6mo ago

Banning cellphones in schools gains popularity in red and blue states

Summary

Cellphone bans in schools are gaining bipartisan momentum, with at least eight states, including California, Florida, and Virginia, enacting restrictions to combat classroom distractions and protect children’s mental health.

Governors from both parties, such as Arkansas' Sarah Huckabee Sanders and California's Gavin Newsom, support these measures, citing benefits of phone-free school days.

While some parents oppose bans, citing emergencies and transportation needs, proponents argue phones disrupt learning and may pose risks during crises.

States differ on implementation, from outright bans to district-level policies or funding for phone storage solutions.

55 comments

Wait for it in .. 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. say it with me .. "but who will think of the children" .. when inevitably there's yet another school shooting and they can't call 911?
It's pretty fucked up that there's a society on this Earth where school shootings are "expected" and that's the reason why you cannot remove mobile phones from the student body.
The question is, how many dead students is it going to take for this phone ban to be reversed?
I really am grateful that I am not forced to make those choices living on the other side of the planet.
- Uh it's been shown countless times that the powers that be don't give a shit about children's safety in school shootings. Only thoughts and prayers.
- I don't know how other schools/districts are handling this issue, but in my kids' high school they have plastic storage bins in every classroom. Some classes have one big bin by the door. Others have multiple smaller bins at each group table. When the kids enter the room, they are expected to put their phone in the bin and leave it there until the end class. The bins aren't locked or put anywhere they can't be reached in an emergency.
  From everything I've heard from both teachers and students, this new policy is working wonders to increase student engagement and interaction. I honestly don't see any downsides. The only people I've seen complaining are helicopter parents who are upset that they can't get ahold of their kid at any moment of the day.
- There is like 1 school shooting per decade in Germany.
  Every single school has these buttons scattered around hallways:
  Couldn't US schools just put those alarms next to fire alarms? It's faster to hit a button anyways + teachers will be automatically notified with an announcement to lock the doors until further notice. No phones required.
  
  Different culture here:
  I see these being abused by pranksters. Also, that requires you to go outside of the classroom in a crisis where the gunman is typically roaming the halls.
  
  Could US schools have these? Yes. Do the politicians and police in charge care enough? Fuck no.
- They have fire alarms in schools, maybe they should have 911 buttons in all rooms too.
  The fact that any of this is needed is sad too.
- Teachers and staff can do that at least as well as any student. It's a non-issue.
  Kids really don't have any need for cell phones in school. Maybe those who do have a real need, can drop them at the office each morning, and pick them up again at the end of the day. Perhaps some other exception I can't think of. But certainly no need for students generally.
  
  You mean like the student who was required to leave their medication, insulin if I recall, at the office because of "needles" and then was denied access and called the fire department who broke down the door to get access so the student didn't die?
  I don't think that students leaving things "at the office" is ever a solution and I don't think you have any idea what the logistics of 200 or 2,000 phones (that was the size of my primary school and high school respectively) at the office looks like.

In a universe where my kids are getting kevlar backpacks, you will never see me agree to this.
I will put a new burner phone in their lunch daily if it comes to it.
- Probably more economical to buy the kid a tub of lube and teach them to keister it at that point :D
  Seriously though, I fully agree. Even here in Europe, there’s always ‘something’ that can happen. And I’d want a direct line to my kid just in case.
- Are you a Bell 412 or a McDonnell Douglas MD500?
  
  Nah, they can do whatever with the phone otherwise. But we literally have shooter drills and lockdowns on the regular because we can't figure out guns like literally every other civilized nation on earth.
  Not sending them into that scenario with nothing but good graces and the hope that the police don't just camp outside the building again.

