The fact that we ever allowed kids to scroll instead of paying attention in class is absurd.

I've never actually seen a classroom where this was the case. (aside from after work was completed, sort of as a reward for finishing their assignments on time) Most teachers will immediately tell students to put the phone away and will confiscate it if they keep trying to use it.

When they're talking about phone bans, they're usually meaning things like taking phones away at the front and returning them at the end of the day, or requiring students to leave them in lockers/locked pouches.

Yeah, I really don't understand what changed or why. By the time I was in high school, pretty much everyone had a cell phone, but they'd get confiscated if they went off in class or we were caught using them during school hours, and that included all break periods. I remember a teacher threatening to take my phone away when I was using my phone to call my dad for a ride home after I had finished my exams for the day. For high school kids, I could see arguments on both sides for whether they should be allowed during breaks, but definitely not during class periods.

Things were a little more flexible in college, but they were still expected to be silent, and some professors would ask you to leave the class if your phone went off or was otherwise causing a distraction.

“It’s fine if it’s in a bag and off or silent” has been cell phone policy in my experience (decades ago).

I haven't been to school in a while, but we had smartphones when I did. And if we took up our phones in class we got called out by the teacher.

Remind me, where in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand does Verizon operate?