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I vividly remember finding out my fifth-grade son was one of only two children in his new class without a cellphone.
My family and I had recently moved into a highly respected school district, filled with great families and knowledgeable teachers. Yet despite the best of intentions, every child seemed to be texting friends, family members and coaches, engaging in various social media platforms, and more.
A decade before, I’d been a part of a mobile-learning initiative at a private university, and I knew firsthand how powerful mobile phone technology could be in the hands of students, and how disastrous the phone and its adjacent technologies could be for the classroom learning environment, social connection and overall human flourishing.
Phones allow learning environments to become unbounded – children are bombarded with messages, photos, streams and ads – all while a teacher is standing at the whiteboard trying to teach. (iStock)
Since the release of Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, “The Anxious Generation,” school district leaders, teachers, parents and other concerned parties have increasingly called for the banning of cellphones in schools. As a former teacher, professor, dean of students and now the parent of school-age children, I want to not only echo the call to ban cellphones in schools, but I also want to encourage parents and teachers to work together to accomplish this critical, generation-defining mission.
MORNING GLORY: PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE, DARN IT
Developing elementary and middle school children can be considered little more than exposed nervous systems with clothes on. In these critical ages, children are beginning to uncouple from their individual family members, and they’re tentatively reaching out into the rough waters of independence, discovering who they are, who they’re not, and how they’ll engage and be received by the outside world.
In a perfect world (of course, I’m under no illusions that this is reality in the majority of places), elementary and middle school classrooms should be safe, bounded contexts for children to exhale, be seen and known, and feel tethered to centered adults. These classrooms should be places to explore, learn, question and fail, all under the guidance of a caring, knowledgeable adult.
A cellphone wreaks havoc on the minds of young, developing children. Phones allow learning environments to become unbounded – children are bombarded with messages, photos, snaps, streams, videos and advertisements from all over the world, all while a teacher is standing at the whiteboard trying to teach math.
None of our brains, much less a child’s brain, can handle the toggling, the messaging bombardment, and the constant comparison and distraction the mobile devices cause. Throw in the added pressure of sexting and the sharing of inappropriate messages and content that will never go away, and the thought of handing a phone to a child seems like madness.
As my friend and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan recently said, “When you give your phone to a kid, you’re not giving your kid access to the world. You’re giving the world access to your kid.”
Cellphones are not benign toys or ways to keep up with your friends. They’re extraordinary supercomputers designed by for-profit companies to hijack a person’s ability to disconnect, discern and objectively interpret reality. This is hard enough to manage as an adult (hello, anxiety). This is impossible for children and teens to manage in the classroom.
Now, of course, many will dismiss the concerns I’ve mentioned above as fearmongering and scare tactics. Not every child or teen will find themselves on the other end of a nefarious situation. This is true. But beyond the extreme circumstances, I think there’s still plenty of cause for concern about having phones in schools.
In a recent study by Common Sense Media, they found that 50% of teens receive at least 237 notifications on a daily basis – with some receiving over 4,000 notifications. In a separate study, they found that teens spend about 8.5 hours per day on screens. And according to Gallup, the average U.S. teen spends 4.8 hours a day on social media. Even the most pro-cellphone adult can see how this is a dramatic problem.
CELLPHONE BANS IN SOME STATES’ PUBLIC SCHOOLS TAKE EFFECT AS EXPERTS POINT OUT PROS AND CONS
The reality is that we’re intentionally handing our children devices that are proven to cause distraction, impulse control and social disruption. Our children must learn to engage with live adults. They must learn to engage in social communities. They must learn to focus deeply on tasks – especially hard, uncomfortable and seemingly “boring” tasks – to develop the neural circuits they will use later in their lives.
Cellphones are robbing our children of their humanity. Imagine someone walking in 237 times a day and randomly blaring a foghorn right behind your ear. This is simply cruel and unfair.
We’re rolling the dice with the very hearts and minds of our children and teens.
And this technology is only a decade or so old. We have no idea what harm we’re doing to the developing brains of our youth. We’ll find out if we permanently alter the chemistry and neurological development of our children after it’s much too late to do anything about it.
OK, remember the fifth-grade son I mentioned earlier? He’s now in high school, and electronic communication is mandatory for certain activities. In his particular school, cellphones have been banned inside the buildings and during the school days, but he must have ways to receive electronic communications.
CLASSROOM TEACHER’S VIEW: CELLPHONE BAN LIKELY MORE TROUBLE THAN IT’S WORTH
And here’s my confession: I like being able to text him. I like being able to check in on him when I’m out of town, when I think of a funny joke, or when I want to check on how his day is going. But recently, it hit me: I wonder if the phones we’re handing our children are more for us, and not them.
Parents are the ones who have trained their children to text them after each test or to screenshot every seemingly mean interaction with a fellow classmate. Parents have taken the responsibilities for living in the real world completely from their children, overtly communicating a lack of trust, ability and strength.
At the same time, we all stand around the water cooler at the office, complaining about the lack of grit and strength of the younger generations. It’s as though we took our kids to the gym of life, but we took all of the weight off the bar so they wouldn’t be uncomfortable, and now we’re upset that they didn’t develop any strength.
In short, we tied electronic distraction leashes to our kids in the form of cellphones and sent them to school. And yet we act shocked that their collective generational mental health has fallen of a cliff and that challenging subjects that require intense focus (like math and writing) have ever-decreasing national test scores.
Here’s my plea:
Let’s give our kids a chance. Let’s give them a chance to make true, deep, in-person friendships. Let’s let them learn the gruelingly difficult challenge of deeply focusing on hard, challenging problems and coursework. Let’s give our kids the opportunity to both succeed and fail, and to partner with other safe classmates and educators to grow, get stronger, and learn to trust themselves – without our digital hovering. And let’s give our teachers a chance to engage with a fully present student.
Parents: The world changed out from under us. It’s time we take back our homes, our schools and our children’s minds, hearts and bodies.
Let’s work together – parents, teachers, school administrators and communities – to give our kids developmentally and neurologically appropriate learning and social environments.
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Let’s ban cellphones in classrooms and schools during the school day. And if they must be present, may they only be available to be used after school hours.
Our children deserve a shot. It’s up to the adults in their lives to give it to them.
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