Going phone-free

 

Ralph Harrington, the associate principal for grades 7-12 at Cambridge Central School, shows off one of the pouches in which students’ cell phones are sealed throughout the school day. Joan K. Lentini photo

 

By MAURY THOMPSON
Contributing writer

CAMBRIDGE, N.Y.

Cambridge Central School this year declared itself a “phone-free school,” one in which student access to cell phones is prohibited during the school day.

“We believe that phones have great utility,” the school district said in a news release in July announcing the new policy. “We have also found that learning and social behavior improve dramatically when students are fully engaged with their teachers and classmates.”

The action comes as lawmakers and education officials in both New York and Vermont are discussing the possibility of wider bans on student use of cell phones at school. Many teachers and school administrators say students’ constant use of phones to message their friends and monitor social media sites results in major disruption to classroom instruction, and they say that in some cases teenagers have used their electronic devices as tools to harass and bully other students.

Over the past year or more, public health experts also have raised concerns about the addictive qualities of social media algorithms, particularly for teenagers. In June, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms stating that “social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.”

In Cambridge, junior and senior high school students now must place their phones, earbuds or smart watches into a sealable pouch when they arrive at school. The pouch cannot be opened without a magnetic device. When the bell signaling the end of the last period rings, students take the pouch to an unlocking station to regain access to their electronic devices. Students are permitted to use cell phones during after-school activities.

In the elementary school, phones also must be turned off and stored until the end of the school day.

 

 

Ralph Harrington, Cambridge’s associate principal for grades 7-12, explained that his school’s use of the locked storage pouches does not really represent a new policy. Instead, he said, it’s a means of enforcing the district’s longstanding policy against classroom use of cell phones.
“Our policy is exactly the same as it has been since 2014 — which is no cell phones are to be used during the school day,” Harrington said.

But that policy proved ever more difficult to enforce.
“It’s become nearly impossible,” he said.

 

Making bans effective
About 77 percent of schools nationally already either ban or restrict use of cell phones in classrooms, but many of those do not have adequate enforcement, according to Everyschool.org, a nonpartisan digital awareness research and education organization.
Methods of enforcement can include the use of locking pouches or cell phone racks in classrooms, requiring students to check in cell phones at the office, requiring students to keep cell phones in their lockers, or prohibiting students from bringing cell phones to school at all.
In the first few weeks of the new school year, the use of storage pouches in Cambridge appears to have substantially increased compliance with the district’s prohibition on cell phones in class.
Last year, Harrington said, teachers sent “hundreds” of students to the office for disciplinary action for repeatedly violating cell phone policy. Typically, students had four or five infractions before being sent to the principal’s office.

This year, as of Sept. 20, teachers had sent just two students to the office for disciplinary action. Both had become belligerent when teachers reminded them that cell phones were supposed to be stored in pouches, Harrington said.

Several Cambridge students said in interviews that putting their cell phones out of sight and out of mind has made them less distracted and more likely to interact with other students.
“More kids are paying attention and working together,” junior Nate Lord said.
“I’m talking with my friends a lot more now,” senior Amanda Wescott said.
Wescott added that the new policy has reduced online bullying.

“It was a lot of, like, trash talking,” she said.
Elsewhere around the region, the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake High School District in Saratoga County this year placed cell phone racks in its classrooms. Students there must store their phones in the racks during class but have access to them between classes and during their lunch period.

At least four other school districts in New York’s Capital Region have new policies restricting cell phone use in the classroom, according to area news reports, including the city school district in Schenectady, whose board voted 4-3 on Sept. 9 to require students to place their cell phones in “receptacles” during classes.

 

Special risks for adolescents
Educators say student cell phone use distracts from learning and contributes to bullying, depression, isolation and cell phone addiction.

“Kids get mean,” said Caroline Goss, the secondary principal in Cambridge. “And it’s just easy to hide behind a keyboard or a cell phone.”

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 72 percent of high school teachers, 33 percent of middle school teachers and 6 percent of elementary teachers nationally said cell phone distraction was a challenge in classrooms.

“The tool of convenience that a cell phone began as has become a tool that is contributing to chaos in our schools,” said Mary Banaszak, president-elect of the New York School Counselors Association, speaking Sept. 20 at a New York State United Teachers conference in Albany on cell phones and social networking.

