New York State Governor Kathy Hachul is considering a statewide ban on smart devices in schools, but many parents, students and teachers have a more nuanced view.
A student uses his cell phone after unlocking a bag that protects it from use during the school day at Bayside Academy in California.
(Leo Suzuki/Getty)
When I entered seventh grade, my high school banned all cell phones. It was 2019, just before the Covid pandemic, and the school administration was tired of dealing with TikTokers in front of teenagers. It didn’t matter if we brought flip phones or the latest iPhone, they were all locked away in our homeroom teacher’s closet at the start of the school day.
We were disappointed: last year our phones were often part of the lesson plan. Our teachers would tell us to take out our phones to look something up or fill out a Google form. We used it as a small computer – for quick tasks when school laptops were not available.
across the country, states and school districts enact laws and policies to limit the use of smartphones by students. Governor Kathy Hochul proposed a nationwide ban on smart devices in schools, and Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks also pushed for a ban over the summer. Banks told FOX 5 New York days before his resignation on Oct. 7 that “now is not the time” for the ban, saying he had faced pushback from parents worried about contacting their children during the emergency.
In 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio overturned the city’s ban on cellphones in public schools, calling it “out of touch with modern parenting.” In practice, the ban has led to “uneven enforcement” and penalized students “mostly in schools with metal detectors in low-income communities,” the report said. press release at that time. “Parents should be able to call or text their children,” de Blasio said.
Sure, past generations of teenagers survived without devices and parents never worried, but they also didn’t grow up in a world where frequent school shootings were a reality. Now in my fourth and senior year at Stuyvesant High School, where we’re still allowed to have phones, I’ve had a few bomb scares—all hoaxes, but disturbing nonetheless—and the evacuation made me home late. I was able to text my parents which kept them from worrying. Governor Hochul arguing that “talking on a cell phone” during an emergency can distract students and put them “at risk.” But if we can’t guarantee safety in our classrooms, what wisdom is there to take away perhaps the only line of communication we have?
At the school, which has about 3,400 students, many do not have time to come to school early and leave later, as they would have to do if the phones were collected. Yondr bags, which can be locked and unlocked by school staff in designated areas, are expensive and put additional strain on an already tight school budget. These magnetic cases cost between $25 and $30 for each student. While a bag would allow me to monitor my own device, not every school can afford it. Moreover, the logistics of unlocking and locking the bags for different scenarios, such as after-school activities or lunch, is cumbersome.
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For example, when a student had to leave early during the seventh-grade suspension, he had to find a teacher and interrupt class to get his phone back. Meanwhile, our parents, who had bought us phones to track our whereabouts (as many of us were walking to school unaccompanied for the first time), were upset that our devices had been switched off from 8:30 in the morning to 3 in the evening.
Most importantly, we need phones, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a screenwriter. In a school as crowded as mine, telephones are used for daily communication. My classmate and fellow student Astrid Harrington lamented the logistical challenges the ban could impose on competing teams: “The Stuyvesant debate team uses Messenger to deliver messages throughout the day. Math team uses Discord and email to send schedules to members. Last year, I used email to spread the word about Spanish classes.’ Waiting until the end of the day to communicate information can mean losing a competition or learning something you want.
Teachers at my school also use phones in their lessons both to enrich the learning experience with online educational games and to teach digital literacy. Almost every day, the teacher asks my class to get out our phones and research information. While the New York Department of Energy’s director of security, Mark Rumpersant, suggested that even with the ban, phones could still be allowed for academic purposes, that admission seems like an afterthought and doesn’t take into account the flexible ways phones can be used in lesson plans.
Many teachers have a more nuanced view of the benefits of cell phones. “My students can handle being told when to take out their devices and when not,” says English teacher Carrie Garfinkel, who noted that it would depend on the school and that blanket bans “wouldn’t be a good idea.” He adds, “My use of phones in the classroom is part of the pedagogy.”
He notes, however, that this may not work in every school: “I’ve been in urban schools where there were big problems with phones. The kids use them in every class, all the time, and it adds a level of discipline to an already difficult job.” Most of the people I spoke to noted that cell phones are part of everyday life and cannot be completely turned off.
It is true that cell phones are distracting us. According to a study conducted Common sense mediaabout 97 percent of students use their phones “for an average of 43 minutes” during the school day. This is the length of one class at my school. Eden Luecke, another classmate, agreed that “when kids have access to phones, they’re automatically being checked or busy to some degree, and so not having phones will help students be more present.” Jolie Jung, a junior at Stuyvesant, agreed, “I find my cell phone a distraction during the school day. It makes it hard for me to focus on my work or what we’re learning in class because I’m either on the phone or distracted thinking about what I just saw on my phone.”
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But generations of students have gone without the help of technology, as evidenced by the decades of overlapping graffiti on our school desks. A simple reminder from the teacher before class to pay attention and not look at cell phones is likely to increase concentration. If that doesn’t work, putting phones in an organizer at the front of the classroom as students enter is a better idea than banning them altogether.
“Teenagers will continue to use their phones at home, potentially longer than before, to make up for lost time during the school day,” Harrington said. “They will also find ways around the ban. High school students are nothing if not persistent.”
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