Vermont bill would ban cell phone use by anyone younger than 21:
A bill has been introduced in Vermont's legislature that would prohibit anyone under 21 years old from using or possessing a cell phone. However, the bill appears to be more about gun rights than cell phones.
The bill, introduced Tuesday by Democratic Sen. John Rodgers, says those under the age of 21 "are not developmentally mature enough" to posses and use cell phones safely. The bill cites fatal car crash and bullying among teens as reasons for the proposed legislation.
"The use of cell phones while driving is one of the leading killers of teenagers in the United States," according to the bill (PDF). "Young people frequently use cell phones to bully and threaten other young people, activities that have been linked to many suicides."
The bill would make possession or use of a cell phone by anyone under 21 punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
The bill says that if those under 21 "aren't mature enough" to possess guns, smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, then the same rule should apply to cell phone use. In recent years, the state has passed laws raising the minimum smoking age to 21 and prohibiting the sale of firearms to anyone under 21.
[...] "I have no delusions that it's going to pass. I wouldn't probably vote for it myself," he told the newspaper.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday January 11 2020, @02:36PM (14 children)
"The use of cell phones while driving is one of the leading killers of teenagers in the United States"
It is already illegal for ANYONE to use cell phones while driving, in some places (not that a pesky law will really ever stop consumertards). If that is not the case in Vermont then perhaps they could focus on that?
Although, personally, I would love to see cell phones banned entirely. These days and it seems like everyone has their face buried in their cell phone. All they seem to see is a good time, but I can see the nickels and dimes flying out of their wallets.
Cell phone vendor bribes arriving in Vermont in 3...2...1... Probably the real purpose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Saturday January 11 2020, @02:52PM (5 children)
While I agree banning to be a good idea, it would just happen in the dark thereafter. Just like no one ever drinks alcohol before they are of age...
Instead, the energy source required for the mobiles should be unique and coupled with a bicycle trainer and attached generator. When the speed is too low, then there is no power. For a network connection you are required to sprint. Etc,...
That scenario, although as much a utopia as a complete ban, would ensure some secondary benefits. At least it is a nice thought.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @03:57PM (4 children)
But now you can criminalize the ones who get caught and run them through your system.
America is always good for new restrictions on people under 21. Perhaps they should gain a reputation for showing up at elections? Old decrepit people otoh are untouchable by idiot politicians.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Saturday January 11 2020, @04:39PM (3 children)
Why not incarcerate all people under the age of 21 right now? They all have done something illegal already. Better to put them all away now then to wait until it gets worse. And, like the old guys like to say, those young pesky buggers, they had it coming.
On the positive side... only one more generation of insanity. All will simply die in lockup. Then you have a lot of land cleared with intact infrastructure. A fresh start can commence.
(Dreams, the best kind of sarcasm is always in your dreams; unfortunately, then you wake up)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @09:10PM
send them to sex slave camps. then geezers can go visit them for vacations!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @01:02AM
Just ban Facebook and they'll kill themselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 12 2020, @07:23AM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 11 2020, @03:36PM (4 children)
Disagree. The ability to just phone someone even when not at home (or, when things go really bad, phone emergency services) is just too damn useful. Especially these days where you'll not find many public phones.
Banning Smartphones? Well, go ahead. Banning all cell phones? Hell, no.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @04:47PM (3 children)
Indeed, I personally voluntarily replaced my smartphone with a KaiOS based flip phone because having a phone that's with me wherever I go is just too useful. I will be working at a school and the ability to call for help if a student gets hurt outside without having to run to find a phone is just too useful. In olden times, you'd either send another student to get help or go yourself, but the fact that I've got a phone with me cuts precious seconds off the response time if a student has fallen and cracked their skull open.
It's also even easier to avoid using while driving as it doesn't do a lot of the things that people would want to use a phone for while driving anyways.
In terms of the problems they're trying to address restricting the children from having access to smartphones would make far more sense as there are many reasons why children that age have phones other than just games.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 11 2020, @05:48PM (2 children)
As an alternative, self control is possible. I've had a smart phone for years, and the battery typically lasts a week because I use it primarily as a cell phone, and I don't even use a cell phone that much.
I stick with a smartphone because it has a much better camera, a much bigger/faster "keyboard" with swipe-typing, and a screen big enough to look up information whenever and wherever I need it. It's a better phone in pretty much every respect except sound quality, and a whole pocket full of handy tools (calculator, level, metal detector, GPS, etc,etc,etc.)
