‘They’re just a barrier to learning’
Schools have been dealing with students and smartphones for the better part of a decade – now they’re grappling with the question of whether they’re a necessity in a modern world, or a scourge that needs to be removed. Sarah Catherall reports.
Principals and parents are grappling with the question of smartphones in schools: are they a curse on the classroom or crucial to a childhood in the modern world?
On a sunny Wellington lunchtime, students at Queen Margaret College are clustered on the school lawn, laughing and chatting.
They’re making eye contact and they’re engaging – both things that principal Jayne-Ann Young spoke about when she told parents the night before about the reasons why the private girls’ school banned phones during school hours. Young’s voice boomed in the auditorium when she told parents what sparked the ban: a Tik Tok video, which went viral last year, showing a man committing suicide amid what appeared to be a cutesy video of kittens playing.
Young was also concerned about the anxiety she saw among students, and the rise of socially withdrawn adolescents in Japan – prompting the term hikikomori, where young adolescents deliberately withdraw from society. She then showed a slide: 72 per cent of Kiwi kids younger than 12 access porn online; 85 per cent get their first sex education from watching pornography.
The hundreds of students wandering around her school in leafy Thorndon are i-kids. Like their peers in secondary schools around the country, they were born into a plugged-in world, and deal with an endless stream of posts, likes, comments and pictures, keeping them constantly connected to modern life. Screens are now arguably more normal to this cohort than books; they connect, socialise, and organise their lives via the slim phones hidden away in their lockers. In class, they learn many lessons on digital devices thanks to the national ‘‘Bring Your Own Device’’ (BYOD) policy.
However, there are growing concerns that students are constantly on their phones at schools. The Education Ministry lets schools decide about phone use, and a growing number – particularly private secondary schools – are banning them in school hours.
In her office, Young is joined by deputy principal Marianne Duston, head of the school’s wellbeing policy. Duston arrived last year from Saint Kentigern College in Auckland, where phones are banned.
‘‘Many of the Auckland schools I had worked with have placed restrictions on phones,’’ Duston says.
At QMC she noticed the student behaviour when it came to phones.
‘‘Before, in form times, breaks, you’d see students with their phones out, not engaging or interacting with each other and there was a social dependency on phones. Even in the past couple of weeks I’ve seen a massive change since I’ve walked around. I’ve had parents commenting when they visit that it’s a much calmer environment.’’
Young says phones used to be banned in class but students still got caught using them. From Year 7, most kids have a phone. ‘‘Parents are very unsure about phones and this is as much about supporting them to say ‘no’.’’
Sleep deprivation – as teens scroll all night – is huge, too. The Ministry of Health has guidelines recommending a maximum two hours per day of recreational sedentary screen time for teens.
Says Duston: ‘‘Students don’t need to be on phones every minute of the day. This generation can be so reliant on their phones that we need to be intentional about encouraging interaction and connection.’’
In her I-Minds: How cellphones, computers, gaming and social media are changing our
brains, our behaviour and the evolution of our species, American psychologist Dr Mari Swingle talks about the dark side of i-culture.
For children, adolescents and youth, excessive use of digital media is highly linked to learning disabilities, emotional dysregulation, and conduct and behavioural disorders.
Worried that technology is interfering with healthy social development of youth, Swindle talks about the rise of i-addiction or cyberchondria: an obsessivecompulsive need to be online.
Three years ago, Richard Dykes was principal of Glendowie College, a decile 10 school with more than 1200 students. While there, he won a scholarship to visit 20 schools in Canada, the US and London. Wandering around school yards and classrooms, one thing struck him: not a single student was staring at a phone as they’d all banned them.
Dykes had never seen this before, and never imagined that it would be possible to introduce such restrictions, especially with the BYOD policy here.
Returning to New Zealand, he became acutely aware of the problems he increasingly associated with phone use: about 95 per cent of his students owned a phone and about half were seen with them at lunchtimes and breaks.
‘‘We’ve had phones in schools for about 10 years now, but they started to become more ubiquitous. I had PE staff say to me that kids used to take sports equipment out at lunchtime, but they were no longer doing so. Teachers were struggling to get kids’ attention in class because they’d have earbuds in their ears. We found that this technology was really affecting classroom learning.
‘‘We were seeing a decline in conversation. We heard from counsellors and staff that a growing number of students seemed to be managing their relationships through their cellphones rather than talking to each other. We weren’t casting the blame for all the depression and anxiety on phones, but they were definitely part of it.
