At least we looked up from our own cellphones long enough to do something

There’s loads of evidence linking excessive phone and social media use with mental health issues, and taking phones away is an easy win.

I don't have time to review all the research that has been done on the topic, but fortunately others have done a review of the existing studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9200624/ concludes "Despite the fears held around wireless technologies, we believe that at this stage there is not enough evidence supporting a causal negative relationship between MP/WD use and children and adolescent’s mental health to justify particular public health interventions."
And this isn't a review, but here's one additional study:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/children-mobile-phone-age.html says "Stanford Medicine researchers did not find a connection between the age children acquired their first cell phone and their sleep patterns, depression symptoms or grades."
- So I did a quick search through the scholarly literature and the consensus is overwhelmingly the opposite of your claim. So much so that I’ve decided not to link any studies (there are literally thousands). Science isn’t perfect and statistics alone guarantee many ambiguous results, some of which you seem to have found.
There's also lots of evidence linking bandages with bleeding. Let's try taking away bleeding people's bandages and see if they get better

Theme: tell me you are 16 without telling me you are 16

Mom: "Honey, try reading a book or something for once. You're almost about to graduate from high school and you've literally never read a book to completion in your entire life. Actually, I'm going to say only 1 hour of cell phone time a night until you finish a book of your choosing."
OP: This post
- I'm 30+ and, granted, I haven't given my daughter a cellphone, and I think well of parents who are careful about how their children use technology.
  It's a meme. It's not super clear, but it's memorable.
  One belief I'm trying to express with this meme is that most laws created "to protect the children" are not really about protecting children. I know that's a hot take (/s). For example, my state has recently said "to protect the children, let's require all adults to upload their government ID before posting on any website", and the skeptical part of me thinks that's not really about the kids.

"Doomerism" when you live in DoomLand - Hellhole is justified. Only a total, worthless moron would think otherwise.
- Even though you’re right, the attitude is unhelpful. We should try to fix things; besides I’m not sure if you guys noticed but an entire generation of 10 year olds is glued to their social media. It’s sad AF. Here are some of the results:
  Even more bizarre, and brace yourselves for this stat, the average boomer is LESS likely to say that “feminism is bad“ than the average gen z’er. No joke. Almost certainly a result of social media overconsumption. Every parent I know with the exception of one allows their kids unrestricted access to the internet 24/7. Afterwards they collect mental illnesses like Pokémon. “Oppositional defiance disorder” is the funniest one, look it up.
- There's still beauty in the world and it depresses me that you can't find any for yourself.

How are these related?

Kids are sad and have problems, people think this is because of cellphones, so they want to take away the kid's cellphones, but maybe kids are sad because of other problems.
See: https://lemmy.world/post/12059331
In general, there's been lots of talk and bills related to regulating social media, a year or two ago it was "ban tik tok", now it's regulate social media and take away kid's cellphones. Lot's of talk about it, lots of time on the evening news about it. Meanwhile, nobody does anything about the big problems and the evening news wont mention them.
- Yes kids are sad in part because of their cellphone, online harassment and bullying is worse than it's ever been, it's an issue in classes too and it's one thing that can easily be fixed.
  If the news you check don't cover the other issues then change your news sources.
  Edit: Funny that you ignored the comments in your link

I love everybody missing the point by trying to be super smart and tell you that you can use phones too much. Computers of all sorts folks just cause you browse lemmy on your pc doesn't mean you are better than anybody else.

Primarily I think the issue is social media. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook you know the ones. If you use these platforms a ton you should uh stop you'll feel better. One of the best decisions I made was deleting my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook account something like 5 years back. If you can't just delete your account put a time limit on how long you can use the app. Have a good think about how much of your day you want to be mindless scrolling.

Best thing about Lemmy is there's only 10 minutes of new content a day.

Whataboutism

You really think OP is trying to derail discussion of the effects of kids having phones, and not, say, trying to draw the attention to the fact that the people in charge are doing fuck all to solve much more serious problems that also cause anxiety in kids?
- It's not that deep. This "meme" was made by a kid who is salty that their own shitty decision making got their phone taken away.

Even more bait trash.

Meanwhile in the 18th century during the reading fever: "You mean, take the kid's books away, right?"

And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.
Plato, 370 BC
- Also greek philosophers: Farts are bits of the soul leaving the body.
Welp, banning reading is bad, therefore banning things unrelated to reading is also bad.

Any excuse to further marginalize young people and exclude them from society. Fellow old people never fail to disappoint me.

Stop playing on your phone in class, kid

Does this quality as "dank"?

No :+(