New York will implement one of the strictest bans on school technologies, but experts are split on if it will help mental health challenges.
New York City schools have had a long history of phone restriction policies, with an outright ban in the early 2000s that was reversed about 10 years later. Individual schools, like the ones where Corletta and Leston teach, have had the freedom to implement their own restrictions.
That will change again in the new academic year as all schools in New York state will implement a bell-to-bell ban — one of the strictest among dozens of other states that have passed similar legislation — barring students from access to personal devices that can connect to the internet for the entire school day. Schools will be required to provide storage for the devices.
But with such new policies, many being implemented for the first time this school year or in effect for less than two years, no one knows what the perfect model looks like.
Researchers are moving cautiously as they grapple with uncertainty about the effectiveness of in-school phone bans on mental health. Data yields mixed results — and there’s growing a sentiment that more has to be done outside of schools to get kids off their phones and back into the world.
A recent Pew Research survey found that nearly three quarters of Americans support restrictive phone use in schools, up six percentage points since last year — but many are also unsure how far the bans should go. About 44% of respondents supported all day bans, with others split on whether students should have access to their phones between classes or at lunch.
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In this age of school shooters I don’t know that I’d feel comfortable sending my hypothetical kid to school without a phone, or knowing it wouldn’t be allowed to be on them provided they kept it away and silent.
Definitely confiscate it if it’s out when it shouldn’t be, but when phones can be how people have access to money, bus passes, ID, etc then it seems unreasonable to not expect kids to learn how to be responsible about having it with them. I don’t want to deal with a bunch of 18 year olds that don’t know how to use a phone appropriately in the workplace.
From the outside looking in, it's funny in a sick and twisted way that legislators are looking to ban phones from schools because they're dangerous but do nothing about guns.
Look, school shootings are horrible and should not happen. I support sensible regulations on gun sales, for example.
That said, we are going to need our AR-15s to shoot Fascists.
I could be incredibly wrong with this however it's my understanding that fascists equally to being shot whether it be by a 9mm or an assault rifle. Additionally, there are still mass shootings where far too many innocent people are dying with a notable lack of fascists being shot.
I don't believe the justification of having AR-15s to shoot fascists is the worth the trade-off of dead children.
FYI: My understanding is that smart phones make school shootings more deadly, as they start misinformation, panic, and help shooters find targeted individuals. But school shootings aren't a major concern where I used to teach (not the US), so I never looked into whether this is sorted by research, it was just the explanation we were given as teachers for our lockdown procedures.
The details are quite graphic so I wouldn’t recommend reading about it, but you can also find news stories of kids being on the phone with 911 and being kept calm, relaying information about the shooting to help authorities, etc. I don’t know of an instance where phones were used to track victims, but so many shootings happen it wouldn’t surprise me. I just think the potential positives outweigh the potential harm, at least in the US.