A study last year by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization concluded that it takes a student’s brain 20 minutes to refocus after a 10-second cell phone interaction.

In his book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” published earlier this year, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that students are more susceptible to distraction than adults because the portion of the brain’s frontal cortex that helps resist temptation and maintain focus is not fully developed until age 20. Haidt connects cell phone and social media addiction with sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, loneliness and perfectionism.

The measures being implemented by schools in Cambridge and elsewhere in the region come as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has been conducting a series of roundtable discussions around the state this summer about cell phone use in classrooms.

“My top priority is protecting New Yorkers and right now, our kids need our help,” Hochul said in a recent news release. “They are in a dark place, feeling depressed and anxious. We have to stop them from scrolling their lives away and get them back to experiencing the joy of being kids.”
Hochul said at a western New York roundtable in July that children and teenagers coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic have become more addicted to cell phone use than adults.

“The young people in lunch time are not talking to the person sitting next to them. They’re talking to someone far away,” she said in remarks videotaped at the round table and posted on the governor’s website. “They’re not even making eye contact or connecting. This is not good for their mental health. It is not good for them to emerge as fully functioning adults.”

The governor said last month that she expects to propose legislation in early January to establish a state policy on student cell phone use. She suggested the proposal could be enacted quickly, separate from the state budget, but said she is still evaluating the best approach to address the issue.

“I feel even more committed than I did at the beginning of this process, after all the stories I’ve heard from frustrated teachers, anxious parents and teenagers,” Hochul told “The Legislative Gazette” podcast on WAMC, the Albany public radio station, on Sept. 6.

 

Vermont weighs new limits
In Vermont, the weekly newspaper Seven Days reported recently that at least five school districts around the state have restricted or banned cell phones in the classroom this year.
But some are calling for broader, state-level action to curb cell phone use.

State Sen. Terry Williams, R-Poultney, introduced bipartisan legislation in January to ban the use of cell phones, earbuds and smart watches at public schools, independent schools, career and technical schools, and private pre-kindergarten programs.

In addition, the proposed legislation would have prohibited schools from communicating through social media networks and would have required schools to educate students about the dangers of cell phone and social networking technology.

“Teachers and school administrators are telling me that they need guidelines to assist in controlling the use of cell phones in the classroom,” said state Sen. David Weeks, R-Proctor, a co-sponsor of the legislation. “Vermont legislators can assist in this challenge.”

Weeks said a statewide policy would free teachers from being “put into the position of cell phone policing.”

The legislation’s proponents suggested banning cell phones in classrooms would have a fiscal as well as social benefit by reducing the number of teenagers being treated in hospital emergency rooms after attempting suicide.

The Senate bill’s statement of findings says youth mental-health-related emergency room visits cost Vermont’s health care system $4.2 million in 2021 and that “many of these youth-related emergency room visits could be prevented by providing a youth a safe environment free of electronic devices and digital and online harms.”

But the legislation proved controversial. Those speaking out against it included state Health Commissioner Mark Levine, who called the proposal “heavy-handed and unrealistic,” Vermont Public reported in February. Levine argued it would be more effective to educate students about the positive and negative aspects of cell phone and social media use.

School officials also balked at the provision prohibiting schools from communicating with students and parents via social media.

The Senate ultimately passed an alternative bill that would have required the state Education Department to develop a model cell phone policy for school districts. But the House never took up that proposal.

Rep. Angela Arsenault, a Chittenden County Democrat, told Vermont Public last month that she plans to reintroduce legislation in January to limit cell phone use in schools, and Weeks said he expects revised legislation will be introduced in the Senate.

“We need to look at what schools across Vermont and the nation have implemented for cell phone guidelines,” he said. “From those experiences, we should draft supportive legislation.”

State, national debates
Massachusetts this year has offered state grants totaling $1.3 million to 77 school districts to address classroom cell phone use by providing pouches or lockers in which to store the devices during instruction time.

The New York Times reported in August that at least eight other states have banned cell phone use in classrooms or are directing local districts to do so within the next year. Florida, Indiana, Louisiana and South Carolina already have adopted statewide limits, while Virginia, Ohio and Minnesota will do so within a year, and Pennsylvania is providing grants to local districts.
Some large urban school districts also are acting independently. The Los Angeles city school district recently banned cell phones in classrooms, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams is considering reinstating a previous ban in city schools.

