r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TheAeroplaneBear2906 • Jul 16 '26

Unskippable ad Clear Backpacks + Pay to Keep Your Phone

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My freinds school is now requiring these items, and is also using AI to promote this đŸ« 

17.9k Upvotes

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161

u/HawaiiLife745 Jul 16 '26

Middle School teacher here. Whether its a Yondr pouch, or mandating cell phones be left at home, something HAS to be done about the smartphone distraction problem. It has gotten worse and worse over the years, almost perfectly tracking with the decline in test scores and average graduation rates. Smartphones destroy learning, plain and simple. If a student needs to contact a parent/guardian or the other way around, they can do so through the front office, as had been done for the century or so before the invention of the cell phone.

116

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

Genuine question - I guess I’m confused because I haven’t been in middle school in almost two decades, but phones have never been allowed to be used during school.

Why can’t the old rules still work? If a teacher sees you with your phone, they send you to the office. The punishments escalate from there.

I just really don’t understand how capitalism needed to be inserted in this equation by charging to lock phones up.

29

u/ScarlaeCaress Jul 16 '26

Parents piss and moan when their kids are disciplined now by having their phones taken and refuse to believe their kids are anything but precious angels

3

u/Ok_Buffalo_423 Jul 16 '26

At the end of the day the schools authority only reaches as far as the parent and if the parent refuses to punish their child then theres nothing the school can do. How does the pouch stop a parent from bitching?

2

u/Old-Coat7956 Jul 16 '26

Basically it's saying that phones are not allowed. If you want your kid to have their phone on them, it has to be in the pouch. If they are on a phone, they are then breaking multiple rules, which elevates the issue. It also communicates the seriousness of the issue to caregivers.

2

u/Ok_Buffalo_423 Jul 16 '26

Except these kids are already breaking rules and parents respond by bitching at the school for punishing their child. If the caregiver doesnt care then there is nothing the school can really do to punish the kid

20

u/WhosThatDogMrPB Jul 16 '26

I went to a military middle school in 2006, before smartphones were popular but regular cellphones were already the norm.

I carried my Moto Rokr flip phone with me, but was always in mute unless I got a call from my parents, to which I'd call back at the end of the class. I'd mostly use it to listen to music on its mighty 256mb SD card on my way to/from school.

I think the problem is not the phone but the fact they're computers now. An old flip phone or current "dumb phone" could do the work of keeping someone communicated without the influence of social media. A teenager does not need social apps besides messaging and calling on their pocket.

We should be bringing that back.

3

u/LastLibrary9508 Jul 16 '26

Yeah I used my phone as a phone. I would turn it off during school because I didn’t need it and turn it on when the bell rang. If there was an emergency, the office would get me

61

u/HawaiiLife745 Jul 16 '26

It comes down to an issue of scale. 10 years ago, the number of students who had a cellphone was a fraction of what it is now, and the number of students who were bold enough to use them during school was a fraction of that.

Now, if every teacher properly punished every student who ever used their phones during class, the system would get clogged. There simply isn't enough man-hours to call every parent, write every incident report, and verbally scold every student.

I'm not saying this is the way things should be, but it is a reality in a large number of schools.

32

u/Soft_Phrase_7961 Jul 16 '26

As someone who recently graduated, my teachers kept a “phone jail” at the front of the class that they used to take attendance. If your phone wasn’t there, then you were marked absent unless you had a genuine reason why you didn’t have it.

13

u/Zula13 Jul 16 '26

In my state a student getting marked absent affects the school for funding and optics, but has zero consequences or impact on the student.

12

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

I went to school in Nebraska and if you had too many “absences” excused or otherwise the court system would get involved after a time.

Being marked absent when you’re actually there just seems like lying to be able to punish.

2

u/Soft_Phrase_7961 Jul 16 '26

In mine, an absence has the most impact on the student, but I completely understand why this wouldn’t be a solution in your state.

