'Get phones out of schools:' teachers, science support a ban

Photo by Jonas Roosens, ANP via Redux

Ask a junior-high or high-school teacher what they would like to do with cell phones and the overwhelming response is, "Get cell phones out of school," reports Jonathan Haidt for The Atlantic. "The teachers and administrators I spoke with. . . saw clear links between rising phone addiction and declining mental health, to say nothing of declining academic performance. A common theme in my conversations with them was: We all hate the phones. Keeping students off of their devices during class was a constant struggle. Getting students' attention was harder because they seemed permanently distracted and congenitally distractible. Drama, conflict, bullying, and scandal played out continually during the school day on platforms to which the staff had no access. I asked why they couldn't just ban phones during school hours. They said too many parents would be upset if they could not reach their children during the school day."

Does that mean phones get to stay? "A lot has changed since 2019. The case for phone-free schools is much stronger now. As my research assistant, Zach Rausch, and I have documented at my Substack, After Babel, evidence of an international epidemic of mental illness, which started around 2012, has continued to accumulate," Haidt writes. "So, too, has evidence that it was caused in part by social media and the sudden move to smartphones in the early 2010s. Many parents now see the addiction and distraction these devices cause in their children; most of us have heard harrowing stories of self-harming behavior and suicide attempts among our friends' children. Two weeks ago, the United States surgeon general issued an advisory warning that social media can carry 'a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.'"

Cell phones distract the mind and drain mental energy. "Consider this study, aptly titled 'Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.' The students involved in the study came into a lab and took tests that are commonly used to measure memory capacity and intelligence. They were randomly assigned to one of three groups, given the following instructions: (1) Put your phone on your desk, (2) leave it in your pocket or bag, or (3) leave it out in another room," Haidt explains. "None of these conditions involve active phone use––just the potential distraction of knowing your phone is there, with texts and social-media posts waiting. The results were clear: The closer the phone was to students' awareness, the worse they performed on the tests. Even just having a phone in their pocket sapped students' abilities."

Cell phones also zap social connections and leave adolescents feeling lonely. "The psychologist Jean M. Twenge and I have found a global increase in loneliness at school beginning after 2012. Students around the world became less likely to agree with survey items such as 'I feel like I belong at school and more likely to agree with items such as 'I feel lonely at school," Haidt writes. "That's roughly when teens went from mostly using flip phones to mostly using smartphones. It's also when Instagram caught fire with girls and young women globally, following its acquisition by Facebook, introducing selfie culture and its poisonous levels of visual social comparison."

Haidt recommends, "More American schools—arguably all schools—should make themselves into genuinely phone-free zones. How would that look in practice? I think it's helpful to think of phone restrictions on a scale from 1 to 5, as follows: Level 1: Students can take their phones out during class, but only to use them for class purposes.  Level 2: Students can hold onto their phone but are not supposed to take it out of their pocket or backpack at all during class time. Level 3: Phone caddies in classrooms: Students put their phones into a wall pocket or storage unit at the start of each class and then pick them up at the end of that class.