Why are US states, school districts banning smartphones in schools?

Because the little shits (affectionate) don't want to put them down when appropriate

I agree with the conclusion of the article:

“School’s the same for 120 years, where kids go nine to three, have long holidays, sit at desks and have to regurgitate what the adults tell them to learn, basically all over the world. We’re blaming kids for falling academic standards, we’re blaming the rise in mental ill health, we’re blaming the rise of cyberbullying. Oh, well, it all must be the fault of the mobile phone,” Marilyn Campbell told Al Jazeera.

“I mean, what a simplistic view of how we are educating our children in a different world and taking away that main tool that we’re all using in society and saying, ‘No, the kids can’t have it now’.”

A balanced approach, involving regulated use and clear guidelines, may be the most effective way to harness the benefits of smartphones while minimising their drawbacks, experts say.

The general recommendation of Campbell and Edwards, who carried out the scoping review in Australia, was to leave it to individual schools to determine smartphone use and to focus on helping children to use smartphones positively.

Anecdotally, yes it does improve attention in class. I have friends who are teachers here in Australia and they are all massively in favour of the bans after a year of them being in place. The problem with the scoping review quoted in the article is that it conflates several different issues and suggests phone bans in schools are supposed to be a silver bullet for all of them. You are never going to solve the mental health and bullying problems with a phone ban that only lasts half of the day, five days a week. Those problems require much broader policy and greater responsibility from parents. Another problem is that research into the effect of smartphones on schooling (which does actually suggest improvements) generally focuses on test or exam results, which are not a reliable indicator of whether students are actually learning or gaining anything from the experience of school.

I'm currently rebuilding my math foundation and part of that process was tracking down high quality educational resources with passionate instructors, rigor, and entertainment factor (because I want stuff to recommend to parents). I did eventually find something that was better than what I got in grade school, but I have to say that the Pythagorean Theorem just isn't going to be as interesting as social media feeds and entertainment products custom tailored to my preferences. No teacher is realistically going to be able to compete with the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry for attention and tech companies are abusing psychology research to make their shit as addictive as possible. It's not the biggest problem with the US educational system, but it is one of many, so I'm down with restricting smartphone access at schools.

I usually let my students keep their devices, but I had one student… I had asked everyone to write 5 sentences about a made up place. The kid was on his phone, showing things to his classmates while assuring me he was doing his work. Everyone finished but him, with nothing. I let every other student share their answers first to buy him time, then when it was his turn, nothing. I took away his phone and he had it done in less than a minute.

Got several kids at regular public schools (not in US) and their policy never allowed phones during school hours from the start. It is pragmatic and doesn't cause any drama. The kids get messages home if needed and can collect phones when they leave. It is a relatively normal society where kids walk and ride to school by themselves and parents aren't obsessed with stalking kids or bubble wrapping them.

Schools have a duty of care and sadly are as much baby sitters for working parents as they are places of learning and phones create more problems than they introduce opportunities.

Just say you hate neurodivergent kids already....

It's disappointing but not surprising to see so many people (on lemmy) willing to violently control children and their access to tech, information, etc.

• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/thousands-young-people-told-us-why-kids-online-safety-act-will-be-harmful-minors
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/schools-and-edtech-need-study-student-privacy-year-review-2022

I am in full agreement that cell phones should not be out of the backpack or pocket unless there is an emergency or it’s lunch time / outside of class.

But for the love of critical thinking, also please ban the teachers from using ChatGPT to create their tests for them. I was appalled at finding out teachers at my kid’s school are doing that. While I support any tool (and funding!) that can make the lives and jobs of teachers easier, using a tool like ChatGPT is as irresponsible as telling kids to just Google it. And teachers/administrators should damn well know better.

In general; I don't think banning them will help. By all means; confiscate phones which do not get put away during class and return them after class. Give teachers and administrators the authority to do this.

Offer appropriate places to securely store and charge phones in each classroom until the teacher releases them. These places remain "locked" or "inaccessible" until class is over.

Do this from a young age and teach the children how to have moderation through this method.

I do not believe children should be deprived of their devices before and after school. If a student is found to be bullying other kids or students online; then charges can be filed in a school-based court and a Judge can consider ordering the bullying kids to have limited or no access to any smart device unsupervised. This puts the burden on the parents to manage any kids who are misusing the tech outside of school. Similarly the troublemakers can be transferred to other schools.

Students who are being bullied online can simply report this to the teachers or admins and get relief from their tormentors. If they can't also learn how to get the adults involved in actually troublesome situations; that's also a problem that needs addressing.

I would encourage students to be open with their parents and teachers about things and definitely also focus on things like social media literacy and how to navigate through tricky situations as well.

