Phones are distracting students in class. More states are pressing schools to ban them
SAN FRANCISCO– In California, a high school teacher complains that students are watching Netflix on their phones during class. In Maryland, a chemistry teacher says students are using gambling apps to place bets during the school day.
Across the country, educators say students are routinely sending Snapchat messages in class, listening to music and shopping online, among countless other examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning.
The influence phones have on adolescents in America today is well documented, but teachers say parents are often unaware of the extent to which students use them in the classroom. And increasingly, teachers and experts are speaking with one voice on how to deal with this: ban phones during lessons.
“Students used to know that you were not allowed to use your phone during class. Those days are over,” said James Granger, who requires students in his science classes at a Los Angeles-area high school to place their phones in a “cell phone booth” with numbered slots. “The only solution that works is to physically remove the mobile phone from the student.”
Most schools already have rules regulating student phone use, but these are sporadically enforced. A growing number of leaders at the state and federal level have begun to endorse cell phone bans in schools and propose new ways to curb access to the devices.
The latest state intervention came in Utah, where Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, last month urged all school districts and the state Board of Education to remove cellphones from classrooms. He cited studies showing that learning improves, distraction decreases and students are more likely to talk to each other when phones are taken away.
“We just need a space for six to seven hours a day where kids aren’t hooked up to these devices,” Cox told reporters this month. He said his initiative, which is not binding, is part of a legislative effort to protect Utah children from the harms of social media.
Last year, Florida became the first state to restrict cell phones at school. A law that took effect in July requires all public schools in Florida to ban students’ use of cellphones during class and block social media access on district WiFi. Some districts, including Orange County Public Schools, went further and banned phones throughout the school day.
Oklahoma, Vermont and Kansas also recently introduced legislation becoming known as “phone-free schools.”
And two U.S. senators — Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, and Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia — introduced legislation in December that would require a federal study into the effects of cell phone use in schools on students’ mental health and academic performance. Theirs is one of several bipartisan alliances calling for stricter regulations on social media companies and greater online safety for children.
Nationally, 77% of U.S. schools say they ban cell phones in school for non-academic use, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
But that number is misleading. It does not mean that students follow these bans or that all those schools enforce them.
Just ask teachers.
“Mobile phone use has gotten out of hand. By that I mean I have no control over it, even in my own classroom,” said Patrick Truman, who teaches at a high school in Maryland that bans students from using cell phones during class. It’s up to each teacher to enforce the policy, so Truman bought a caddy with 36 slots for storing student phones. Yet every day, students hide their phones on their laps or under books while playing video games and checking social media.
He’s tired of being the phone police and has come to a hesitant conclusion: “At least students on the phone are quiet. It is not a behavioral problem.”
A survey last year from Common Sense Media found that 97% of children use their phones during school hours, and children say cell phone policies at school vary – often from classroom to classroom – and are not always enforced.
For a cell phone ban in school to work, educators and experts say the school board should be the one to enforce the ban and not leave that job to teachers. The Phone-Free Schools Movement, an advocacy group founded last year by concerned mothers, says policies that allow students to keep phones in their backpacks, as many schools do, are ineffective.
“If the book bag is on the floor next to them, it’s buzzing and distracting, and they’re tempted to want to check it,” said Kim Whitman, co-founder of the group, which advises schools to require phones to be turned off. and locked up all day.
Some students say such policies take away their autonomy and cut off their main means of communication with family and friends. There has also been pushback from parents who fear they will be cut off from their children if there is a school emergency. Whitman advises schools to make exceptions for students with special educational and medical needs, and to inform parents of expert advice that phones can be a dangerous distraction for students during an emergency.
Jaden Willoughey, 14, shares the concern of losing contact with his parents when a crisis breaks out. But he also sees the benefits of handing in his phone at school.
At Delta High School in rural Utah, where Jaden is a freshman, students must check their phones at the door as they enter each class. Each of the school’s 30 or so classrooms has a cell phone storage area that looks like a shoe bag hanging over the door, with three dozen pockets for smartphones.
“It helps you focus on your work, and it’s easier to pay attention in class,” says Jaden.
A classmate, Mackenzie Stanworth, 14, said it would be difficult to ignore her phone if it were within reach. It’s a relief, she said, to “take a break from the screen and social life on your phone and actually talk to people in person.”
It took a few years to change the cell phone policy and find a system that worked, said Jared Christensen, the school’s assistant principal.
“It was a struggle at first. But it was so worth it,” he says. “Students are more attentive and involved during class. Teachers can teach without competing with cell phones. And student learning has increased,” he said, citing test scores that are at or above the state average for the first time in years. “I cannot say with certainty that this is due to this policy. But I know it helps.”
The next battle will be against earbuds and smartwatches, he said. Even with the phone in the bag, students can be caught listening to music through Airpods hidden under their hair or in a hoodie. “We have not yet included earplugs in our policy. But we are almost there.”
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AP reporter Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City, Utah, contributed to this report.
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