You know how the US invaded Iraq as a response to 9/11? We knew it was the Saudis the entire time. We just needed a war.

Good. Everyone should state this.

I imagine most militaries have contingency plans against enemies and allies ready to go. Wouldn’t be much of a defensive force without them. (I know that the US is not a defensive force. I live here. We will 100% take over your country for borderline no reason.)

Score one for climate change.

Um, I began falling apart about 11 years ago, but it got really bad over the past few years. I can specifically remember being in therapy over the holidays and coming to this exact realization. Like, I knew it before that, but that was the day that I, like, really felt it. I’m in my early forties.

Or no more orange blowjobs for Putin.

Well, yeah. But the Israeli population is 75% Jewish and their leadership even more so. I’m holding my neighbor responsible for genocide, I’m holding Israel responsible for genocide. A critique of Israel is not an attack on Jews.

I remember from history class that a boat of Jewish refugees was turned away from several ports during WW2. Wild to have lived long enough to see that reason completely flip and have a decadent cruise turned away for supporting genocide.

That black and white in the center is particularly disturbing.

Someday I hope that we can see the Roast of America, hosted by Jeff Ross, and featuring China’s internet.

I get it. TikTok is trash.

Yeah, no shit. I’m with Iran on this one.

I bet that the Pandas would step in and keep us going.

Holy shit, that’s good.

TIL. Thank you.

I am very interested in this pending response.

I promise you he fucked her one more time.

Once …

Hey! Sorry for the delay. I am an infrequent poster at best.

When kids have access to phones, then they want to be on their phones. They rush through their work, don’t pay full attention to their instruction, and have no distance from their friends in which to process their lives.

Rushing through their work and doing a shit job in order to get back on their phone sets up power struggles in the classroom with children who become offended if you tell them that their work is insufficient. Since they were not fully paying attention to the lesson, they have to go back and correct mistakes, which they view as ‘cutting into their time’.

The biggest behavioral impact is that once phones are in the mix, the conversation in the friend group never stops. Arguments continue, jokes continue, complaints continue, and all of this spirals and escalates on itself. Kids get stuck into online arguments with people they then see at lunch. So, you have kids talking mad shit online, creating this culture of anxiety and fear that keeps the students on edge. Grudges continue on for years. Literal years, over stuff that would have been forgotten in a week if it wasn’t constantly recycled in the friend group for content.

Finally, kids who are removed from their phones freak out. That constant conversation that they know is happening is now inaccessible to them, and they know how they talk about each other. Now they have to worry about not knowing who has beef with who, what is being said about them, and not understanding the latest ridiculous meme or joke.

So, in answer to the specific behaviors that cell phones cause, there is no direct answer. Rather, take a school, give bullies access to everyone all the time, amplify every disagreement, argument, or compromising picture or piece of information, add in a constant distraction to the task at hand, which reduces reflection and growth, keep kids in constant contact with their parents and stymying their independent development, and then ask which behaviors are the result of that. Is it the violence? The disrespect? The apathy toward classroom instruction? The anxiety? The reliance on constant reassurance from either looking something up or receiving real time feedback from their parents and friends? It is tough to say.

What is easy to say, based on a lot of experience, is that when you stamp out cellphone culture, everything improves by every metric. Grades go up, discipline goes down, positive interactions with peers and kindness become the norm, and kids are able to just be kids while they are at school.

I mean, I’ve worked as a teacher for eleven years and I don’t know a single person who doesn’t think that social media contributed to declining behavior standards. When I say, ‘a single person’, I am referring to other teachers or administrators. I am not using hyperbole. Nobody thinks it is good, everyone thinks it’s bad, and every year we tighten the noose.

This is across three school districts and nine grade levels.