Enforce cellphone restrictions in schools
Among the issues facing public education, discussions with teachers inevitably settle upon a preeminent problem — phones. Smartphones have given students — and adults — access to the world that previously was unimaginable. They have delivered accumulated human knowledge to our fingertips, retrievable in a matter of seconds. But they also have put time-wasting distractions within reach, and those distractions all too often take precedent over the serious business of learning.
Cellphone use by students should be limited to before and after school, and perhaps during lunch. And steps should be taken to keep phones in pockets or backpacks during class.
While many schools have policies that restrict the use of cellphones and other telecommunications technologies, parsing the definitions of those policies and expecting teachers to police cellphone use is difficult. As Bloomberg Opinion reports: “A recent survey found that 97% of U.S. adolescents used their phones at school, with most of it spent on social media, Youtube and gaming platforms.”
The lure of Tiktok and other social media, or the seemingly powerful need to check text messages, is a compelling distraction. It also is a harmful one. Various studies have detailed that excessive social media use is linked to rising rates of depression and emotional distress among teenagers.
A bipartisan bill introduced in Congress would require districts receiving funds through the federal E-rate program to block access to social media platforms. The E-rate program subsidizes broadband connections for certain districts.
But only one-third of public schools qualify for the E-rate program, limiting the scope of such legislation.
Another bill in the Senate would allocate $5 million a year in federal money to help schools pay for phone-storage equipment. But that funding is unlikely to have much reach in a nation with more than 13,000 public school districts.
Instead, solutions should fall to individual districts.
According to The Associated Press, 90% of U.S. public schools in the early 2010s prohibited cellphone use. By the 2015-16 school year, that had dropped to 65%. And the COVID-19 pandemic further enhanced students’ reliance on their phones.
Prohibiting phone use should be routine rather than unusual.
The primary drawback to such a policy is increasing the enforcement duty of educators. But with support from administrators and parents, schools can remind students that they are in school to learn and that phones can distract from that purpose.