NEWS that Victoria is going to ban mobile phones at its public schools from next year would have been greeted with an approving nod by more than one NSW parent - but it would be fascinating to know how many of them read about the ban while staring fixedly at their own glowing phone.
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Further, how many read about the ban while laying in bed, tired but unwilling to switch off and go to sleep, or while using up a bit of dead time while waiting in the supermarket line?
Maybe it was in the car at the traffic lights or at the dinner table or at work? Perhaps at the playground or the park?
Phones are distracting and prevent students talking to each other, the Victorian education minister James Merlino says. They reduce focus and concentration. And he's right, of course.
But like most vices, it's easier to identify a problem in others than it is to admit you might have one yourself.
IN OTHER NEWS AROUND BATHURST:
Australians have a reputation as early adopters of technology and we have certainly adopted mobile phones - from the old bricks that we used to lug about to the supercomputers that now live in our pockets - with enthusiasm.
But after the uncritical embrace of any new technology comes the more important part: making that technology accommodate our lives, rather than letting our lives accommodate it.
And there are indications that the tide might be shifting.
Signs in some Bathurst shops now warn that customers won't be served if they are talking on their mobile, while viral videos show pedestrians absorbed in their phone running into inanimate objects, falling into holes or drifting distractedly into traffic.
Conducting a loud conversation on a phone in a public place has gone from cutting-edge to run-of-the-mill as mobiles have become part of our lives, but there are signals (such as those signs in some Bathurst shops) that the final step might be to consider such conversations a sign of poor manners or boorishness.
Victoria's mobile ban move might be radical or it might be a first sensible unwinding of phones' unfettered domination of our - and our children's - lives.
Where you stand on that argument probably depends on how long it takes you to reach for your own device when your eyes blink open in the morning - and what time you stop looking at it at night.