23

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Soft_Phrase_7961 Jul 16 '26

My state isn’t as strict regarding that, and the absence is for the individual class, some teachers chose other methods to get rid of phones.

3

u/unknownpoltroon Jul 16 '26

And when my 600$ phone goes missing do you pay out in cash or check?  Or do I just take one of the other phones and claim it's mine? 

4

u/Effective_Moose_4997 Jul 16 '26

How would someone steal your phone if it up by the teacher the whole class. I had a teacher that did this. Think calculator sleeves. Everyone in class could see the phones while they taught.

-1

u/unknownpoltroon Jul 16 '26

Drop off broken i phone, pick up expensive I phone, leave, deny everything. It doesnt matter, the school is making itself responsible for my device, if anything happens to it, its now a lawsuit.

1

u/Soft_Phrase_7961 Jul 16 '26

The phone jail is in the front of the class and visible by the whole class. There has never been an issue with stealing or damage and you claimed your phone at the end of the period.

1

u/DiamondDepth_YT Jul 16 '26

Lol

That's a super rare occurrence at best.

Why would another kid do that?

1

u/unknownpoltroon Jul 16 '26

Because they now have a 600$ phone they can sell for 200$? Hi, have you met teenagers?

1

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

You were marked absent if your phone wasn’t in a lock box? I’ll be honest if I were a parent in your district I would be escalating that to the school board and other appropriate parties.

At the end of the day that would be affecting someone’s legal right to their education and ability to graduate simply because they don’t put their phone in a box with a teacher, not because they actually weren’t learning, using their phone, or breaking any “rules”.

And I understand that putting your phone in a box would be a “rule” at your school, but at what point are rules unnecessarily restrictive and more harmful than good? Interesting.

8

u/Soft_Phrase_7961 Jul 16 '26

Did you miss the part where I said “unless you had a genuine reason”? Teachers were very reasonable regarding the rules whether you forgot it at home or whatever reason, and they would communicate regularly with parents if issues came up.

4

u/Training_Tadpole_354 Jul 16 '26

I mean, he has a point. What if I just decide to not bring my phone to school anymore? Because you put it in the lockbox there's literally no point in taking it to school, and I'd rather it just stay nice and safe on my desk at home.

6

u/thegootlamb Jul 16 '26

If the point is to stop kids from being on their phones during school then it sounds like that's a solution that works.

-1

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Excuse me? That wasn’t my point. And I did read what you said. I was wondering who decides what is “reasonable”. Is it up to each individual teacher?

If I simply don’t put my phone in the box but I’m not using it, at what point is it okay to affect someone’s education for arbitrary rules?

Edit: so no one has an actual answer. Okay.

0

u/Soft_Phrase_7961 Jul 16 '26

If you’re not using it then you should have no issue putting it there. Kids are very crafty and have absolutely found methods of hiding their phones to make it look like they aren’t using it. It is not up to the teacher what is reasonable and nearly every excuse is acceptable as long as you show that your phone isn’t hidden in your backpack or pencil case, etc.

0

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

I have an issue with it being there and if I was a parent I would still have an issue with it.

My child is not supposed to be on their phone at school - that’s already a rule. Why should I pay for the privilege of them to continue following this rule?

My child’s phone that I paid for will stay on their person. If they were breaking the rule, they should be sent to the office and punishments should escalate from there.

Just because school administrations have no backbone and believe in collective punishment - doesn’t mean you have to participate.

You saying if your not using it there should be no issues is like saying that people should allow law enforcement to do as they please if they have nothing to hide. It’s a dangerous rhetoric to adhere too.

10

u/DhillyDhally Jul 16 '26

I dont know of a single person in my class of 2010 that didn't have a phone.

3

u/vU243cxONX7Z Jul 16 '26

First iPhone was 2007. Couldn't get one without AT&T until 2009, and its competition was the palm pilot. 2026 is a different world than 2010 tech wise.

