I'm a K-12 guy so read ~40 articles a week. This is best thing I've read in ages.
Step 3, the "Parent Ambassador," that's a killer app for the phone crisis. Allows school to unleash new out-of-school norms without the heavy-handedness of a school-created policy. If you've got enough Ambassador parents, threads the needle.
Step 5, the phone free experience of sleep-away camp, we need more of that built into a typical day, week, month, year. Yes.
I design new schools sometimes (private, charter), so this approach is a Must Have for my next one. I'd concede that it's harder to flip existing schools.
This is exactly my feeling as well. Setting examples at home of limited phone use and leaded by example will be largely beneficial in supporting phone-free schools. Parents should be the ones leading then charge in reform, advocating for schools to change, and helping design policies. If the schools just go phone-free without parent support, it will never work. Parents will only push back saying the school is being too controlling, they need to get ahold of their kid, their kid can do what they want, etc. It really needs to start at parents.
QLD, Australia has put in place a statewide ban on phones and smartwatches during school hours. Initially this didn't include break times but it now does!
This was a wonderful article. Part of the challenge is to get parents to even agree that there is an issue. Sadly for many, the phone has become a baby sitter, and familial conversation has suffered.
We produced a documentary about social media addiction and AI called Severed Conscience. We have footage of Sean Parker former President of Facebook making very bold and arrogant statements that despite having questions about the effects of continuous release of dopamine hits, they forged ahead and built an addictive user interface. If would be interested in more materials I would be happy to get them to you.
Our New Zealand government banned phones in schools in April. As a consultant to parents of troubled teens I've noticed the culture shift already. A parent told me recently her teen who earlier was inseparable from her phone day and night said to her when it broke recently "What's the point in getting a new one? We're not allowed them in school anyway."
I work for a parochial school system, and was part of an accreditation visit this past spring to one of our boarding high schools, and they had a phone free campus. Our team was curious what parents and students thought of it. There was definitely some frustration, but I did note that even the students who said they wished they could have their phones also admitted without us prompting that they understood the benefits and why the school made the decision they did. And a number of them actually shared that it was a really positive thing for them, and ones who had been to other schools highlighted how much more connected and engaged everyone was compared to their previous school experiences.
This is great. I hope more parents in parochial schools will be addressing this head on! It's near and dear to my heart and the topic of my Substack, Dear Christian Parent
Thank you for your tremendous work in carving a clear and actionable path past the conundrum facing parents of either losing their children to screens or fearing that they will be socially excluded from their friends without social media accounts.
If these changes are to take a firm foothold beyond school hours, parents will need to examine their own use of digital tech in the home and model behaviour that will support their children's healthy and phone-free childhood development.
Get crappy food and vaccines out of the schools. Get high frequency exercise and play into the schools. Children choose their phones because the world is so fucked up. Give children a world they want to live in.
Hello all. I’m a middle school principal in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. After reading Dr. Haidt’s article in The Atlantic last spring, and the book Reconnect by Doug Lemov, our school went to a “Off and Out of Sight” policy for the school day with tremendous success. I’m willing to share all/any of our tools, resources, materials. Email me at akujawski@isd282.org. If our plan can help your school community, more kids win.
Providing steps and actions is really great. And it seems the most important action is realizing the consequences now and wanting to change. Then parents to take the lead in supporting phone-free schools and advocating for this, rather than schools making the ban themselves.
When I complained about the ubiquitous use of phones at my sons’ high school (circa 2016ish), the receptive teacher indicated that many parents are afraid to be out of touch with their children during the school day due to the perceived threat of school shootings and other physical dangers. Many parents will not support a ban on cell phones in school until they are convinced that the electronics pose at least as great a threat as school violence.
She's banned Smartphones. She is also a strict disciplinarian of the old school. No running in corridors, politeness required. The results from this school, in a deprived part of London with a deprived demographic are astounding. Follow her on X and you will see she is in constant assault by the Left. I guess for know how to run a school, when what they have done here, in 40 years plus of dominating education and academia, has degrade education so much it is now damaging children.
A more likely and much more supported cause of the rise in anxiety is a world of ever increasing access to information and stimuli enabled by electrical communication technologies (starting with the telegraph) that cause stress and circadian disruption (i.e., light exposure at night).
Has anyone done research on how many school phone bans last? Schools have been restricting and eliminating phone access for years and it's unclear whether the enforcement or regulations last much longer than a couple years. Answering that question would seem to be very key to the effort proposed here.
I'm a K-12 guy so read ~40 articles a week. This is best thing I've read in ages.
Step 3, the "Parent Ambassador," that's a killer app for the phone crisis. Allows school to unleash new out-of-school norms without the heavy-handedness of a school-created policy. If you've got enough Ambassador parents, threads the needle.
Step 5, the phone free experience of sleep-away camp, we need more of that built into a typical day, week, month, year. Yes.
I design new schools sometimes (private, charter), so this approach is a Must Have for my next one. I'd concede that it's harder to flip existing schools.
Another critical factor, parents need to stop using their phones all the time in front of their kids. The use starts there.
This is exactly my feeling as well. Setting examples at home of limited phone use and leaded by example will be largely beneficial in supporting phone-free schools. Parents should be the ones leading then charge in reform, advocating for schools to change, and helping design policies. If the schools just go phone-free without parent support, it will never work. Parents will only push back saying the school is being too controlling, they need to get ahold of their kid, their kid can do what they want, etc. It really needs to start at parents.
