One good and healthy way of using technology is to set it aside when it's not necessary and when it risks being an obstacle to accomplishing your goals. For instance, in the "real world", you should not be using your phone while driving a car, or operating a table saw, or in a movie theater, or while having an intimate dinner. "Put it on mute and put it away" is an extremely useful skill. Furthermore, children generally have less developed impulse control than adults. It's easier for them to deal with a single coarse requirement ("no phones") rather than a set of nuanced ones.
Also, to be frank, schools need to take the easy way out sometimes. They have part-time, limited custody of children across the whole spectrum of development. Even if some large subset of kids would take well to a "digital wellbeing" curriculum, they will always also have to deal with the subset of kids who could not care less.
Comments
One good and healthy way of using technology is to set it aside when it's not necessary and when it risks being an obstacle to accomplishing your goals. For instance, in the "real world", you should not be using your phone while driving a car, or operating a table saw, or in a movie theater, or while having an intimate dinner. "Put it on mute and put it away" is an extremely useful skill. Furthermore, children generally have less developed impulse control than adults. It's easier for them to deal with a single coarse requirement ("no phones") rather than a set of nuanced ones.
Also, to be frank, schools need to take the easy way out sometimes. They have part-time, limited custody of children across the whole spectrum of development. Even if some large subset of kids would take well to a "digital wellbeing" curriculum, they will always also have to deal with the subset of kids who could not care less.