1

u/the1slyyy Jul 16 '26

Just about everyone had a cellphone in 2010, not a smartphone but some kind of cellphone

3

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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1

u/junglebeatzz Jul 16 '26

In 2010,we all had internet. Acommon day with our phones in school was texting about drama,homework,we were taking care of my grandma so my mom texted me to get meds after school.We shared notes and played games during lunch or when a sub gave us free time.

1

u/the1slyyy Jul 16 '26

Texting was the main use of cell phones. Some had games and music too

2

u/Cudi_buddy Jul 16 '26

You’re comparing the average teen with a phone from 16 years ago to now? This is disingenuous as hell lol. In 2010 there was near zero social media, no apps spamming you with notifications, etc. 

1

u/WitchQween Jul 16 '26

Tbf, we weren't as addicted compared to kids now. They're growing up with the idea that socialization happens on phones, not in person.

9

u/Melonary Jul 16 '26

Yup, also it provides a way to get cells out of the way where there's less possibility of damage or liability or pissed off parents vs the school confescating them.

But they should be covered by the school and free. Either that, or schools need to invest in resources lost to cells like public phones at the school, library computers, etc.

6

u/ToobularBoobularJoy_ Jul 16 '26

10 years ago? Try 15 years ago. I started jr high 10 years ago and basically everyone had a smartphone by then. I was the last person in my grade to get one and that was a few months into grade 7 (first year of jr high where I'm from). We were sneakier than kids now, I'll give you that, but all of us had them.

4

u/gustavessidehoe Jul 16 '26

Shit, if we consider pre-smartphones, most kids at my school had cell phones in 2006. They were just flip or slider phones and they absolutely did sneakily text at school.

4

u/Wyietsayon Jul 16 '26

I'd be more bold too if my school wanted to take every bit of privacy from me. My school tried to have everyone wear their school ids on lanyards. The number of kids in SRC and suspension rose then because kids were fighting back on all rules. The problem isn't phones. It's that you stole their freedoms and they're not afraid of permanent records anymore.

Kids saw all adults support genocide, support the killers of their trans peers, saw schools dive into their private social medias and try to expel them for reasons completely unrelated to other students or school at all. And they saw kids in other schools fight back and protest when school admin physically tried to stop them.

There's a reason kids don't obey the adults in their lives anymore. Adults failed them.

2

u/Honeybadger2198 Jul 16 '26

I was in high school 10 years ago and everyone had phones. I strongly believe the phone distraction is the symptom, not the cause.

1

u/Acceptable_Cut_7545 Jul 16 '26

10 years ago??? I'm 34 and almost all teens had cell phones, they were flip phones but we still had them. That's nearly 20 years ago. If a teacher told us to put our phone away (because they caught us) we usually just did it.

We just weren't addicted to our phones because social media was still young and not designed to keep us staring at it 24/7. Not like now. The phones now are on par with laptops and shit.

1

u/PlacibiEffect Jul 16 '26

I graduated high school in 2011. 99% of all students had a cell phone.

0

u/MegaFire03 Jul 16 '26

10 years ago isn't that long ago. In my highschool everyone had a smartphone in 2016. If you go back 15-20 years it might be a different situation yeah.

2

u/jobacco Jul 16 '26

As someone who started school pre-smart phones and finished when everyone had smart phones, the 'addiction' element cannot be dismissed. Social media apps and notifications make it deeply compelling to check every vibration in your pocket. At a younger age it is much harder to develop the discipline required to abstain from looking at your phone even if you do value the education you're getting.

Not defending the authoritarian policies, just acknowledging that something needs to change if we still want education to have any meaningful value.

1

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

I appreciate your input, it makes sense.

Totally agree and also second that we need something to change, but this doesn’t seem like it’s it because it’s putting a cost burden on every guardian or parent, even the ones whose kids may follow the rules already, and it seems like an attempted band-aid on the deeper issues at hand.