I suspect that one of the things that helps keep me from spending an inordinate amount of time on it is that I stick with a low-data $10/month dumphone plan. A few hundred MB of data per month is more than enough for email and occasional internet/map searches, especially if unused data rolls over to the next month.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @11:13PM (1 child)
No, it's really not. Just having the device on you leads to negative results. The phones themselves are designed to be as addictive as possible and just having it results in cognitive load.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday January 12 2020, @04:18AM
If you say so. Personally the pocket-load far exceeds the cognitive load - but then I choose what I put on it carefully. I have no notifications except for alarms, calendar notifications, and communication directed at me personally. And most of those notification sounds are selected to be easy to ignore - further amplified by bi-hourly clock-chimes that simply note the passage of time without any potential for response, to further weaken the check-every-chime reflex.
I have no social media surveillance/time-waster apps installed, nor such sites bookmarked. No "quick time waster" games installed that can tempt me when waiting in a queue, though I do have a handful of more involved games that I occasionally play when I've got a half-hour+ block of time to fill.
On it's own it's a pocket computer, no more addictive than a desktop - the addictiveness is in the software you choose to install on it, and the relationship you establish with it. And while there's certainly mountains of addictive software and "services" available, installing or using them is completely optional.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @03:37PM (2 children)
Don't you worry about our wallet, hon. It's our money and we spend it however we want. Maybe we don't want to look at you, ok? Or anyone for that matter. Which we have a right to.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday January 12 2020, @12:04AM (1 child)
Well, that's just my personal opinion, there are a lot of things in this world that I think should be different, but it's not like I can change.... umm... I'm talking to you, but you have your face buried in a cell phone... oh, cat videos... that is so important... by the way, you know we are standing in a warehouse and you really should be watching out for **WHOMP**SPLAT**CLINK**MEOW**CRUNCH**... forklifts. Ok, never mind.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @03:21AM
Think of it as an easy filter - these days you can talk to somebody for just a few minutes and get a fair sense of how high courtesy, respect, and attention span rank in their personal virtues. Used to be it could take months or years to get an honest assessment.
As for forklifts, etc... evolution in action. I see no benefit in saving people from their own terminal recklessness. The one place I think society has cause to object is when someone is using their phone while operating dangerous machinery like cars. And there I really think we should take a hard line - at *least* several months of license suspension on the first offense, on top of reckless endangerment charges, for using your phone while operating a moving vehicle or other heavy machinery.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday January 11 2020, @02:45PM
Inhabitant subjects of the said State are not developmentally mature enough to vote.
They already proved that by accepting current legislation.
Next step will be elimination of voting.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @02:50PM (1 child)
Guns don't kill people - cellphones kill people!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @04:53PM
Because we can't deal with more than one problem at a time.
The only reason why we don't have effective measures in place to curtail gun related crimes is that there's enough small dicked people in the country that would riot if they had to lose their penis-enlargement device.
(Score: 3, Funny) by inertnet on Saturday January 11 2020, @03:47PM (4 children)
Some people are totally addicted to their smartphones. How about a system where providers are legally bound to allow internet connections for a limited amount of minutes per day? Let's say, if people are only allowed one hour of internet time per day, less of them will use that time behind the wheel of a car.
Ideally I'd opt for better education of youth on smartphone use and its dangers, but the world is past that already. That can be done anyway, but it won't solve the current epidemic.
Another idea would be a sort of driver's licence, but for smartphone ownership instead.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 11 2020, @06:03PM (1 child)
As an alternative - get a cheap, extremely low-data "dumphone" plan, especially for kids. A few hundred MB of data a month is quite serviceable for email and occasional information lookups, but completely untenable for much more than that.
As an added bonus, having an extremely limited data budget helps teach budget management, which is something most peple these days don't seem to really start learning until their 20s. Hard to believe that 12 year olds used to be expected to start seriously learning to manage their own households not all that many generations ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @10:29PM
Wow.... and I thought a 28.8kbps was a low-data plan.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 11 2020, @11:19PM (1 child)
The problem nowadays is that parents give their babies cell phones so that they can play baby games and shut the fuck up not disturbing the adults.
The only problem is that giving a kid a cell phone is like feeding a dog human food. All it takes it once, and then it's all over. Feed a dog human food and they will literally act like they are cracked out, jumping all over the place and biting everything up, and they will attack you if you refuse to share your McDonalds with them.
Pull the phone away from a kid and they will start kicking and screaming, and even if they are old enough to be spanked, parents are not allowed to do that anymore because CPS will be called and their kid taken away and given to one of Adam Schiff's "charities." Back in the day when I pulled that shit with my Nintendo, if I tried to bargain or refuse when told to stop, I'd get pulled off the floor by my ear. It didn't take much of that before I got the hint.
