2mo ago

Support for Phone Bans in Schools Is Growing, but Is It Enough to Help Kids?

www.the74million.org

New York City schools have had a long history of phone restriction policies, with an outright ban in the early 2000s that was reversed about 10 years later. Individual schools, like the ones where Corletta and Leston teach, have had the freedom to implement their own restrictions.
That will change again in the new academic year as all schools in New York state will implement a bell-to-bell ban — one of the strictest among dozens of other states that have passed similar legislation — barring students from access to personal devices that can connect to the internet for the entire school day. Schools will be required to provide storage for the devices.
But with such new policies, many being implemented for the first time this school year or in effect for less than two years, no one knows what the perfect model looks like.
Researchers are moving cautiously as they grapple with uncertainty about the effectiveness of in-school phone bans on mental health. Data yields mixed results — and there’s growing a sentiment that more has to be done outside of schools to get kids off their phones and back into the world.
A recent Pew Research survey found that nearly three quarters of Americans support restrictive phone use in schools, up six percentage points since last year — but many are also unsure how far the bans should go. About 44% of respondents supported all day bans, with others split on whether students should have access to their phones between classes or at lunch.

63 comments

Leave the kids alone. They're already oppressed enough (the real reason their mental health is shit, phones are a scapegoat)
- Remember all the shitty stuff happening in classrooms that's been outed by phone cameras over the last 10+ years? Pepperidge Farms remembers...
- Smartphones are the medium through which children are most oppressed through social media apps, poisoning their brains. Instagram and Facebook deliberately targeted young girls to make them feel like shit about their bodies, and engagement based algorithms (particularly YouTube) pumped harmful fascist ideas to young boys.
  
  Then it is the social media companies that should go or fix their act, not phones in and of themselves.
- !YouthLiberation@slrpnk.net
  !Unschooling@slrpnk.net
  
  I want to respond to the unschooling bit here as I have some personal experience.
  First I acknowledge that this is an anecdotal thing and there are likely examples of unschooling going way better. Second, I really do empathize and appreciate people wanting to not have kids grow up in a system that perpetuates toxic aspects of capitalism.
  This being said, I think unschooling, while having a fine motive, can set up children to have extremely difficult lives. We have family friends who are unschooling their children and their knowledge and behavior is concerning to me. The eldest is 13 years old and doesn't know how to read, because she never had any interest in learning. I am fine if a child wants to be a creative. But learning to read and write I feel is too important a skill to leave out of any curriculum. I won't let that become just some tool that perpetuates capitalism.
  Do I enjoy our capitalist society? No, and I want to work towards a better future in that regard. But I also think unschooling just tries to cover ears to the reality we live in. I think it's important to teach children to criticize the systems we are in. But if a child grows up wanting to be a creative, but can't read, write, do simple arithmetic, all sorts of skills that one would need to just survive in a capitalist dominated world... Like what's the point. Traditional school does not have to be nefarious. I grew up in Seattle public schools and was taught to criticize these systems despite being a cog in it at the time.
- Snapchat in particular (but TikTok and Instagram, too) is absolutely toxic for children and should be illegal, imho. This legislation is a step in the right direction, but we'll need to educate parents to move the needle even further if we want to see major mental health gains.
  If you're a parent reading this, please consider getting your child a dumb phone instead of a smartphone! A tablet at home is fine—not having notifications 24/7, and being in a semi-monitored space (with no social media apps installed) will make a big difference.
  
