Mobile phones are banned in our state public schools for children (South Australia). The media are starting to roll out feel-good stories about effective the ban has been on children's behaviour. I'm still sceptical, but I'm old and remember life before mobile phones. My parents didn't even have a landline phone when I was a kid. My grandkids are homeschooled, they wear phone watches. I see the advantages of that all the time. And yeah, most of the advantages are around security and safety, things my parents probably didn't think about when I was a kid.
The covid years showed just how much damage can be caused to our youth in the name of 'safety'. In that case, we created wide spread damage across a generation of youth for the sake of avoiding a tragedy that was statistically extremely small (young people dying of covid).
Fighting against phone bans in school is fearing the worst case scenario which is a statistical anomaly while ignoring the ongoing negative impacts that are affecting a generation.
Having said that, I'd guess the most common reason parents would give for opposing a phone ban in schools is simply because they want to be able to reach their kid at any given moment for any reason, which is a whole other issue.
My guess is when the current kids start raising their kids, they'll take a much more draconian approach towards phones in schools. Having grown up with phones, they'll have first-hand knowledge of the havoc they wreck.
A European dad to two schoolchildren here. I attended the neighbouring school to Columbine from 1998 to -99, when that tragedy happened. My parents were on the other side of the world while our school was put in lockdown for some hours. I didn’t have a phone, and we were all better off for it. The American emotional need for safety is a destructive force in the world.
I agree, especially when we're safer than we've ever been. But we're fed fear, 24/7 to split us into groups, make us look at each other as "the other," and keep us from looking at real problems.
You don't even need a phone for the peace of mind features these parents want. You can buy a smart watch right now that has no internet but has GPS and calls/messaging with a small number of pre-programmed contacts. These do not have nearly the destructive potential of smartphones.
While I appreciate the compassion for students and families who may feel unsafe at school, I don’t see the problem here at all. What concern here can’t be addressed by allowing students dumb phones (for text, call only)? That should be the norm anyways for any child under 16. We can’t, and we mustn’t, assume that smartphones are the end-all-be-all.
And for the argument that students will sneak their smartphones into school anyways, sure, students have always tried to break the rules. But that’s no reason not to have them. Honestly, we don’t know how it would pan out if we don’t try. Make sure there are consequences. If the student tries to break the rules, that’s their own risk.
IMO: We give parents too much power when it comes to shielding their children from consequences, and not enough power (or responsibility, rather) when it comes to ensuring they’ve raised intelligent young adults who can mind their peers and teachers at school.
Brit here. My heart breaks for the families in Texas, and I am as horrified as you might imagine by your US schools having to guard against men with guns - but that's your culture. What I didn't really get from reading this is what difference having a mobile phone in school in the hands of a child would really make to their safety, if a person was walking around trying to shoot children? Adults in school will call the police, move the children, and keep them quiet. What can the parents possibly add to this by texting or calling while the dangerous situation is still happening? Aren't they just a distraction? And if a child has escaped, letting the parents know isn't the most urgent thing - I know as a parent that seems harsh - it's the child finding any safe adult ASAP.
So that's my puzzlement. My children were at school in London and would be going to museums etc during the period when we had a few terrorist attacks. No mobile phones. We just waited and suffered. I was personally caught up in the 7/7 tube and bus bombings, and my son was in school and knew I was travelling in Central London that morning. He had to wait, and he suffered. But what's the safety argument?
But with our weird blend of cowboy culture (call Dad, and he's coming to the rescue with his buddies and their guns), nostalgia (flight 93 and the people who called their loved ones from that plane and "let's roll"), Hallmark-ization of everything ("Her daughter's last chance to say she loves her mother and that she'll be waiting for her in heaven”), there's a belief that a kids with a phone will make a call and save the day or close out their accounts here on earth. There was maybe one case of a student giving helpful information during a shooting in the past few years.
The risks far, far outnumber the possible benefits.
The day the flood in Texas happened I told my husband this is going to be a blow for our phone-free childhood crusade… And what an immense tragedy for families who lost their kids and whose kids are still missing.
We are currently residing in Italy, where all phones in schools are banned. Phone-free schools has always been the case in most European countries. One of the reason I moved my kids from the US here two years ago.
Yet, the high school my daughter attends asks students to have their phones on their desks. This is because we live in a crater of an active volcano. We are in the heart of the most active seismic zone on earth Campi Flegrei and here we “enjoy” frequent earthquakes and are always in fear of a big one.
For this reason teens in our high school are encouraged to keep their phones on their desks during school time. Which is a very rare situation in schools in Italy. But last year my daughters’ class jeopardized a lecture with their cell phone flashmob. Right after it their phones were ordered to go into a box and were to stay there for the rest of the year during school hours, despite the earthquakes risks. As a parent I agree. Yes, I am very anxious how she is in case of a natural disaster and our zone is a national headline for its high earthquake risk. Yet I find daily routine without a cell phone distraction to be too important for teens to be ignored for the sake of safety.
Wow - that's amazing. I don't think "volcano risk" was on any phone-policy bingo card, ever until now. But...wow. And I agree with your final sentence - the good that will come from the loss of the distraction machine, in the long run, and for the vast majority of students, will outweigh the safety risks.
