughly!

[–] reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 8 points 2 days ago

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.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago

wow. I was just gonna say doubt based on my experience substitute teaching.