Various apps and software tools could be used to manage a student's phone (During school hours) as well; if and only if needed. They could make this mandatory; but it would only be restrictive on phones of students who misuse their phones; and thus are identified as needing 'management'. This would ideally only enforce appropriate usage times and optionally; iff the student is being penalized for bullying or misusing; provide a way to disable various apps and browsers while preventing new ones from being installed without parent or teacher consent.

TL;DR: If the kid follows the rules; their phone isn't going to be locked down. If they don't; they get the lock-down experience while the adults ensure the kid is educated as needed.

Even if that sounds dystopian; it's also a way to integrate phones into the school experience which addresses all the issues...and ensures the adults in charge of the students has ample opportunity to educate the kids about how to use their phones correctly...and intervene with a student's usage if needed while still allowing them to have phones for emergency and necessary use.

Why not banning them in schools, are they needed for studying?

Who is still going into teaching?

The pay is utter shite and you are dealing with other people's children most of whom didn't get much parenting.

Then these "parents" spend all a lot energy harassing teachers about their crotch fruit poor behavior and or performance.

Because people are out of touch, saved you an article

FA/FO

We're on phase 2

I got a smartphone back in 2012. Data plans were expensive, so it was bare minimums. No major web surfing, etc. Modern day social media was largely in its infancy. I'm extremely curious what the environment is like now for kids/youth.

Kids were on their cellphones all the time when I was in school, but it largely was listening to music or texting each other, maybe playing some app games. I personally didn't have any issues and would pay attention (for the most part). But I wonder if I would have been the same given what access kids have today.

Plus so many kids just went through a rare global event that messed up their learning and development. It's really quite a strange time to be living in.

In terms of phones causing anxiety...they might be contributing. Surely they could be depending on what kinds of apps/social media kids are using. But I'm curious if this is causing more anxiety or if we're just more observant of anxiety in kids now. I was an anxious sickly kid all the time without smartphones haha.

I'm not sure why I see people treating banning smartphones in class like child abuse or something. The only explanation I have is that it's a cultural thing. Obviously, if used appropriately, a smartphone is a valuable tool, but this is only if they are used appropriately, which some students will do and some won't (and this varies as well from school to school and class to class). Where I went to school, a significant number of students did not use them appropriately during class, so not allowing them made sense since they distracted from the lesson.

So, why do I have so little confidence that they'll be used properly? Some people are posting anecdotes about their time as teachers in this thread, so I'll post one from the student's perspective. Despite smartphones not being allowed in my classes in high school, people used them anyway. Why? The teachers wouldn't notice, or some might just not say anything. I played the heck out of one mobile game with my friends in both of my history classes, and nothing ever happened. I knew people who'd be listening to music during class too, and completely ignore the lecture itself. Almost everyone with a phone out used it as a distraction from class, not as a tool to help them learn. Despite there being a rule against them, I'd estimate more than half of the people I went to school with used them during class anyway.

So why didn't the teachers enforce it more strictly? My guess is because it wasn't safe. Many of my friends carried knives at school for self defense. There were a lot of violent students, ranging from fights in the hallway to students being part of a gang. To be clear, this wasn't by any means the majority of the student body, but it wasn't an insignificant portion of it either.

The violence escalated dramatically after the 2016 election, where students (who were understandably upset about the result) got up and threatened all the white people in the school. I had graduated by then, but I knew people who had to barricade themselves in a room with a mob of angry knife-wielding students on the other side of the door. Many of the students in the room weren't even old enough to vote. One teacher left the school because of all the threats she'd received.

Also, not sure how common it is to have a "senior prank day" at other schools, but we had one every year. The "pranks" ranged from spray painting threats to teachers on the outside of the gym, to destroying school property. Once they had to put classes on pause while a company came out to replace the locks on all the doors since the "prank" was to destroy the locks so the doors couldn't be opened.

This school was pretty tame too, compared to some of the schools I'd heard stories of. One teacher I talked to at a different school had stories about all the times some student threatened her or pulled a gun out on her or whatever, and it honestly just sounded like hell.

Anyway, I wouldn't say I blame the kids for this behavior, and while I have strong opinions against feed-driven social media, I don't think it was a major contributor to these behaviors (this was before social media was as big as it is now). I think it really comes down to parenting, whether the parents are just bad at raising kids, or they don't have time or resources to properly raise their kids, or their kids have needs they don't know how to (or refuse to) satisfy. Regardless, a teacher can only do so much, so rather than trying to correct behaviors in students at the risk of their own lives, I think a lot of them just put up with it for the sake of the students who do want to learn.

So if the rule is going to be broken anyway, why have a rule against smartphones? It sets the expectation of students regarding smartphone usage, and gives teachers an opportunity to enforce that rule when they feel it's appropriate (and safe) to do so.

Edit: I should also add that I don't think most schools are this violent. This school was exceptionally bad, but it wasn't as uncommon as you might think to have a school this violent.