It’s a tired debate. Should students have access to their phones while in school? Although most agree that phones rarely enhance and support learning, barriers continue to foil outright phone bans. Here’s only a few that I myself have observed or encountered.
- Parents want quick and easy access to their children in the event of a crisis or disaster.
- Parents want access to their children for scheduling and transportation changes.
- Students want connection to their friends and family.
- Students want a distraction when they feel inadequate, overwhelmed, bored, or awkward.
- Teachers are ill-equipped to thwart increasingly defiant and surreptitious phone use.
- Teachers are choosing to pick their battles, and bigger battles exist.
- Parents and students want the expensive devices in their possession only, and teachers don’t want to be responsible for lost or damaged phones.
The issue is complicated, and a ban in and of itself does not solve the problem. I think a change in students’ phone use will take a cultural shift. As Jonathan Haidt indicates in his wildly popular book The Anxious Generation, a healthy approach to phone use begins at home with families setting boundaries and regulating their own phone, tablet, and computer use. Both home and school need to set boundaries. Both home and school need to teach and expect phone etiquette such as not using a phone at the dinner table, during family activities, or while someone is talking. Both home and school need to reduce their time spent on these devices – and I do mean that Chromebooks and laptops should be relied on less in many classrooms.
Teachers cannot implement a ban all by themselves. If that were the case, my classroom would experience constant interruptions and tension. Imagine you must give a speech or lead a discussion, and every time someone looks at their phone, you have to stop the speech or the discussion to ask them to put their phone away. What if your pastor had to stop the sermon every time someone took out their phone? What if your boss had to stop a meeting every time someone took out their phone? Not only is learning and progress disrupted for a whole bunch of people who are not on their phones, but tensions and anxiety develop that hinder the joy and excitement of being at that church or a part of that company.
I know that students learn more when phones aren’t available. I also know that teachers alone cannot change a culture, so this post is a plea for help. We need administrators, counselors, parents, grandparents, employers, coaches, directors – basically everyone – to model and teach what life looks like when we talk face-to-face, enjoy activities together, embrace boredom, and observe our surroundings. Phones are not bad; their overuse is.
