It's not just grumpy older folks worried about young people's reliance on digital and social media. Just ask most parents whether their kids spend too much time on mobile devices and almost all will reply: Way too much.
But it's more than an annoyance. Habitual use of smartphones and social media has been linked to rising rates of depression among young people, anxiety, suicide and cyberbullying, and is also blamed for damaging student's academic performance and widening post-COVID school shutdown achievement gaps.
This has become a global issue, as evidenced by a 14-nation study that found just being around a cellphone in a classroom disrupted learning for kids of all ages, and was especially harmful for students who were already falling behind academically.
To counteract this, some national school systems are prohibiting the use of mobile phones during the school day. Unfortunately, these schools are in other countries, such as Great Britain where the government has said schools will be ordered to prohibit the use of cellphones in school.
Prohibitions against cellphones in the U.S. during school hours, however, are widely ignored, more so since the disastrous pandemic-fueled school closures that are proving so challenging for students' academic progress.
According to federal data, close to 77% of schools in the U.S. reportedly ban cellphone use in schools. But practice looks different than policy.
A study released last month found that 97% of U.S. adolescents reported they use their mobile devices during the school day for a median of 43 minutes. Most of that time is spent on social media, YouTube or video games.
The problem in enacting workable restrictions is complex, since national bans such as those being put in place in Europe aren't possible in this country, where schools are controlled locally. Prohibitions also can be extremely difficult to enforce, as most teachers can attest, but when followed through can mean more gains in terms of students' grades and test scores than far more expensive policies, such as reducing class sizes or putting more computers in schools.
Legislation passed in California before the pandemic states that school governing boards may adopt a policy to limit or prohibit the use of smartphones by students while they are at school – but does not require boards to take any action. The law also includes language barring schools from prohibiting students from possessing or using smartphones in the case of an emergency or in response to a perceived threat or danger.
Billions of dollars have been spent ensuring that smartphones and social media apps capture users' attention while implicitly encouraging students to bring their phones into classrooms, which makes it nearly impossible for individual teachers to prevent teens from using the devices. Teachers, moreover, should not be policing cellphone use by students who are attached to their phones since this can just lead to power struggles that harm the teacher-student relationship creating more problems than it solves.
But that doesn't mean the California Department of Education should shy away from issuing further policy guidance that cellphones should not be accessible to students during the school day – and that schools should temporarily confiscate smartphones if necessary and place them in "phone lockers."
Would such bans bring protests from parents worried they wouldn't be able to reach their children during a crisis? Probably, so schools would need to demonstrate or communicate their emergency contact policies.
Smartphones are essential devices for most of us, but also are proven to undermine academic achievement, as well as pose documented dangers to teen mental health. School policies that restrict cellphone use can provide the means for adolescents and teens to resist the temptation to use their devices constantly
As test scores in most schools have dropped since the shutdown, finding a way to lessen the distractions of mobile devices is a critical piece in the overall efforts to help students recover lost learning ground and move forward.
California can and should take the lead on getting phones out of K-12 classrooms.
—The Editorial Board, Bay Area News Group
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