US parents want their kids to have phones at school | Mint

“It’s like they don’t believe us,” says Eva King, a 14-year-old student at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C. She stands outside the school at recess, joined by two other students who nod their heads and laugh in agreement. Deal’s administration has banned cell phones throughout the school day. Students must keep their devices in Yondr pouches, gray padded cases that can only be opened with a special tool. Adults open the pouches with special magnets when students leave the school.

Not surprisingly, students have hacked the system. (“What do you expect?” Eva says. “We’re middle schoolers.”) The girls recite a list of workarounds. Those magnets have become very popular, and some have gone missing. Students have been seen opening the pouches in the toilet. Other students have faulty cases that no longer lock, but they have kept that information to themselves. The girls say that since phones have become forbidden fruit, students crave them even more. They hope their school will change its stance after the summer break.

The debate over teenagers’ access to phones and their use in schools has heated up recently. Some state legislatures in the US are passing laws to restrict the use of phones in classrooms, but without removing them from schools altogether. A popular book published in March, “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt, has again drawn attention to evidence that social media, mostly accessed via smartphones, may be responsible for a sharp increase in anxiety, depression and self-harm among today’s youth.

Some researchers are not convinced that phones are causing mental illness. Although the US and Britain have reported a rise in problems due to social-media use, not all rich countries have seen a similar correlated increase. “Adolescence is affected by many things,” says researcher Margarita Panayiotou of the University of Manchester. “It would be unrealistic to expect that one thing — social media — is affecting adolescent mental health.”

Most parents want their children to have phones available at school. In February, the National Parents Union, an advocacy group, asked 1,506 public school parents and found that most believe students should be allowed to use phones during free time. Larry McEwen, a parent at Deal and the school’s basketball coach, agrees. He believes students should have phones for emergencies. He and Eva King cited a lockdown at a nearby school last year due to a gun scare. Having a phone came in handy at that time.

These devices are clearly disruptive. Students may receive more than 50 notifications in a school day, according to a study of 203 children by Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group. Teachers complain that students watch YouTube and use other apps in class. Phones can be tools for bullying, and students have been secretly recorded while using the restroom or undressing in the locker room. These days, the infamous schoolyard fight can be organized by phone.

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It’s also clear that mobile phones can undermine studies. Several studies have found that their use reduces concentration in school, and phones don’t just affect the user. “It has a second-hand-smoke effect,” says Sabine Pollack, founder of the Phone-Free Schools Movement, another advocacy group. Even if a child doesn’t have a phone, they are still affected by their use by others. These devices are stressful for teachers, too. They must keep an eye on their use, making sure students don’t use phones secretly under their desks or during long toilet and Netflix breaks.

An all-day ban is one way to get around this, but as Deal’s students can testify, it’s also difficult to enforce. Teachers must make sure every child who arrives has placed the phone in the pouch and secured it. This adds another task to the teacher’s day that doesn’t involve instruction. Alternatives must be found for students who forget their pouches, a predictable problem in any school full of teenagers.

New state laws attempt to enforce phone-free classrooms, as well as keep students and parents connected. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law last year that bans mobile phone use by students in class, and a similar law in Indiana is set to take effect in July. Other states are considering similar bills. These moves are separate from more ubiquitous efforts to create laws aimed at protecting children from social media (according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30 states and Puerto Rico are debating laws designed to protect children on the Internet).

Complete bans on mobile phones are more common in Asian countries other than the US, according to a report by UNESCO, the UN education and culture agency. France has banned phones in school for most pupils since 2018, although enforcement has been difficult. Several countries, including the Netherlands, restrict phone use to only when not in teaching.

Kim Whitman of the Phone-Free Schools Movement argues that the answer is for parents in the US to agree to delay giving their children smartphones and schools should support them. To communicate and keep track of their children, parents can use simple devices such as flip phones, smart watches or tracking devices. Overall, Ms Whitman wants parents who want to communicate instantly with their children to relax. She says, “We all survived and functioned absolutely fine for a very long time without phones and without instant access to our parents.”

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