Key elements include depicting the downsides of unfettered access, differentiating among proposals, and avoiding cookie-cutter coverage.
By Sabine Polak, co-founder of the Phone-Free Schools Movement
Social media damaged my teenage daughter’s confidence, ruined her self-image, turned friends into people she couldn’t trust, and led her to contemplate suicide.
Sending her back to a school without a proper cell phone policy after a six-week partial hospitalization was nearly just as bad. Her mental health declined even further, and her grades began to plummet.
I made changes: deleted apps, imposed time restrictions, and eventually took her phone away altogether. But the school environment remained unchanged.
I could navigate the challenging mental impacts of limited access to her phone at home, but I was helpless when she was at school.
As many other parents and I were discovering, it would take school- and district-level changes to improve the overall situation for our children.
My passion and advocacy on the topic of phones in schools would lead me to co-found the Phone-Free Schools Movement, a nonprofit with the focus of removing phones from all K-12 schools.
I have a strong desire for journalism to cover the topic in the most accurate, comprehensive, and impactful way possible. And I’m thrilled that we are finally to the point that the detriments of cell phones in schools are being reported more frequently. Proper media coverage is instrumental in pushing schools to implement stronger policies.
However, the public and the media should not mindlessly accept classroom-only cell phone policies or legislation that pushes for partial phone bans, which we believe don’t really work.
If students have any access to phones during the school day, then the distractions and harms still exist, and not just to their academic success but to their social and emotional well-being as well. It is essential that people understand that when students have access to cell phones during the school day, it affects all children — not just the child with the phone.
Thus far, however, most media coverage I’ve seen has not examined the downsides of partial cell phone bans along with their obvious appeal.
I have a strong desire for journalism to cover the topic in the most accurate, comprehensive, and impactful way possible.
The school cell phone debate at my daughter’s school was not covered by the media, and my experiences with national coverage have been mixed.
My daughter’s initial mental health challenges were well documented in a 2021 CNN article and several national television interviews, but our attempts to move past that experience and focus on her phone-related challenges in school have been dismissed.
There’s lots more coverage lately, but honestly, it’s all pretty much the same. From the same three stock images to the content of the articles, I worry it’s gotten to the point where each article blends into the next. Somehow, we are not portraying the urgency of the matter or how historic it is that we have collectively turned our heads on an entire generation.
There is an appearance that journalists are attempting objectivity, but many articles are still missing important research or alternate arguments.
There’s lots more coverage lately, but honestly, it’s all pretty much the same.
This is certainly true when it comes to parental concerns over all-day phone bans.
All-day phone bans are different from the classroom cell phone restrictions many schools are proposing and implementing, and they require a deeper level of media understanding.
The argument that parents want access to their children during the school day is a perspective that many journalists have understandably shared as it remains one of the biggest obstacles to all-day bans.
Recently, two mainstream national news outlets shared that parents want access to their children in case of an emergency and that having open lines of communication with their kids is something that parents expect for the conveniences it provides.
Unfortunately, the debate over whether cell phones make kids safer in an emergency is seldom explored. Security officials, in fact, will tell you cell phones could make students significantly less safe in the event of a school crisis, such as a lockdown.
School administrators will also find that access to cell phones in between classes and during lunch has, on a day-to-day basis, made their schools less safe as they facilitate cyberbullying, physical fights, easy access to drugs, etc.
The articles I’ve encountered also don’t generally explore any of the negative impacts that occur when parents have 24/7 access to their children, or when schools allow cell phone use in between classes and during lunch.
Learning and practicing independence in a safe and controlled environment like a school community is critical to fostering a child’s self-confidence, resilience, problem-solving ability, and good mental health. Reporters need to dive deeper into why it is not okay to put convenience over the developmental needs of our children.
A medical professional who could explain the developmental needs of children might have been a welcome addition to these articles to counteract such invalid reasoning.
The articles I’ve encountered don’t generally explore any of the negative impacts that occur when schools allow cell phone use in between classes and during lunch.
Another popular national outlet recently ran an article where critics of all-day bans argue that they could disproportionately harm students with adult responsibilities, such as after-school jobs or taking care of ill relatives and siblings.
But again, the viewpoint isn’t examined.
Shouldn’t the school day at least be the one time that is off limits? Maybe we should note that if schools didn’t allow cell phones to be accessible, employers would no longer be able to take advantage of a student’s right to an education. It would certainly make it easier for a student to ask that important information not be communicated during school hours. Schools, as leaders in our communities, could help shift the cultural norms in a way that would be extremely beneficial to our children.
