scrolling horror show

[etben]

A friend asked me if I had Thoughts on cell phone bans in school. Unsurprisingly, I absolutely do, so I dusted off Dreamwidth to do an Opinion Yell.

My biggest hesitation on banning cell phones in school has to do with the notion that cell phones specifically are the problem. There's a lot of data suggesting that kids are more depressed and anxious these days than ever before; I have two major questions about that data:

1. How sure are we that this represents an actual rise in rates of depression and anxiety, and not just an increase in the % of kids who are willing to admit it? The conversation around mental health in schools has shifted dramatically even just since I started teaching, and I wonder how much of the increase in reported depression rates is an increase in reporting rather than an increase in actual depression.


2. How sure are we that cell phones, specifically, are to blame? Like...*gestures vaguely at the entire world* I think there are plenty of perfectly cromulent reasons to be depressed and anxious even without consulting the Torment Nexus we keep in our pockets. Correlation is not causation, my dudes.

To be clear, I don't know that cell phones aren't the problem! It's entirely possible that they are! But I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss those two considerations out of hand.

But, okay: if we leave all of that aside and assume that banning cell phones is in fact unambiguously a good thing for student mental health, I have the following thoughts:

• As a teacher, power struggles over handing in cell phones are the LAST thing I want to do with my already limited class time. It’s tedious and irritating and a fucking bummer.

 Ultimately, having a school-wide ban may (may!) actually help with that; it’s easier for teachers (especially early-career teachers) if it’s a party line and not something that they’re trying to enforce alone.



• Whatever ban you put in place, you have to understand that kids WILL find a way around it. If they have to turn in their phones? They’ll turn in burners, or old phones, or empty phone cases. If you make them put phones in pouches or lockboxes? I give it three days before you have a thriving black market in whatever it takes to unlock the things.
  
  

...which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it! Kids vape in the bathrooms even though it’s against the rules; that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother making the rule. I'm just saying that the actual implementation is going to be a lot messier than I think people realize, particularly people who aren't in a school context. Teenagers are smart, y'all, and spite is a powerful motivator.

• There are in fact a handful of legitimate uses for cell phones during class time! Our science classes use them a ton, actually: as timers, as calculators, to film experiments, to photograph results, to share data quickly. Now, obviously a lot of those functionalities can be duplicated with either a laptop or another piece of technology…but then you need to be sure that everybody can access that technology. Our HS photo classes have kids use their phones as cameras, because we don’t have 30 actual cameras for kids to use.



• I’ve seen a lot of pushback from parents on the grounds that they need to be able to contact their children at a moment’s notice. Some of that comes down to convenience: you want to be able to text your kid and ask them to pick up milk on the way home, because it’s easier than calling the office and asking them to pass on a message. And, I mean, I get it! But also, I went to HS when cell phones were still not really a big thing, and I don’t think anybody died because their parents couldn’t text them during third period.



• The other argument I see from parents is that they need to be able to contact their kids in the case of an emergency; school shootings are the example that comes up the most. On an emotional level, I can only imagine how terrifying it would be to know that your child was hunkering down for safety in a classroom and not be able to contact them. But on a practical level, there’s really not a damn thing that you will be able to do over text, and there’s actually a chance that you’ll make things worse by distracting them.


  
  And at the same time…I don’t know. If it doesn’t help in any material way, but it makes people feel better, is that enough?

  
   
• The concept of ‘dignity of risk’ is something I come back to a lot - basically, the idea that being an independent human means being allowed to make your own choices, even if some of them are risky. With teenagers, it’s complicated, because of course they mostly aren’t legal adults, and we do have a duty of care towards them…but in loco parentis doesn’t mean ‘protected from ever making a mistake’!  To my mind, it’s much better for a kid to make a smaller mistake in HS and learn from that experience than make a bigger mistake later, with fewer supports and harsher consequences. You dicked around on TikTok instead of listening during class, and now you’re struggling on the test? Well…yeah! That happens!


  
  AND AT THE SAME TIME: that only works if faculty and staff are committed to creating a space where kids can recover from mistakes. It can’t just be fuck around and find out; it has to be you fucked around, let’s talk about what you’ve found out, let’s make a plan for how you’re going to get back to where you want to be.

  
   
• I think it’s easy for people to fixate on the cell phones themselves as being the problem, when the real problem is the behaviors that cell phones enable (distraction, bullying, cheating). For example, I’ve had several colleagues raise the question of bathroom breaks: specifically, what if a kid doesn’t hand in their phone—says it’s broken or they’re grounded or they forgot it—and then goes to the bathroom and uses it there?


  
  Well, there are two real possibilities: Either the kid is taking a bathroom break that’s noticeably longer than necessary, in which case you handle that in whatever way you would handle it normally…or else the kid just goes to the bathroom and then comes back, with no real delays, in which case you don’t actually have a problem that needs fixing! Which is great news! If kids are getting around the ban, but they’re doing it in ways that are functionally indistinguishable from them following the ban, that’s not actually a bad thing.

  
   
• I also think that fixating on cell phones can be a way for teachers to avoid looking at or thinking about their own practice. If a kid is taking 20 minute bathroom breaks so that they can escape from my class and check Instagram, I think there’s real value in taking a good hard look at my classroom and trying to figure out why they’re so desperate to escape in the first place.


  
  And it might not be anything to do with me! Kids are complicated people with rich internal lives; maybe the kid needs to escape social drama, or they’re stressed about family stuff, or they’re freaking out about another class entirely! …but I won’t know unless I’m willing to actually be honest with myself about what kids are experiencing in my classroom. Which is hard, and scary, and also the only way I can do better.

I probably have further thoughts—I usually do—but those are the ones that are topmost in my mind right now.