Sometimes it is the only way the parents can reach the kids.
I doubt that the kids learn as much about using smartphones from their parents as they do from their peers.
QLD, Australia has put in place a statewide ban on phones and smartwatches during school hours. Initially this didn't include break times but it now does!
This was a wonderful article. Part of the challenge is to get parents to even agree that there is an issue. Sadly for many, the phone has become a baby sitter, and familial conversation has suffered.
We produced a documentary about social media addiction and AI called Severed Conscience. We have footage of Sean Parker former President of Facebook making very bold and arrogant statements that despite having questions about the effects of continuous release of dopamine hits, they forged ahead and built an addictive user interface. If would be interested in more materials I would be happy to get them to you.
Here is our access point on our Substack https://culturalcourage.substack.com/p/severed-conscience
We have recently published a companion book for our documentary on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0eNfQJHs
Our New Zealand government banned phones in schools in April. As a consultant to parents of troubled teens I've noticed the culture shift already. A parent told me recently her teen who earlier was inseparable from her phone day and night said to her when it broke recently "What's the point in getting a new one? We're not allowed them in school anyway."
I recently wrote an short post about how growing up with a smartphone has made it difficult for me to take a walk without going on my phone. Sharing here as I think it may be of interest to the After Babel audience: https://open.substack.com/pub/mattersofmattering/p/going-for-a-walk-without-a-phone
I work for a parochial school system, and was part of an accreditation visit this past spring to one of our boarding high schools, and they had a phone free campus. Our team was curious what parents and students thought of it. There was definitely some frustration, but I did note that even the students who said they wished they could have their phones also admitted without us prompting that they understood the benefits and why the school made the decision they did. And a number of them actually shared that it was a really positive thing for them, and ones who had been to other schools highlighted how much more connected and engaged everyone was compared to their previous school experiences.
This is great. I hope more parents in parochial schools will be addressing this head on! It's near and dear to my heart and the topic of my Substack, Dear Christian Parent
Thank you for your tremendous work in carving a clear and actionable path past the conundrum facing parents of either losing their children to screens or fearing that they will be socially excluded from their friends without social media accounts.
If these changes are to take a firm foothold beyond school hours, parents will need to examine their own use of digital tech in the home and model behaviour that will support their children's healthy and phone-free childhood development.
Get crappy food and vaccines out of the schools. Get high frequency exercise and play into the schools. Children choose their phones because the world is so fucked up. Give children a world they want to live in.
Everyone has a different definition of crappy with respect to food and vaccines.
Does high frequency exercise require high electromagnetic fields?
Child ownership of phones should be based on child funding thereof.
Hello all. I’m a middle school principal in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. After reading Dr. Haidt’s article in The Atlantic last spring, and the book Reconnect by Doug Lemov, our school went to a “Off and Out of Sight” policy for the school day with tremendous success. I’m willing to share all/any of our tools, resources, materials. Email me at akujawski@isd282.org. If our plan can help your school community, more kids win.
You can hear about our success in this MPR article. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2024/06/11/minnesota-principal-banned-cell-phones-from-school-worked
Good luck all! It’s worth it.
Providing steps and actions is really great. And it seems the most important action is realizing the consequences now and wanting to change. Then parents to take the lead in supporting phone-free schools and advocating for this, rather than schools making the ban themselves.
When I complained about the ubiquitous use of phones at my sons’ high school (circa 2016ish), the receptive teacher indicated that many parents are afraid to be out of touch with their children during the school day due to the perceived threat of school shootings and other physical dangers. Many parents will not support a ban on cell phones in school until they are convinced that the electronics pose at least as great a threat as school violence.
I agree with all you say. What gets me though is that schools cannot properly educate children when they are on their phone all day.
We don’t need the Government telling us how & when our kids can be online
Be the adult …
We don't need the government telling us anything about anything, if the Declaration of Independence means anything.
Checkout this school in London, headed by the magnificent Ms. Katharine Birbalsingh.
https://x.com/Miss_Snuffy
She's banned Smartphones. She is also a strict disciplinarian of the old school. No running in corridors, politeness required. The results from this school, in a deprived part of London with a deprived demographic are astounding. Follow her on X and you will see she is in constant assault by the Left. I guess for know how to run a school, when what they have done here, in 40 years plus of dominating education and academia, has degrade education so much it is now damaging children.
Anxiety was invented by Fraud to cover for the telegraph, and is an electrical illness.
Getting rid of Wi-Fi and going hardwired would lessen anxiety.
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/hysteria
This is at best unsupported hypothesis (see for example https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-020-00602-0 and https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/electromagnetic-fields-and-public-health-mobile-phones ) and at worse pseudoscience.
A more likely and much more supported cause of the rise in anxiety is a world of ever increasing access to information and stimuli enabled by electrical communication technologies (starting with the telegraph) that cause stress and circadian disruption (i.e., light exposure at night).
Has anyone done research on how many school phone bans last? Schools have been restricting and eliminating phone access for years and it's unclear whether the enforcement or regulations last much longer than a couple years. Answering that question would seem to be very key to the effort proposed here.