| The Anxious Generation Needs Phone-Free Classrooms
 Four out of ten Pennsylvania children and teens report feeling depressed, anxious, or stressed. A popular new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, makes a powerful case that smartphones are a major reason why.
The brain chemistry of young minds (and older ones too) is altered by overexposure to cell phone screens, increasing sadness, loneliness, and stress. It’s so bad that even the U.S. Surgeon General issued a health advisory that “social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
Kids even get it. Instead of kids physically interacting with each other, they’re glued to their screens. “It’s not healthy for you because you need social skills,” says an 11th grader who is glad his school banned cell phones.
In the classroom, kids are reading their texts, not their text books, making them distracted and teachers frustrated. The photo above illuminates the problems. A teacher in the U.S. had her students turn their phones on loud and every time they received a notification, students put a tally mark under the correct category. This was just one class. Every one of these tally marks is an interruption in a student’s education.
Fortunately, 15 states and local school districts are passing policies to eliminate unnecessary cell phone use during class time.
In Pennsylvania, Senator Ryan Aument (R – Lancaster) led the way last year to pass funding for PA schools to purchase lockable phone pouches so students can’t access them while in school. In some Pennsylvania schools, kids started the year with new policies requiring them to put their phones on racks while they’re in the classroom. Other schools still allow students to keep their phones but they have to stay in their pockets or backpacks all day.
This patchwork approach is a good first start but it could be improved by every school board passing clear policies around cell phone use in school. It shouldn’t fall on teachers to be the cell phone police.
Think about cell phone use like cigarette smoking – addictive and harmful. Just 50 years ago, smoking was commonplace across America, even in schools. Kids and teachers were allowed to smoke in designated areas, which seems insane these days. Thanks to aggressive public health campaigns and clear no-smoking regulations, our schools are cigarette-free.
That’s why school boards need to step up and pass policies that are clear for students, teachers, administrators, and parents to understand. Less ambiguity can lead to more consistent enforcement. But, schools still need to guard against disproportionate disciplinary practices that already target Black and brown students. Administrators and school personnel also need training on the research behind phone-free schools prior to implementation of policies.
Let’s face it, cell phones and other mobile devices are a huge part of our lives and they’re not going away. Many adults can’t function without them and children and teens are glued to them – not good for either of us.
School districts and charter school leaders should take the lead and craft policies that support all students’ learning and mental health. Our students need the freedom from phones to focus, talk face-to-face, and just be kids. |