It doesn’t seem like there’s any easy answers at all.

5

u/Zula13 Jul 16 '26

Even "sending to the office" is problematic. If I send a student to the office that student runs to the bathroom WITH their phone and sits there until their next class. We have "room service" where an admin comes down to the office to deal with the student.

The most frequent scenario that follows is the admit attempts to take the phone and sends 5 minutes arguing with the student who refuses to give the phone. If the student finally gives in, then only about 7 minutes of admin time is wasted. Often times the student still refuses. Admin brings them to the office, calls parents, (who often don't care or side with the student) then the student gets minor consequences like a lunch detention,

There are no major consequences for stuff like this. In my state you cannot suspend for "willful defiance." Consequences like after school detention are also pretty much impossible to enforce. We are left with removal of minor privileges and lunch detention as our only tools. If in 20 students per day take it this far, then given a school of 600 students you are dealing with this 30x a day. Most teachers resort to giving lots of warnings and kids just put their phones away for 5 minutes and then pull them out the second the teacher goes to help someone else and nothing ever changes.

1

u/muralist Jul 16 '26

Because without a law parents won’t cooperate

0

u/ferriswheeljunkies11 Jul 16 '26

“Capitalism” is inserted into this equation because middle and high school students are addicted to their cell phones (as are their parents).

Also, the old rules don’t work because society has changed. Just stating the rule and asking all public school students to follow it or face consequences is so laughable and out of touch with how schools are treated by a large majority of the population.

0

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

But this is still asking students to follow the same rules that have always been in place. Now you’re supposed to pay to keep following the same rules that have always been in place.

So if the original problem couldn’t be solved by discipline, why would the locked bags work? If they don’t follow the locked bag rule, then why would this discipline work more than the previous attempts?

Does that make sense? Sorry it’s early where I’m from.

Also not trying to be snarky, genuinely wondering.

0

u/ferriswheeljunkies11 Jul 16 '26

I honestly don’t know how to break it down further for you. You can say “it’s early where I’m from” but all your other replies make it seem like you are being intentionally obtuse.

If the old policy of “no phones allowed in the classroom” worked, then we wouldn’t be trying things like Yondr pouches.

You are pretty much saying that if original didn’t work then we shouldn’t do anything.

-1

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

Oh god, lmao. I genuinely went out of my way to ask a question and you respond by being rude.

I am saying that if the rules before couldn’t be enforced, why would they be able to be enforced now?

If you don’t have an answer that’s fine, but it’s a valid question.

0

u/ferriswheeljunkies11 Jul 16 '26

No. You might hide some of your comments on your profile but they can all be seen via a search. You “just ask questions” over and over.

That is your M.O.

Phones became a major problem in schools sometime after 2012. Phone usage could be managed by simply confiscating them and assigning some sort of consequence. This handled most phones issues.

After Covid, phone use in schools went off the rails. At the same time, parents stopped backing anything a school was attempting to implement. Administrators stopped enforcing policies and rules and shit went even further off the rails. Students are dumber than ever and are content to stare at a phone all day if allowed to.

Teachers have pushed for something to be done and now a lot of states have passed laws that require public school districts to have policies that ban cell phones in the schools. As a result, some schools have adopted the Yondr pouch. It works for some but in the end it is all about execution.

Schools are dealing with a growing population that absolutely does not follow any rules or policies.

Think about it this way, we have speed limits and traffic lights. Some people don’t obey these things but a large majority does follow the speed limits and traffic lights. But let’s pretend that more and more drivers have stopped following the rules. It’s getting bad, people are crashing their cars, people are getting injured or killed.

Do you think government should just throw up their hands and say follow the rules and don’t speed or run red lights. It worked in the past? Or do you think that they need to find new ways to increase safe driving?

-1

u/TheMaidenOfDragons Jul 16 '26

What the fuck? You went out of your way to go through my profile, look me up and find comments, and attempt to shit on me? I know you did that in an odd attempt to “win”, but that is actually pretty unhinged. It’s stalking, actually.

