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.
Sure, but the phones are the tools which are facilitating the harm and they’re not necessary for a child to have in school. I’d even go far enough to say that no minor should have full unfettered access to a smartphone or the internet but this requires a level of involvement from parents.
Kids get bullied in school. Kids feel alone. LGBTQ+ kids, neurodivergent kids, others. Phones connect them to support. Friends, like minded folks, etc. Some get support at home. Some don’t.
Bans will harm a lot of kids. It’s a sad and dangerous moral panic.
Parental involvement would be wonderful, but we should not punish all kids just because some parents aren’t up to the task.
I’m showing my age here - I was alone in school. I am neurodivergent and part of the LGBTQ+ community, both things that were not well understood or accepted when I was in school. The only brief pieces of support and connection I had was online needed to be on a PC as smartphones were simply not a thing.
Are you saying that children today must have instant and immediate access to friends and like minded people online during school hours? The children I know (i.e. children within my family and the children of friends) don’t have smartphones at school and are able to wait until break times or after school to socialise but they’re also not American; is this a uniquely American issue?
We have to acknowledge the times we’re in. Many kids only access to non-face-to-face communication is their phone, no desktop, no laptop (or at least not one that isn’t school-issued and locked down). Many kids don’t have the support they need at home. Many kids don’t have enough friends they can regularly meet face-to-face. Kids have less autonomy these days than the times when we grew up, too.
Consider if your PC was taken away because landline phones existed. Or if your landline phone was taken because you could use the postal service or pass notes in class. Etc.
So, no, please don’t focus on the “instant and immediate” part of your question, and focus on the “access”. In that sense, yes I am saying kids today must have access to friends and like-minded people. Banning phones in schools could take that access away for a significant portion of their waking hours. And for vulnerable kids who don’t have steady home lives, that might be a disproportionate effect.
I do believe that we should adapt to prevent new technology from disrupting education, but I believe blanket bans have too great a potential for harm.
Thank you for expanding more on this, it’s gone a long way to helping me understand better.
I still believe that social media, as it currently exists, is something which is harmful to children for reasons I laid out previously but connection and support are important.
The perfect solution would be to disallow any kind of traditional social media outside of break times whilst bolstering better spaces for support and friendship both online and offline; the first part of that is definitely a symptom of the second but I’m not sure how to best solve that outside of direct community support and advocacy for such spaces.
I agree with this. I do think that traditional social media is often (maybe usually, for some platforms) harmful.
I think local community advocacy is vital, and I also think it’s a “muscle” our society has allowed to wither.
I do think it’s possible to create positive digital spaces as well. I remember the old Google Reader social networking features (few remember), but they created a really positive way to discuss things. And before that, there were a handful of great forums and irc channels I frequented.
I wonder if it’s possible (legally and practically) to make a beehaw equivalent for 13+ kids.
Why are you so obsessed with taking away that access? That’s not a good thing you know
The thread lays out my opinion retty clearly; characterising a discussion as an obsession is being deliberately disingenuous.
We disagree, there are many reasons why they should be allowed, including in order to facilitate learning, and to stop abuse by providing evidence of it happening.
Yeah, good point. There’s lots of phone camera footage that those in power would rather not have made, like cops chokeholding kids in the middle class
Surely learning can be facilitated with devices provided by the school if such devices are necessary? There are dumb phones with cameras that can be used to document any evidence of abuse.
School is prison
Not really what we were discussing and trivialises the harm done by systems of retributive punishment but okay.