  Sounds like a problem specific to Snapchat. I recommend everyone against corpo crap. It's not even strictly an age thing they jsut abuse us all
In this age of school shooters I don’t know that I’d feel comfortable sending my hypothetical kid to school without a phone, or knowing it wouldn’t be allowed to be on them provided they kept it away and silent.
Definitely confiscate it if it’s out when it shouldn’t be, but when phones can be how people have access to money, bus passes, ID, etc then it seems unreasonable to not expect kids to learn how to be responsible about having it with them. I don’t want to deal with a bunch of 18 year olds that don’t know how to use a phone appropriately in the workplace.
- From the outside looking in, it's funny in a sick and twisted way that legislators are looking to ban phones from schools because they're dangerous but do nothing about guns.
- FYI: My understanding is that smart phones make school shootings more deadly, as they start misinformation, panic, and help shooters find targeted individuals. But school shootings aren't a major concern where I used to teach (not the US), so I never looked into whether this is sorted by research, it was just the explanation we were given as teachers for our lockdown procedures.
  
  The details are quite graphic so I wouldn’t recommend reading about it, but you can also find news stories of kids being on the phone with 911 and being kept calm, relaying information about the shooting to help authorities, etc. I don’t know of an instance where phones were used to track victims, but so many shootings happen it wouldn’t surprise me. I just think the potential positives outweigh the potential harm, at least in the US.
- It's been my experience that allowing school teachers and admins to confiscate phones on sight is generally a bad idea. They tend to get power-trippy.
  The only time it's really appropriate to take a phone away is when there is a reasonably substantial disruption to the class. Not when a student is harmlessly using the device in the hallway, nor when the student is briefly checking the device, but is otherwise engaged normally with the education being provided.
  I've seen some schools take and hold phones until the parent retrieves them; which is theft of personal property.
  Should the student be forced to store the phone away securely if they're using it at an incorrect time/place? Absolutely yes. But they should also be guaranteed to be able to retrieve it after the final bell or when they go to leave campus with no questions asked. Yeah that does mean that maybe the principal/school officer has to walk you to the phone storage area/locker to enforce the rule. That's fine. Schools have the right to punish the breach of their rules, within reason.
It is not to help the children.
- It's explicitly designed to hurt LGBT teens
So glad to hear that more districts are following the evidence on the toxicity of cell phones on youth mental health. As a former secondary teacher, I've been following this very closely, and it's good to see politicians actually doing the right thing in increasing numbers globally, finally. If only we could get more parents on board with banning social media access for their children (until age ~16) in the first place!!
To be clear, there's very little evidence that having dumb phones are a problem. Phone calls are great, and simple SMS/MMS texting is largely used by students effectively for communication and to build connections. And, obviously, are more than sufficient for parents to keep in contact with their children.
The problem is smart phones, especially "social media" apps, but, more generally, with addictive and deceptive dark patterns in most popular apps and, increasingly, websites.
For example, within minutes with a fresh account on TikTok, Instagram, or SnapChat shorts, teenage girls will be shown content promoting self harm/suicide and encouraging disordered eating. Teenage boys will be shown misogynistic "manosphere" and racist content just as quickly. It's incredibly toxic.
I've already written too much for an Internet comment, but if you want to learn more, Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation" is a great, recent popular press book that explains this in detail. The only big criticism I've heard is that he does the Malcolm Gladwell thing where he jumps a bit farther than the evidence supports, but the book is otherwise very sound, well explained, and well researched. And, even if his conclusions aren't the ideal solution (as sorted by evidence), it's still grounded in reality and much better than the status quo, so I think this criticism is overstated.
- I found The Anxious Generation to have useful information presented with unfounded conclusions. No causal link established, written to drive this moral panic.
  Queer and neurodivergent kids cut off from their only source of friendship and hope are going to suffer for that book, and it pains me.
  
  Non-algorithmic websites aren't a problem in the same way and can be accessed from a home computer or tablet. Chat rooms and web forums are generally really wholesome spaces, at least if they're moderated. There are lots of amazing spaces for 2SLGBTQ+ and neurospicy youth to connect outside of for-profit, maximize-engagement, addiction services.
  Part of the reason to ban smart phones is notification anxiety, btw. The constant barrage of notifications scoring youth on their value as a person ("likes") is addictive and incredibly toxic. Removing constant distraction from notifications in their pockets at all times alone is a huge benefit, and there is strong research supporting that. (Like the study that showed even having a switched off phone in the room impacts the ability to focus, with increasing effects of the phone is in their pocket but off, increasing again if it's on but silent).
  I strongly, vehemently reject that limiting smart phone access will hurt 2SLGBTQ+ and neurospicy kiddos from finding connection as there are many better ways of accessing safer online spaces than what phone apps. (My favourite example is the "autism" Minecraft server moderated by dads of autistic kiddos—what an amazing, wholesome project!)
  