I'm not sure where I land on this debate.
What I am sure of is that most teachers would still have cell phones, so the idea that kids couldn't make a call to emergency services doesn't seem relevant. I'm sure a call from any teacher or other employee would be just as effective. Claiming kids need phones so that they can call 911 in an emergency isn't relevant.
The fact that we have to discuss whether or not kids need to have phones available during school because of school shootings -- that's the truly insane part. I'm no longer convinced that any body count would produce effective "well regulated" gun control in the US.
- Claiming kids need phones so that they can call 911 in an emergency isn’t relevant.
  No, it's definitely relevant when we keep hearing that the first calls from several of these attacks have been from students.
  
  I mean it's pretty simple common sense there... in a shooting.. shits happening fast. In an emergency the order of process is, get yourself somewhere safe ASAP, Then consider calling.
  Teachers have much harder responsibility... because they need to get their students in as safe of a position as possible, then themselves... Then try to contact help. So teachers aren't likely to be in a position of relative safety to call, until after the whole classroom has already been in such a position.
  On top of that just numbers... obviously there's 30x more students than teachers... so just on a numbers basis in a free for all, when someone is in a position to make the emergency call, it's just statistically more likely to be a student.

Seeing the unaddressed issue of bullying to class interruption if not cheating, dumb phones like the blackberry type should be allowed aka ban smartphones and not cellphones.

Me, going on 48: “they let kids have cellphones in school?”

I was a teacher for a few years but tapped out and got back into the real world. My partner is a teacher. My ex is a tutor and former teacher.
Based on those experiences - cellphones are a menace. They always were, and always will be. Technology in the classroom should rarely be in the hands of students, and if it is in their hands, it should be made such that it cannot access the internet or anything non-educational. That's an absolute.
More importantly, we need parents to enforce these rules as moral bases. We shouldn't be distracting babies with screens when they're yelling and screaming. We shouldn't be letting kids have 'screen time' without clear supervision or with any form of internet content. We need parents who actually do the job, because as we become more reliant on technology it's gone from the TV Babysitter to the TV Parent to the Internet Parent. That's no way to live, to be educated, or to understand the world around you.
These statewide and district-wide bans and solutions are important. But what I think would be more important would be for there to be fines. Take it easy on the kid, but any time they're distracted by their phone or other electronic device, that's a $100 ticket issued to the parents. Misuse of school property?$500 ticket, and a bill for the cost of the device since it potentially has to be scrapped. I bet that if we did that, parents would send far, far fewer phones to school and make sure the kids only use school computers for school.
- But what I think would be more important would be for there to be fines.
  I like this, it seems like a very practical approach that takes on the root issue. Parents need to address their kids' conduct in school, it can't solely be on the teachers and staff.
  Just to play devil's advocate; what if the parents ultimately refuse to pay the fines?
  
  Same as with any fine related to a kid. CFS gets involved, and the parents get jailed.
- And this right here is how you convince people to home-school after the first few fines.
  
  That keeps the real troublemakers out of the classroom, and reduces the student:teacher ratio. I'm honestly struggling to see anything resembling a downside here.

Kids should be allowed to have cell phones so they can learn good habits and self control with them.
- What? That's crazy talk. Schools are clearly only for warehousing kids in the most orderly manner possible. We let life punch them in the face the second they graduate, it's the American way.
- No, it should be illegal for kids to have phones until they're 21. High schoolers should be getting fake IDs to buy phones and then binge on social media when their parents are out of town.

I have several friends who teach at middle- and high-school grade levels, and they all tell me the same thing: There aren't really clear rules in place governing cell phone use during class so kids are just fucking around with them all day, and even where the rules are clear, they have no authority to actually take a cell phone from a kid, even if they're being disruptive to the rest of the students.
On the other hand, an all-out ban (and even "phone storage solutions") just creates a new problem; keeping a potentially life-saving tool out of the hands of students in emergency situations.
I'm almost certainly over-simplifying this, but why not:
Let the kids keep their phones
Set forth strict guidelines for their use while on school property, and
Ensure teachers have the authority to enforce those guidelines.
- 2 & 3 are not a solution, it's just ignoring the problem. You think teachers will ever do any teaching if they spend their whole day playing phone police? Unfortunately we have to counteract decades of festering phone addiction and kids are going to have to go cold turkey at some point. The storage solutions are silly but honestly that's the only way you'll actually get kids to put their phone away, put it in a locked Faraday bag. And the emergency reasoning is bogus. The teacher has a phone, an intercom, and a panic button. Having 30 kids call 911 while simultaneously making a _{tik tok} rednote about it is not emergency response.
  
