What were we thinking?

A couple of month ago I attended a parent group at my son’s high school. I had recently read about states who had banned cell phone use during school hours and asked what our school was doing about it. The answer was: not much. Cell phones may be a mixed blessing, there are benefits to be sure. But think about what they do to a teenager’s attention span. And how it can amplify bullying. When my sister was in elementary school, the queen bee sent around a paper note in the classroom. It read: “Sign if you think X is fat and ugly.”  X was one of the people receiving that note as it passed from student to student. Now think about the impact of that type of note in the social media world. Do you “like” this? In an article in the NY Times the author, David Leonhardt, argues that America is slowly waking up to the fact that unrestrained use of cell phones may not be such a great idea. He quotes Russell Shaw, head of a private school in DC, who tells him how back in the 60’s, his parents could pick up free cigarettes in the high school cafeteria. That was considered normal. That scares me. What are we accepting as universal truths today, that later generations will look back on and say: But what the hell were they thinking?