In the late 70s / 80s we didn't have cell phones, we had pocket electronic games - and that was just obvious: lunch / recess time only stuff, duh. Cell phones have that nasty "safety communication lifeline" hook that single purpose electronic games don't have, but in reality they're just 10,000x more addictive entertainment widgets than those old pocket games ever were.

I think a lot of U.S. schools got lazy about enforcing "phone off and put away" in class - to the point that kids feel like it's a right. Same thing actually has crept all the way up into the armed forces even on deployment. If anybody were to ask me where we need to start drawing the line, I'd say right there: if you're forward deployed at sea, you do NOT get unfettered access to a personal communication device that would have been the wet dream of every spy of the last century. Hell, if you're enlisted at all you should have an armed forces standard issue phone for all your communication needs, complete with a pre-enlistment acknowledgement that all those communications ARE recorded and you WILL be held accountable for EVERYTHING you communicate through them. Personal phones should be locked down and even less accessible than firearms, because they ARE more dangerous to the missions.