small thing nobody mentions. my mom works shifts, the schedule changes day to day. who picks me up, whether i take the bus, whether i walk to my titas — that gets sorted in like 4 texts between classes. the office isnt going to relay my familys logistics every day. the phone isnt just brainrot, its how working families run

A fair point, and I remember arranging all of this with a single phone call to the school office, which I concede was slower. When my grandson visits, his phone rests in a basket by the door — house rule, his mother's idea — and he checks it between meals. Perhaps the school day can work like my hallway: the phone exists, the messages wait an hour, and the family still runs. It did for fifty years.