At the national level, the House Education Committee, of which U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, is a member, is considering bipartisan legislation which Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., introduced in July directing the secretary of education to study student cell phone use and establish a demonstration grant program to “create a school environment” without cell phones. The legislation, H.R.8993, had four Republican and three Democratic co-sponsors, none from the region, as of Sept. 26. Stefanik’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this report.

Rep. Marcus Molinaro, R-Catskill, said he supports Westerman’s proposal.
“I’m a parent of four kids,” Molinaro said in a statement. “We know phones are a constant distraction in the classroom. They pull faces into screens and away from learning. The Focus on Learning Act is a good place to start.”

Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, is still reviewing the proposed legislation, his office said.
The legislation is a companion to Senate legislation introduced in 2023 by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Tim Kaine, D-Va. Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance of Ohio is a co-sponsor of the Senate legislation.

Even without the legislation, the federal Department of Education is preparing to issue new guidelines regarding for classroom cell phone use.

The issue needs “careful handling,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told Axios last month.

“It’s important that we communicate impacts on students’ over-reliance on cell phones, but also ways that technology, whether it’s cell phones or other devices, can be used to enhance learning,” he said. “At this point, we don’t feel there is a need for a federal mandate.”

 

Risks vs. benefits?
In New York, the 83-person board of NYSUT, the state’s largest teacher’s union, on Sept. 20 unanimously endorsed a “bell-to-bell” school cell phone ban.

Schools that have barred cell phones during class time “have seen significant improvements in student focus, classroom engagement, children’s relationships and school safety,” NYSUT President Malinda Persons said in a news release.

The teachers union cited a survey in which 95 percent of students aged 13-17 said they use a social media platform, and more than a third said they are on social media sites almost constantly. The union also pointed to a recent study by the Institute for Family Services that concluded teenagers who spend five or more hours a day on social media sites are 2.5 times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, 2.4 times more likely to have a negative view of themselves, and 40 percent more likely to report extensive sadness during the day.

But not all parents are convinced of the logic of cell phone bans. A recent Siena poll found that 40 percent of likely voters in New York oppose banning cell phones in classrooms. The 60 percent who supported the idea were about evenly split between the two major political parties.
Opponents include many parents who say banning cell phones makes it difficult or impossible for them to contact their children during the school day.

In Cambridge, the district cell phone policy states that parents can call the school’s attendance office to relay messages to students, and that students, if necessary, can use telephones at the attendance office to call parents.

Some opponents also argue that students and parents should be able to be in contact in the case of an emergency such as a school shooting.

The Cambridge policy addresses this issue by stating that, “in the event of an emergency, we direct our students to safety first, following our school emergency preparedness protocol. The district will continuously provide updates to all families throughout the emergency.”

Hochul said initially she thought that students needed to have access to cell phones in the case of a school emergency but learned that cell phones can actually be a problem in such situations.
“I listened to law enforcement who said, ‘If there is a crisis on the school grounds, if there is a shooter running loose, the last thing you want happening is your child talking on their cell phone, maybe videoing, sending messages, trying to go viral, and not paying attention to the adult in the room who is trained to get them to safety,” she said at the Sept. 20 NYSUT conference.

Some education experts say that instead of banning cell phones, educators should develop ways to integrate cell phone technology in the educational process.

There can be “overlooked dimensions” to banning cell phones in schools, such as students feeling less safe or less respected — or being stigmatized be other students when they are disciplined for violating policy, Harvard University researcher Dylan Lakes suggested in December 2023 article in NEA Today, the monthly publication of the National Education Association, a teachers union.

Michael Rich, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said allowing cell phones in the classroom can be incorporated into teaching students responsible and productive ways to use communications technology, according to a Sept. 5 article in Scientific American.
Goss, the Cambridge principal, said the local district has taken a dual approach, with both enforcement and rewards. The school will be holding a student luncheon to celebrate going phone-free.

The school has established a gaming club where students, with supervision, can play video games after school, and the administration is exploring the feasibility of joining an e-sports league, in which a team from the school would compete in gaming against teams from other schools.

The district is also planning a day on which students, instead of attending regular classes, can attend workshops on skills that do not require a cell phone — such as tying fly-fishing lures or cooking.