The complicated reality of school cellphone bans
Pop quiz: What’s a policy supported by political rivals in California and Florida? And no looking at your phone. (That’s a hint.)
The answer is banning cellphones in school. Florida is among a handful of states that have restricted mobile devices in the classroom. California has not, though Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, recently pushed the Legislature to take action.
School officials in New York City and Los Angeles also recently moved to ban phones in their districts.
The policies are intended to reduce distraction and mitigate addiction and other mental health concerns attributed to phone use, but the issue is not a simple one. Liz Kolb, a clinical professor of education at the University of Michigan, discussed the multiple sides of the question with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino.
The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Liz Kolb: Cellphone bans can mean a lot of different things in schools. Some schools consider a ban to literally mean the cellphone cannot be on school property. Other schools, a ban is the cellphone can come into the school but has to be in a locker or in a protected area the entire school day. Sometimes the policy is that the cellphone can be used in hallways or at lunch or even at a teacher’s discretion. So, a ban isn’t necessarily a universal blanket statement. It really varies from school to school is what we’re seeing.
Meghan McCarty Carino: Not everyone is on board with these kinds of policies. What sort of arguments are there against phone bans?
Kolb: So, while there’s good arguments for phone bans, there’s also some good arguments against it. One of the biggest ones is around issues of equity and communication. One of the reasons why a lot of parents are getting their children, especially young children, cellphones is because they want to be able to have easy access to communication with them. Maybe it’s for safety reasons. It also might be that the school itself doesn’t have the staff to provide messages in a timely manner, so the parents are able to get immediate messages to their children and they want to be able to keep tabs on them, especially if there are any concerns within the school around violence or something that might be happening that is concerning. So, there is that argument.
The second argument around equity is historically what we have found is that our students who have been historically marginalized in schools, our Black and brown students or lower-income students, they typically do not have access to desktop or laptop computers at home, compared with our more affluent students. And we have found that they do tend to have access to smartphones and smart devices. So, for some families, that is the only digital tool access they have. So students learning how to use it in an academically productive way, in a way that helps with life skills, is an essential skill. By not allowing students to have cellphones in school, it takes away that opportunity to provide that education to the students who most likely will need it. So, there is definitely an equity argument for why cellphones should be considered in schools. And cellphones also do sometimes provide accessibility tools for students who need those as well.
McCarty Carino: Are there educational uses for phones? These are devices that students are naturally engaged with. Can they be leveraged for good in an educational context?
Kolb: Absolutely. There are so many teachers that use cellphones in very creative and just also efficient ways for learning. We see a lot of science teachers using it for simulations and to calculate data and to teach students how to collect data in their everyday lives and to use it to calculate different formulas with it. We see teachers who have taught their students how to edit an essay or a paper with the many different apps that you have on a cellphone. There are many productive ways that cellphones are currently used in schools and used very effectively. The hard part is for the teacher trying to create policies and structures within their classroom, to take the phone out when it’s academically beneficial and then to put it away when it’s not, and to not have them distract in that process. But when you have something in your pocket that you learn how to use to write papers, to gather data, to collect the news of the world, and then you can walk outside and do the same thing, it can be really powerful.
McCarty Carino: This effort to ban smartphones in schools is obviously coming at a time where there is high and increasing concern about mental health among teens. Social media has been called out by many experts, including the United States Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who has called for warnings to be put on social media apps. How do you think this discussion kind of fits into that context?
Kolb: Yeah. I think that’s all fueling the want for a ban by many people. I also know from working in this population for so many years that banning cellphones is not going to ban students from using social media. It’s not going to ban them from gaming. They’re still going to do it outside of school, just like they always have, or maybe they’ll sneak it in school in different ways. So, we want to be careful about assuming that a ban would mean that students are going to use these things less. They’re middle and high schoolers. They are curious. Their brains are developing. They don’t necessarily have the impulse control that adults do, so they’re going to want to engage in these things. And so rather than trying to stop students from doing it, our best route is really to educate and to have really meaningful conversations and safe conversations with them about what’s going on, and also recognize that while yes, social media can be addictive and harmful at times, as the reports have shared, and I agree with that, there are also parts of it that can be good and healthy for a younger population. Many students cite examples of different friendships that have developed when they’ve struggled in person to develop friendships. Or they’ve found groups that they’ve been able to be a part of, especially if they identify in different ways. And so it’s important to not completely take that away from them. We’ve also seen students who have reached out and found therapy online when they refuse to do that type of thing in person, and they found it through social media. So, we want to be cautious about a blanket ban statement, recognizing that there are potentially good things that can happen too.
McCarty Carino: You have studied these issues for a long time. Have you come to any conclusions about the wisdom of these cellphone bans?
Kolb: I would say one of the things that I do know for sure is that there’s no universal policy that’s going to make sense for every school. Each school is in their own demographic. They’re in a different community, the communities have different needs, they have different lifestyles and economics. So, trying to create a kind of statewide law or federal law that is blanket for every school is not really going to be effective, and especially because it’s not going to be easily enforced by the state. Instead, allowing each school district and school building to come up with a policy that makes sense for them and their students and their families, and making sure it’s enforced and clearly communicated, is most important. And there are ways to use cellphones in educational settings, and at the same time create policies and structures so that they’re out of the way and less distracting when not needed.
Last year, when Surgeon General Vivek Murthy first issued an advisory about the relationship between social media and young people’s mental health, we spoke with Mitch Prinstein at the American Psychological Association. He talked about what the research says about how social media affects young people and how families can mitigate those risks.
Prinstein stressed that there are limits to how much individuals can do on their own, which brings us to these more systemwide approaches like cellphone bans in school.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that more than 80% of teachers reported their school had a phone policy, but a third said it was difficult to enforce.
One method that has been gaining popularity, according to reporting by NBC News, is a magnetically sealed fabric pocket made by a company called Yondr.
NBC reports that school districts in 41 states have spent $2.5 million on the pouches, which require the touch of a magnet — presumably in the possession of a teacher — to unlock them. So, kids have to find other activities, like pingpong, to fill their lunch breaks and recess. That is, unless they’re spending the time scheming about how to get their hands on that magnet.
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