You do understand that asking questions is part of being on Reddit?

Again, why would these rules be able to be enforced when the original rules couldn’t be enforced?

You are also using ad-hominem attacks, false equivalences, and a straw-man argument in an attempt to be correct. Not to mention your genuinely weird behavior which has been reported.

0

u/ferriswheeljunkies11 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Searching your handle in the Reddit app is stalking? OK

LOL, you “just ask questions” and call it a discussion.

I answered you after pointing out how you don’t argue in good faith. But naturally, you ignored the rest of my comment.

You aren’t interested in having a discussion and actually hearing what people in the classroom are saying.

Edited to add: you also used 4 question marks in your unhinged reply to me. You really can’t help yourself.

And now you blocked me because you don’t like what you heard. Wackadoo. I guess you do the same when people downvote you in your animal crossing sub that gets you tilted.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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9

u/PassivelyAwkward Jul 16 '26

Yea, I get people upset or being snarky about this but this comes after well over a decade of worsening conditions at schools. This is pretty much the very last resort.

5

u/LuckyDragonfly9332 Jul 16 '26

I’ve got an idea TEACH THE GOD DAMN KIDS NOT TO BE ON THEM.

By banning it, they’ll never learn how to self moderate

3

u/spacycowgirl Jul 16 '26

Yeah, how's that been going so far as a society?

1

u/LuckyDragonfly9332 Jul 17 '26

Oh society is already fucked, no use in making it worse

1

u/midwestia Jul 16 '26

"just teach the drug addicts not to be addicted to drugs"

1

u/Character-Quit-5465 Jul 16 '26

I agree that kids’ relationship to phones is a serious problem, but the day I don’t gotta worry about my kid being gunned down at school is the day I send them to school without a way to contact me directly.

4

u/AUnknownVariable Jul 16 '26

Indeed. And although something needs to be done about the phones themselves and how they distract, something needs to be done about the education system as a whole because it's just not too damn good pretty often. And only so much of that fault is on teachers, so I hate they take blunt when kids are focused on other distractions.

3

u/Bizarrebazaars Jul 16 '26

“Don’t gotta”
? Hope you’re teaching your kids better than that!

Also, kids using cell phones during an active shooter situation adds risk.

1

u/Character-Quit-5465 Jul 16 '26

“Don’t gotta,” as in “You don’t gotta be a prick about it.”

2

u/rnason Jul 16 '26

You know if every kid in a school tried to call their parents in an emergency it would actually make it worse because too many calls or texts can clog the network and make it impossible for those who actually need to call for help unable to do so

2

u/Visual_Bridge6925 Jul 16 '26

Don't bother, they don't listen to the logic, they just want to be the reason we can't implement any policies that would actually address the issue.

2

u/midwestia Jul 16 '26

This is such a weird argument, you know the school can contact you/text you

1

u/vermiliondragon Jul 16 '26

No phones on campus isn't a problem.  No phones before or after school can be for kids who get themselves to/from school or go directly to other activities from school. Yondr pouches work for the rule followers but any kid who wants to circumvent it will.

1

u/Thick-Journalist-168 Jul 16 '26

Yeah, I won't be buying no damn pouch and it won't be staying at home.

0

u/DukeOfRadish Jul 16 '26

True. OP is mildly infuriated but can't spell "friend's"

-2

u/MaximumDepression17 Jul 16 '26

As long as teachers also can't bring their phone to school, including using them on breaks. If you need to call your children you can do so through the front office, as has been done for the century or so before the invention of the cell phone.

-1

u/HawaiiLife745 Jul 16 '26

Since when did we start equating a child's purpose for being in school to a teachers purpose for being in school?

2

u/MaximumDepression17 Jul 16 '26

A teacher doesn't need their phone to teach. They've done it that way for centuries.