It’s also worth noting that many employers complain that recent graduates struggle to separate from their phones and are often incapable of having face-to-face conversations with customers. An interview with such an employer could have provided an important perspective into the real-life consequences of an issue that is being exacerbated by employers and parents expecting access to students during the school day.
School cell phone restriction articles need to get below the surface and examine claims and assumptions rather than just parroting them.
School cell phone restriction articles need to get below the surface and examine claims and assumptions rather than just parroting them.
For example, one recent article did a great job in bringing the misuse of school-issued laptops into the conversation — something that has had minimal coverage and goes hand- in-hand with phone bans.
The article brings up an important point that school-issued laptops, which students spend a significant portion of the school day using, can also be distracting and have a negative impact on learning. In addition to banning phones, one must also understand that school-issued devices often serve as a backup for inappropriate phone use.
A significant difference is that schools are liable for what happens on the school-issued devices, which isn’t the case for personal devices like cell phones. Personal devices cannot be monitored or filtered by the district.
When the offense happens during school hours and on school grounds, the school is most often not held accountable, even when the offense happens to a child without a cell phone.
GOING DEEPER
The case against cell phones in schools is strong and warrants much more in-depth media coverage than it has received. There are a few significant issues the media seems to be missing entirely.
One is the question of whether many schools are actually facilitating the problem. I’d love to hear a student report on the countless ways schools make it virtually impossible to not have a cell phone.
Some examples include electronic hall passes, requiring assignments be uploaded versus handed in (cell phone camera required), scanning QR codes and after-school program communications that are only accessible via an app.
There are also plenty of schools that are creative when it comes to scaling back on their tech dependencies, and I’d love to read more about alternate solutions.
COMPARATIVE HARMS
No one is arguing that reducing cell phone use in schools is easy or simple. That’s why we created the Phone-Free Schools Administrator Toolkit. By laying out the implementation process and providing the tools needed, it drastically simplifies the process.
But the media focus on challenges shouldn’t ignore approaches that work or eclipse the well-known downsides of in-school cell phone use, including partial bans.
No child should worry about their privacy being violated by another student armed with a video camera and the ability to disseminate to every student in the school and beyond within seconds. No parent should worry that their child will have access to hardcore porn or deadly TikTok challenges when they send their child off to school.
No child’s quality of education should suffer because teachers spend disproportionate amounts of time policing phones instead of educating. No child should face classroom distractions because of another student’s cell phone usage. No child should have to go to school and be deprived of real-life social interactions because they don’t have access to a cell phone in a school that allows phones.
LANGUAGE MATTERS
Journalists need to be cautious using the term “phone-free.”
Phone-free should not be a blanket definition for any school that attempts to eliminate phone use at some point during the school day. We need a best practice definition. For example, Phone-free School Movement defines a Phone-Free School as having a “first bell to last bell” policy that requires all personal electronic devices (cell phones, smartwatches, earbuds, AirPods, fitness trackers, and Bluetooth connected headphones, etc.) are securely locked away and inaccessible for the entire school day.
We also need to be cognizant of the unintentional harm caused by using negative terms like “restrictive” to describe all-day policies. Consider instead that having phones can be restrictive in its own way, as they can tie students to constant parental oversight and the pressures of social media.
SETTING THE BAR
Despite the headline not being representative of the bulk of the content, a recent Cal Matters article sets the bar so far.
The article in general does a good job portraying phones in schools as a genuine crisis, using administrator testimonials and relevant stats and citing other recent newsworthy events that also emphasize the magnitude of the problem.
The reporters focus on the experiences of school administrators and teachers as the key witnesses to the events that are unfolding in our schools, as opposed to the unrealistic concerns of people that are merely second-hand observers.
There is an honesty about the article that I truly appreciated, evident in the general acknowledgement that things had gotten so bad it was worth at least trying rather than sitting back and giving up on an entire generation. These administrators and teachers clearly felt a duty to protect our children. It should be the duty of others as well.
Mistakes were understandably made along the way, but course corrections were offered up, instead of the “this is difficult, so we should all throw our hands up” approach.
This article includes plenty of hard facts and objectivity, but it also includes its fair share of heart, something many articles are lacking.
Sabine Polak is a co-founder of The Phone-Free Schools Movement. You can reach her at info@phonefreeschoolsmovement.org.
Previously from The Grade
Back to school without cell phones
Cell phone crackdown in LA
Cell phone restrictions
What the Times gets wrong about school cell phone bans
You’re wrong about phone bans
School refusal, phone bans, & secrets to in-school reporting
