This guest blog post was written by The Parents Television and Media Council®, a non-partisan education organization advocating responsible entertainment. Founded in 1995, this national grassroots organization has more than 1.4 million members, and works with television producers, broadcasters, networks and sponsors in an effort to stem the flow of harmful and negative messages targeted to children.
Students across the country are returning to school this week, or will be returning soon. In many states and school districts, those students will be facing a new reality: phone-free schools!
The PTC recently released a new white paper examining what school districts across the country are doing to address phones in schools. You can read the full report, Smartphones in the Classroom: What States are Doing to Confront These Digital Distractions here.
To-date, 28 U.S. states have made efforts to ban or limit cell phone use in schools. Notably, Florida has banned smartphones from schools. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order to create a “cellphone-free education” as a necessary step to improve education and children’s mental health. In June, Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the nation, approved a resolution to develop a policy that bans student use of cellphones and social media platforms during the entire school day. New York Governor Kathy Hochul conducted a listening tour to help inform a policy proposal about how to deal with cellphones in classrooms.
There is no question that these measures are necessary. A recent survey of National Education Association members shows that 90% “support school policy prohibiting cell phone/personal devices during instructional time.”
NEA members cited several concerns, including that smartphones are distracting, social media use impacts the mental health of students, and that smartphones can be weaponized against classmates and teachers. And let’s not forget that social media and technology is addictive and can expose children to predators, sexually explicit and graphically violent content.
Given the significant mental health challenges America’s young people are facing – challenges that even the U.S. Surgeon General has tied to cellphone use – this is unquestionably a positive development, and it is encouraging to see more schools and elected leaders pushing back on cellphone use by children during the school day.
As parents, there’s more that we can be doing to delay our children’s dependence on phones. Nearly one in five teenagers today displays symptoms of smartphone addiction. The longer you can delay putting a smartphone in the hands of a child, the better-off they’ll be in the long run.
- Teach your child how to use paper planners to keep track of school deadlines and assignments.
- Encourage independent playtime (away from screens and devices) and boredom! Unstructured play will help your child expand their imagination and problem-solving skills and boredom can provide fertile ground for creativity!
- Ask coaches, scout leaders and other adults in charge of after-school activities to use tools other than social media and group chats to convey important updates and information – or else make it clear that the messages will be going to you, not your child.
- Support your school in their efforts to curtail phone use during the school day. That means we, as parents, need to refrain from constantly checking-in on our kids while they are at school and we need to stop texting them while they are in class.
- If your school hasn’t implemented a phone-ban, talk to administrators about instituting one. Research shows that phones are not only a distraction for the student who is using it, but also for the students around them.
More states need to address this crucial issue. It is not enough to do piecemeal efforts by one school district here, and another there. Each state must move towards prioritizing student learning and success by eliminating smartphones in classrooms.