‘‘I’d see a person sitting by himself or herself day in and day out in the corridor between classes. A person who was lonely and would go and sit by themselves on their cellphone. Your heart breaks. I’d think: ‘What are we doing to this young person?’.’’
‘‘It was after my trip in 2018 that I really thought: ‘‘How did we let this happen?’’
The college initally banned ear buds and headphones before eventually banning phones.
‘‘It was amazing. Within hours, you could hear the general chattering and noise in the school had lifted about 20 per cent. I walked around the corner and a bunch of kids were playing cards and young guys were playing football on the field again. We also noticed the kids were hanging out in form time rather than being on their phones. It’s definitely lifted the tone of the school.’’ Parents were delighted, says Dykes, apart from a handful who were worried about how they would communicate with their kids.
Now the principal of Nelson College, he says: ‘‘I do think allowing phones is the default setting for most schools, and it’s also harder for some schools when kids don’t have access to other forms of technology.’’
At Porirua College, principal Ragne Maxwell disagrees that phones are distracting. Students at the decile one college socialise without phones and are active on the sports field at lunchtime.
‘‘A blanket ban is not the way to go. Phones are more of an issue at high-decile schools, especially girls’ schools I think,’’ she says.
At primary and intermediate schools, phones are generally banned, according to NZEI president Liam Rutherford. ‘‘Phones tend to be more of an issue in senior primary and intermediate – it’s very rare that younger children will have phones at school.’’
Secondary schools are more likely to allow phones – a policy which PPTA president Melanie Webber supports.
A dean and teacher at Western Springs High School until last year, she said phones were allowed in breaks, but not in classrooms. ‘‘We struggle with these things as adults and I don’t believe that banning things that are always going to be in the world is the way to go. Students are always going to be distracted in class. The problem is the behaviour, not the phone.’’
A ban is just another rule for teachers to enforce, she says.
However, one parent of a teen who was in Year 11 at Wellington College last year talks about her frustration when her son was always on his phone in class. Teachers commented about it in his school reports, she said, but never took his phone away. The mother, who did not wish to be named, constantly confiscated her son’s phone.
‘‘One day I asked the school principal and suggested that parents sign a waiver saying teachers could confiscate phones, but he said they couldn’t do that as some needed them in class.’’
The student is now at Mount Aspiring College in Wanaka, where his mother says: ‘‘There is zero tolerance for phones, which is such a relief. I know I’m not the only parent who is over it.’’
Another mother recalls getting in touch with teachers at Wellington East Girls’ College as her daughters were always on their phones in class.
‘‘I complained about it, but was told that the school couldn’t legally take the phones away. I told her I could get hold of them anytime during school hours and they’d respond, and considering their grades weren’t up to it they should be reviewing allowing phones at school. I never heard back,’’ she says.
Dr Kerry Gibson, an Auckland university clinical psychologist, supports bans if principals and teachers feel phones interfere with learning. ‘‘I understand that when you’re busy teaching students it could be distracting, and they should not be a free-for-all.’’
However, Gibson is concerned about the growing generational divide and the idea that parents and teachers know better. ‘‘Young people use technology to keep in touch with their friends. There are lots of positive ways that phones can be used in educational environments.’’
Gibson’s Youth Mental Health in the Digital Age, will be published this year. In it, she interviewed 400 youth aged 13 to 25, and heard they often feel misunderstood about screens. ‘‘Adults tend to use digital technology to share information, whereas young people are using it all the time to talk to each other. They’ll say things like: look at this new photo, or this video, it’s a tool for the way they interact. We need to shift away from thinking of phones as demons.’’
Yes, we should be cautious about algorithms and sites pushing viewpoints; and about privacy, sexting, and naive youth being manipulated on social media, but Gibson argues young people are generally cautious. ‘‘They’re often more concerned about their privacy than my contemporaries.’’
At Nelson College, Dykes has had calls from parents to restrict phones but argues every school is different.
‘‘The counter-argument is that we need to teach students how to manage phones, but I think we also need to teach them to survive without a phone. We don’t give kids a car and say, ‘Here you go, drive this now’, without making sure they have learned how to drive and got a licence.’’
‘‘I don’t believe that banning things that are always going to be in the world is the way to go. Students are always going to be distracted in class. The problem is the behaviour, not the phone.’’ Melanie Webber