Have schools completely lost their minds about cell phones?
You may have seen a video going around social media this past week of a Tennessee teacher getting pepper-sprayed by a student after taking her phone away. For millennials—or anyone who has not been in a high school since the early 2010s—this is surely a baffling scenario. When I was in high school in the late 2000s, the expectation was that cell phones were not to be seen, and having your cell phone out was reasonable grounds to have it confiscated. Few people questioned this set up.
This situation, however is a direct result of both school policies and a rise in cell phone addiction since the beginning of the pandemic. And for many teachers, this video seemed familiar; many teachers have had an instance where a student blew up at them after trying to get a student to surrender their phone.
As a teacher, my experience has been that schools’ cell phone policies are not clear at all. While many schools still have “no cell phones” policies on the books, in reality, teachers are left to enforce these policies themselves. In all likelihood, trying to confiscate a cell phone leads to power struggles in the classroom; while some students may surrender a phone when you ask them, frequently students won’t. And as a teacher, if your school administration is unwilling to take away a student’s phone, there is little you can do as an individual teacher if a student refuses. Then, if you try to take a student’s phone and you don’t succeed, the students see the policy for what it is: completely impotent. And every time you get into a fight with a student about cell phones, you are losing time for actually teaching. As a result, many teachers have given up their fight against cell phones and have simply resorted to telling students dozens of times per day to “put away your phone.”
There are lots of forces at play. First, is a turn away from overly punitive disciplinary practices that marked the early 2010s—“no excuses” discipline. In New York, this took the form of a complete ban on cell phones in schools for 10 years, which was later lifted in 2015. And these policies hit students of color the hardest, who were more likely to be the subject of disciplinary action. In the wake of the George Floyd protests and many schools’ efforts to become more racially responsive, schools have further gotten rid of punishments. However, schools did not replacement punitive systems. As I have written about in the past, many schools have completely undone any system of order; what they label as ‘restorative” is actually just permissive, create chaos at many schools.
Secondly, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, students have been struggling with mental health, and many students still treat class time how they did during Zoom; students will frequently be on devices during class, watching movies or playing games while trying to “multitask.” And cell phone addiction has increased since remote learning.
Finally is the “serving time” model of education. Students expect to pass their classes merely for having been present. (And, in many schools, being present or turning in assignments is no longer a requirement—being enrolled is qualification enough). Teachers are not able to offer disciplinary consequences for students who use their phones in class, and students face no academic consequences for their poor performance in class due to their cell phone use. Students can sit in class on their phone, and at the end of the semester, they are still expected to pass;. Schools face so much pressure to pass all students in 4 years that students, in fact, may not be prepared to move on; this causes the effects of miseducation to compound over time as students are passed on from grade to grade.
It should be obvious that cell phones, for many students, hurt their education. It is completely reasonable for schools to develop and enforce policies to address cell phone misuse; yet some people still insist that students should be allowed to have their cell phones no matter what, and that a teacher should never take away a student’s phone. This is not about building rapport with students or having engaging lessons; very few teachers are every going to give students the serotonin boost that TikTok is scientifically designed to provide. This doesn’t relieve teachers from creating lessons that are engaging and culturally responsive; but even if you have the best planned lesson in the world, there is little you can do to compete with the allure of a smart phone. You aren’t fighting students about distractions—you are fighting them about addictions.
In most cases, I am opposed to rewards and punishments—we ought to help students develop self-control. But the longer I have taught in the classroom, and especially since returning from remote learning two years ago, the more I have come to see cell phones as an addiction for many teenagers. In a recent survey of my 12th grade classes, I found that that median cell phone use per day was 8 hours.
As compassionate adults, we have an obligation to help students with their addiction and to address cell phone misuse in classrooms.
