I Gave My Kids Cellphones. Now Schools Have to Deal with the Consequences
I live in Massachusetts, and after spending the holidays with family who live in Virginia, I realized the disparate efforts to deal with cellphones and student distraction that are going on across the country. I also realized that parents–and I include myself in this because both my 11 and 13 year old have cell phones–have created this problem. In doing so, we passed the buck onto the schools leaving teachers and administrators to deal with the consequences.
When my now 13 year old was in elementary school, I made a pact with my neighbor to, “Wait until 8th.” Founder Brooke Shannon started fielding requests for a device from her young children. She found that despite parents wanting to hold off on giving their kids a smartphone, peer pressure came into play, which is in part why only 90,000 parents have signed the pledge to wait until 8th grade to give their children a phone. Though it’s a weak defense, I’ll admit that it wasn’t my intention to purchase a phone for my then 11 year old daughter. I set out to buy her an Apple Watch but was bamboozled by the salesperson at T-Mobile who insisted I needed a separate phone line for a new watch.
So, my daughter got a phone and a watch with the caveat that she wasn’t allowed to bring the phone to school until she was in 8th grade. Unfortunately for my daughter who entered 8th grade this fall, her school made a substantial investment in Yondr pouches, so she can bring the phone to school, but it’s locked in a pouch all day. Not surprisingly, she and her peers were unhappy.
I expected that there would be pushback, so I emailed the principal. “I'm sure you will get feedback to the contrary, but I wanted to send a BRAVO! This is excellent leadership, and I'm grateful the school is taking this step to improve teaching and learning.”
He responded with gratitude for the support noting, “your intuition is correct.” Students and parents aren’t happy, which means it’s overwhelmingly teachers leading the charge to create or revise cell phone use policies. The National Education Association reported that the vast majority (90%) of its members want to see a ban on cell phone use during instructional time with 83% supporting a complete ban on devices during the school day.
Some schools have no policy at all while others have tried leaving cell phone use during instruction time to the discretion of the teacher. This lends flexibility to those teachers who encourage the use of technology to augment learning with apps from Duolingo to Kahoot and Quizlet. A quick and easy way to gauge student comprehension is to have them pull out their phones and answer a quick poll.
That same poll, however, could be taken on the school issued device–usually a Chromebook or iPad. According to Learning.com by 2021, “90% of districts were 1:1 for their middle and high school students, and 84% were providing 1:1 for their elementary students, too.” School systems were forced to transition to distance learning during Covid, which made Google Classroom and personal devices ubiquitous.
A Pew Research study asked what it’s like to be a teacher in America, and found 70% of teachers believe cell phones are a “major distraction” for students. Another study in August 2024 found that an overwhelming majority (69%) of parents surveyed believe being a teenager today is harder. Of those who share this sentiment, 41% cite social media as the primary reason with another 26% reporting technology in general is to blame for the challenges of being a teen today.
My own children attend a charter school and have Yondr pouches to lock up their devices during the school day. Earlier this year, The74 reported that Yondr’s revenue has skyrocketed since 2021. Not only have we created a world in which families are investing thousands of dollars in these devices, but schools are now devoting funding to lock the devices down during the school day.
In 2006, the school I taught in dove head first into the 21st Century Schools approach with the advent of laptop carts. Each wing of the school had one cart with 26 laptops that teachers could reserve through the Library Media Specialist. Education was changing, and it was exciting. Nearly two decades later, Pandora’s box is open, and the guardrails have come completely off when it comes to kids and technology, as evidenced by stories like the summer of 2024 scandal in a Pennsylvania school system when Middle school students targeted dozens of teachers by creating fake TikTok accounts, a testament to how easy it is for anyone to be publicly defaced, all from the palm of a person’s hand.
Stories and statistics might support an argument to ban cell phones in school, but an all out ban is a costly option for institutions that are already fiscally challenged. The cost of a Yondr pouch is $25-$30. That’s a substantial investment for any school system, and could make them unfeasible for schools serving thousands of students. According to Common Sense Media, “having the resources to secure every student's phone but also allow access with varied schedules and needs and still address parent concerns around safety is nearly impossible.”
The mother in me loves that my kids don’t have access to their phones all day. Much like the Wait Until 8th pledge, the Yondr pouches do what Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair said is most important. “It gives families the opportunity to create a community within a school, to protect your child not only from the fallout–the neurological, psychological, social fallout of technology–but from social isolation.” The former teacher in me applauds the effort to ban phones in schools even more. My kids were angry in the lead up to the start of the school year, but by all accounts, the kids are ok. Perhaps, they’re even better.