There's a reason people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs don't believe in letting their kids have phones. If I had kids who didn't get the message, then I'd tell them to be that annoying mooch who always asks their friends to use their phones somewhere else if they're Jonesin' so bad, and that shit comes to a stop once they're back home for dinner.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 12 2020, @02:39AM
Maybe you should just stop taking in strays that escape their crack head masters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @04:40PM
And put my house up for sale two weeks ago.
The utter nonsense that goes on in our Statehouse keeps me from reading the news lest I stroke out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 11 2020, @04:55PM (2 children)
Fake news! Democrats would never be authoritarian douchepickles like that. They're liberals and liberals are all about liberty, right?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 11 2020, @05:07PM
A key paragraph was omitted from TFS.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Saturday January 11 2020, @06:05PM
Democrat, Republican - they're all establishment politicians first, everything else a distant second. Keep the rabble at each other's throats over policies none of the politicians actually care about, and they can all laugh together all the way to the authoritarian dystopia.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday January 11 2020, @06:40PM
Here's a news outlet that understands what this bill is about: https://reason.com/2020/01/10/vermont-bill-criminalizing-cell-phone-use-for-anyone-under-21-is-a-brilliant-troll/ [reason.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @07:03PM
Problem solved. Next item!
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday January 11 2020, @07:36PM (2 children)
A phone was at one time a communication device built for this purpose.
A cell phone was at one time a mobile phone built specifically for this purpose.
In 2020, a cell phone is a vastly different thing of vastly different complexity so far outside of the typical user's capacity that it boggles the mind.
https://jmichaelhudson.net/smart-phones-and-wild-bears-2/ [jmichaelhudson.net] (I am looking for someone to seriously consider the equations at thet end, which to my knowledge I am the first to propose)
It is not a phone, it is a full tower with who knows how many extra sautered-on doodads crammed into a handheld device.
Better still, it is a black box that does magic for people who could not explain what a transistor is, much less a side-channel attack.
Also, this is actually kindof sortoff not just an argument against phones, but against a culture based on the automobile.
It kills so, so many people for such pointless reasons.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12 2020, @02:42AM
That's it - the sauter. FFS Hudson, your head is as fat as Hudson Bay, and just as devoid of brain matter.
(Score: 2) by EEMac on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:07AM
And thank goodness! If I had to explain the transistor-level implementation of every technology before I could use it, I wouldn't get to use very much. Heck, even USB keyboards use microcontrollers I only sort-of know how to program.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cykros on Saturday January 11 2020, @09:11PM
This isn't actually a bill that's even being backed by the senator who introduced it, but is rather being introduced to elicit a conversation.
With that in mind, I think that there is probably some room to talk about exactly where regulation may make some sense, and where it obviously doesn't (hence the kneejerk reactions everyone's having to the headline).
I personally think there's room for some school-zone style legislation to put a step up from the school level rules that currently have teachers simply unable to adequately enforce while also attending to their tasks of educating students. Vice Principles across the country have been completely mowed down by the presence of smartphones in schools, and beyond simply being distractions, these things are quite problematic when it comes to bullying, especially when you consider how impossible it is to adequately enforce laws against camera recording in school if you can't keep the smartphones out. Making it illegal for a minor to be in possession of a smartphone on school property under penalty of some sort of civil infraction style punishment, be it fine, community service, or some other non-criminal matter (at least for first offenses...repeat perhaps can get up to criminal).
As far as driving is concerned, many states have good existing laws regarding driver use of handsets. Enforcement is tough and perhaps technology can help here, but there's not a ton of room to really improve without walking all over privacy concerns. And as bad as kids are on this matter, adults are just as problematic...perhaps less only due to not being quite as integrated with them on a lifestyle basis, but this is debatable when you're talking about some urban professionals...
As far as home and other private life, however, I'd have to agree with all the outrage and say "hands off" to the government here, preserving parental sovereignty in their home (nevermind the 18-21 crowd that, you know, DOESN'T live with their parents). The ONE place I'd say is worth leaving room for discussion on that matter is where parental permissiveness becomes tantamount to neglect and abuse. That sort of thing is a lot more nuanced than I'd care to try to delve into on this forum, however.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Sunday January 12 2020, @07:44AM
That way by the time I'm 80 I can keep using one. Sounds fair. Right?
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday January 12 2020, @10:58PM
I favor a ban on cellphone use by anyone with an IQ under 100.
Washington DC delenda est.