  You think teachers will ever do any teaching if they spend their whole day playing phone police?
  Assuming they're struggling to get any teaching done while there are no rules in place, this still seems like a step in the right direction to me. But to answer your question, I suppose that depends on what the rules are, and how they're enforced. One infraction could mean your phone is taken away for the rest of the day, or until a parent comes to get it -- For example. The biggest problem I see with this approach would be that it foists a lot of liability onto the teacher -- As in, if there were an emergency situation for the student following the teacher taking their phone away, perhaps the teacher could be held liable in some way. Then again, I think this comes down to the administrative staff having a very clearly defined policy in place.
  And the emergency reasoning is bogus. The teacher has a phone, an intercom, and a panic button.
  And if the teacher is subdued? Or if the emergency takes place on school grounds, but outside of the classroom? Etc.
- As an elder millennial I struggle to see the problem honestly. When cell phones first came out and teenagers started getting them when I was in high school, the policy was you could have the phone in your bag, but if the teacher saw it during class they would take it away and your parents would have to come get it at the end of the day.
  I am not sure when schools started allowing phones to be a free for all, but going back to the original phone rules I had seems like the easiest solution no? Kids still have the phones in case of emergency, but they cannot use them during class. Is the concern about the confrontation of taking the phone from the kids? That's the only argument I can see, but if they resist, send them out! I'm genuinely confused here.
  
  This is what I was advocating for, with the additional caveat of the admin doing their part.
  My friend who teaches at a local high school told me about at least two instances where parents berated her when they came to retrieve the phone, and having no backing from the school administration. It's easy to imagine that, at some point, it's not worth it to enforce rules if you're just going to get screamed at for it.

Easy compromise here… ban smart phones, not cell phones.
- Snake will rise again

How do the chartreuse states feel about it?

Have you guys tried banning usage of phones? Like literally just that? Having a phone im your pocket is one thing, but not being allowed to use it except for X is an option. X= a room, a special time or "just to look up school schedule info"
This works...it doesn't have to work 100%, eveb 80% is enough.
- My mom was a teacher in America. The problem is that students simply don’t listen. Her entire day was spent trying to either police the use of cell phones or overcome language and reading difficulties. Handing out consequences to more than a few students would negatively affect her review, so she had to let a lot of things slide to address the worst offenders if she wanted to keep her job.
  Banning phone use would probably work if we didn’t have such an overcrowded and broken educational system already, but as it stands now, there are only maybe 1-2 students per year who are actually able to get a quality education, and that is entirely due to their own self motivation.

and what are kids supposed to do when their school is attacked by a gunman? a phone is their only survival tool

Why is this a political issue? Banning phones should be the school's decision
- Everything in society is political. A school’s decision is a localized political decision. The AoE is the only difference

Ban guns first. Else let students call or text their parents when a shooter gets to school.

The main beneficiaries of this will be bad or abusive teachers. How many videos have you seen of a teacher going on a racist rant or something? Now the kids will have no proof, and no way to shed light on the issue by posting it to social media.
Cell phones are essential kit these days that everyone carries and relies on. They should be integrated into the classroom. We're supposed to be teaching these kids how to survive in this society, right?
- That's bullshit. If your system allows abusive teachers then the system is messed up. Also you're telling me that beside school shootings, no healthcare they also have to look out after abusive teachers?
  Great country my ass
  
  I mean, they exist yeah. I've seen plenty of videos of a teacher going off the deep end, who were fired after the video went viral. Take away phones and we're back to my childhood where nobody believed the students because they couldn't provide proof.

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