If Bill Schluter had his way, cellphones would be banned five days a week. Schluter is head of Tatnall Upper School, a private high school in the U.S. state of Delaware. He wants cellphones out of school.
As increasing numbers of young people seem tied to their phones, researchers have found correlations between cellphone use and cases of depression, anxiety, cyberbullying and decreasing attention span.
A 2019 study by the nonprofit organization Common Sense found that 84% of teenagers in the United States already possess a cellphone.
Psychologist Jean Twenge, in her 2017 book “iGen“, wrote that increased phone use by teenagers directly correlates to a recent increase in adolescent anxiety, depression and inability to focus.
Teens themselves, though, think cellphones have a place in the classroom — if used responsibly and with permission.
“I noticed people use them a lot in math class when they forget their calculator,” said Tatnall student Camille Johnson. “If their math teacher allows them to pull out their phone just for the calculator portion, they use it for that as long as you know they’re not being silly and going on other apps. We had a physics lab the other day where we were needing to use it to record our lab.”
Social media replaces human connections
Research also suggests that a hybrid class model that integrates technology into classwork, such as Teach to One or Google Classroom, leads to successful test scores as it personalizes the learning journey.
Twenge found that phones hinder teenagers’ ability to socially engage with each other. Schulter agreed. “Your ability to talk to each other, hear each other and have productive conversations is lessened with cellphones,” he said.
Twenge also found that the recent rise of technological advancements of cellphones and the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged teenagers to shut themselves in and only engage with their devices, as social media has replaced other forms of entertainment such as magazines and books. This leads to a wired, smartphone-dominant society, causing a significant spike in teenage mental health problems.
A June 2024 Pew Research Center survey shows that 72% of public school teachers report that phones are a major distraction in class and make learning less effective. And a March 2024 report from Thorn, a nonprofit organization that works to fight online sexual abuse of children and teens, emphasized a disturbing increase in the creation and distribution of AI-generated child pornography.
The report said that with its ease of use, almost anyone can generate intimate deepfake images of others, whether it be of someone they know or a stranger. Child predators or children interested in their peers can create these pictures with the click of a button.
These images are commonly used in “sextortion”, a form of extortion in which the creator or owner of the photos threatens to publicly release them if the victim refuses their demands.
Abuse of technology
Schluter recalled a story about a local and reputable school in which a male student used AI to superimpose nude pictures of his female classmates from the shoulder up to distribute online, resulting in chaos among the school board. “Board members of the school have resigned and everybody’s at each other’s throats,” he said.
In recent years, schools have responded to the cell phone issue. In many states across the country, such as California, New York, Maine and Pennsylvania, school districts have been able to limit the usage of cell phones among students, whether that be a phone-free day or an outright ban.
My high school, The Tatnall School, has implemented phone-free Wednesdays into the school week, forbidding students from having a cellphone in sight anytime during the day.
Schluter said that another local high school has banned smartphones five days a week.
“They started right off the school year with having a couple days in the school year, and then within a month, they had gone to a cellphone free policy at the school in its entirety, and it’s working great from all sources,” he said.
Resistance to phone bans
Many students, and parents, aren’t entirely on board with banning phones, even one day a week. “It just so happens that every single Wednesday, I’m like, oh my gosh, I need to do something really quick, and I can’t have my phone,” Johnson said.
She admitted that without a phone people learn to be more present in the moment. “But I don’t believe in completely banning them,” she said.
Other students noted that the cellphone policy has caused some problems. Some use their phones as keys to their cars, for example, and having their phones confiscated makes that difficult. Some students have have seen teachers collecting phones from students even when they were simply outdoors during lunch.
Many parents are concerned that smartphone bans limit communication between them and their children, fearing they cannot contact them during an emergency. With a disturbing number of recent school shootings, this fear is understandable. To dampen parents’ worries, school faculty assure them that communication between parent and child will most likely be unnecessary if school safety precautions are followed.
“If we’re cellphone free, the school would, if we do a good job of maintaining our safety precautions for the school, we would be a safe environment,” Schluter said.
Finding a happy medium
Naturally, parents still worry for their child’s safety and desire to keep constant contact, even if it’s a simple text that tells them that their child is safe.
While many educators and some parents believe that phones only impair learning and have no place in a productive academic environment, others argue that the correct classroom model can allow cellphones to enhance education.
Consider online programs such as Duolingo or Google Classroom. These apps prove that technology can be effectively integrated into lesson plans to teach new skills while indulging the attachment young people have to phones and capturing their attention, a precious resource. If teachers worry about students using their cellphones for non-academic purposes, they can employ programs to restrict access to certain websites or apps.
So what is the best best course of action to solve this problem? While the issues related to cellphones prove problematic, many believe that phones aren’t necessarily the root cause. The spike in cellphone usage may merely be an effect of the issues often associated with them.
“Cellphones may be a symptom and not the cause of the shift, but the two are very interrelated,” Schluter said.
Bans are only as effective as their enforcement and only encourage some teens to find ways around the bans. And despite teachers’ efforts to hold students responsible for their actions, this is also not a guaranteed fix.
Perhaps the best solution is a happy medium. Schools can allow teachers to create their own classroom phone policies and punish as they see fit. Or they can limit cell phone use while establishing specific areas or periods when people can be on their phones.
No matter which solution is most effective, technology is improving, and social media and smartphones are on track to become increasingly prevalent in our lives.
“High school education has changed in huge ways in the past 30 or 40 years, and cellphones have been have been part of that,” Schluter said. “But I’m curious to know, not how we get back to the way things were in the 1990s necessarily, but to an atmosphere where students are more engaged.”
Three questions to consider:
1. Why do many schools trying to ban students’ use of phones?
2. In what ways can phones by used responsibly in a class?
3. In what ways do you feel tied to your phone?