  It's the only reason I'm still alive, as someone who was both. And hurting people like me is the goal. Psycho Christian abusers want total isolation and people like OP want to give it to them based off of lies by child abusers blaming everyone else for their misdeeds
- Haidt is a hack, and specific apps sucking obscures the sinister true motives behind this moral panic
  
  Agreed. Kids are going to suffer, like for real suffer, as we take away their lifelines and act like we've solved a problem.
  
  Could you please be more clear? As a concerned father and educator, I strongly agree with Haidt's broad argument and I am very worried for Gen Alpha coming of age with addiction machines on them 24/7. I'd like to hear more about what possible "sinister true motivations" might be aligning with my concern for youth mental health.
- the core issue here is not that the modern internet and social media landscape is bad for kids, it’s that it is bad in general, for everyone! Kids are just a vulnerable population that it is easy to point to and limit access for.
  We need to reject the notion that this is a business, and accept that digital spaces are a public services that shouldn’t be designed around maximizing user engagement and profitability.
  Delaying when we allow large companies to destroy people’s minds with dark patterns doesn’t solve the core issues. There’s no good way to regulate this, the core failure is the nature of these services as for profit companies with no incentive but to design manipulative and addictive systems, and things won’t get better until that is dealt with.
  
  You're also right, of course, but children (with a developing prefrontal cortex) are particularly vulnerable, and that's borne out by magnified mental health effects from social media use. Restricting social media would have big, positive effects.
  The reason for age 16 being proposed is that this gives a couple of years for parents to help support youth with managing access to social media, for example by having supportive conversations about how to manage toxic content and people.
  
  Good point. Children have no rights and so they can be targeted for censorship with ease. The laws they're pushing don't just apply to algorithm driven corpo hellsites or phones. It's a full on attack on our kids and their ability to connect on ways that are bad for those in power.
Kids are being harmed, but so is everyone else.
We need to stop acting as if there is some bandaid fixes or regulations that can adress these issues.
Phones in general need to be refocused on their utility, and social media specifically needs to be rebuilt as a public services, and the notion of it as a for profit enterprise needs to be buried six feet under.
them using AI to complete thier assignments are more problematic.
- Most schoolwork is busywork anyways. I support AI ruining the sorry excuse for an "education" system we have
Bell to Bell bans are fine in my honest opinion.
I do not acknowledge the mandate that all children must have constant access to their phones. Students who have a legitimate reason to carry their phones on their person at all times should be supported by their parents with a request to the school administration. School admins who receive such requests by parents should accept them with no questions asked, and only confiscate the device from the student if they are found to be misusing it or disrupting a class with it; no "If I see it; I snatch it" rules are to be allowed.
If schools have to issue "Phone-allowed Hall Passes" constantly; it disrupts class. If a student can be issued a personal pass that discloses they're allowed to keep their phone on them, per parental request for a legitimate reason, think medical reasons or reasons related to disability and note taking, there's less interruption if a student needs to make a critical phone call to get help.
I do believe schools should provide and encourage device storage. Students of appropriate ages should be allowed to access them in storage during break times. Teaching students the ability to self-disconnect from their mobile devices is important. This can be done efficiently and without cruelty. Responsible students with fewer phone infractions can be permitted to carry their phone more often or during wider hours of the day; while those who do misuse their phones or disrupt classes with them can be forced to keep their phones in storage from bell to bell as the law suggests.

63 comments