But parents' counterarguments for safety will always have a finger on the scale, I fear.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that is immune to facts and data. As a debate coach, I agree that, in an academic debate (typically with parent judges), the "kid needs a cell phone in case of emergency" will trump the facts almost every single time. But here are the facts - schools are among the safest place for children to be (the fear is based on the availability bias - incidents like Parkland and Sandy Hook overshadow the fact that the number of school shootings is infinitesimal compared to the daily damage with distractions and addiction over social media use - but we react emotionally.) Mortality data is well-documented and consistent: the CDC, FBI, and academic researchers all confirm that school-associated violent deaths represent a tiny fraction of child mortality. Drownings and fatal gun deaths outside of schools FAR outnumber child deaths IN schools. But, like almost everything else in our country, you don't convince people with facts.
I teach at an independent school in NY state where our Governor just signed a bell-to-bell no cell phone in schools bill. It does not apply to us, but there is a groundswell to ban phones in our school but we don’t have the parental support to do it for precisely the reasons you state - a very small but vocal minority shout “safety first!” and it swamps any other argument. You clearly know a lot more about cell phone policies than I do, but as much as I would like to see them banished from school - and keeping them in backpacks is a joke - I don’t see how we get over that hurdle. So that’s why your piece resonated with me.
That was full of facts. People will do things to give themselves a feeling of control over the otherwise chaotic world. And their kids having phone access at all times is a means of control.
And that's where it gets weird and lines start getting drawn when you point out things, like you rightly did, about drowning and guns. Many parents who insist upon phones to protect from the slight chance of a mass shooting or other emergency in a school probably have guns at home. Or don't supervise their kids carefully near water.
But when you walk down that road, now, you're making a judgment call (whether it was your intention or not) about how parents raised their kids. Look, I teach physics and chemistry, and I would rather work with radioactive materials and concentrated acid than do that.
I've been making my way through David McRaney's "How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion," and it's equally helpful and depressing. We're programmed to look for the bad stuff, and then our media habits reinforce those beliefs. Those thoughts and beliefs are like catching a severe disease, such as mono or pneumonia. You're generally not going to get better on your own, and the medication has to be given slowly, for a long time, with good habits, rest, etc.
No one has time for that anymore - the getting to know the person, hearing their fears and addressing them slowly, making a connection with the person. All we have time for, unfortunately, is shouting.
Mobile phones are banned in our state public schools for children (South Australia). The media are starting to roll out feel-good stories about effective the ban has been on children's behaviour. I'm still sceptical, but I'm old and remember life before mobile phones. My parents didn't even have a landline phone when I was a kid. My grandkids are homeschooled, they wear phone watches. I see the advantages of that all the time. And yeah, most of the advantages are around security and safety, things my parents probably didn't think about when I was a kid.
The covid years showed just how much damage can be caused to our youth in the name of 'safety'. In that case, we created wide spread damage across a generation of youth for the sake of avoiding a tragedy that was statistically extremely small (young people dying of covid).
Fighting against phone bans in school is fearing the worst case scenario which is a statistical anomaly while ignoring the ongoing negative impacts that are affecting a generation.
Having said that, I'd guess the most common reason parents would give for opposing a phone ban in schools is simply because they want to be able to reach their kid at any given moment for any reason, which is a whole other issue.
My guess is when the current kids start raising their kids, they'll take a much more draconian approach towards phones in schools. Having grown up with phones, they'll have first-hand knowledge of the havoc they wreck.
A European dad to two schoolchildren here. I attended the neighbouring school to Columbine from 1998 to -99, when that tragedy happened. My parents were on the other side of the world while our school was put in lockdown for some hours. I didn’t have a phone, and we were all better off for it. The American emotional need for safety is a destructive force in the world.
I agree, especially when we're safer than we've ever been. But we're fed fear, 24/7 to split us into groups, make us look at each other as "the other," and keep us from looking at real problems.
You don't even need a phone for the peace of mind features these parents want. You can buy a smart watch right now that has no internet but has GPS and calls/messaging with a small number of pre-programmed contacts. These do not have nearly the destructive potential of smartphones.
While I appreciate the compassion for students and families who may feel unsafe at school, I don’t see the problem here at all. What concern here can’t be addressed by allowing students dumb phones (for text, call only)? That should be the norm anyways for any child under 16. We can’t, and we mustn’t, assume that smartphones are the end-all-be-all.
And for the argument that students will sneak their smartphones into school anyways, sure, students have always tried to break the rules. But that’s no reason not to have them. Honestly, we don’t know how it would pan out if we don’t try. Make sure there are consequences. If the student tries to break the rules, that’s their own risk.
IMO: We give parents too much power when it comes to shielding their children from consequences, and not enough power (or responsibility, rather) when it comes to ensuring they’ve raised intelligent young adults who can mind their peers and teachers at school.
Brit here. My heart breaks for the families in Texas, and I am as horrified as you might imagine by your US schools having to guard against men with guns - but that's your culture. What I didn't really get from reading this is what difference having a mobile phone in school in the hands of a child would really make to their safety, if a person was walking around trying to shoot children? Adults in school will call the police, move the children, and keep them quiet. What can the parents possibly add to this by texting or calling while the dangerous situation is still happening? Aren't they just a distraction? And if a child has escaped, letting the parents know isn't the most urgent thing - I know as a parent that seems harsh - it's the child finding any safe adult ASAP.
So that's my puzzlement. My children were at school in London and would be going to museums etc during the period when we had a few terrorist attacks. No mobile phones. We just waited and suffered. I was personally caught up in the 7/7 tube and bus bombings, and my son was in school and knew I was travelling in Central London that morning. He had to wait, and he suffered. But what's the safety argument?
That's the thing - there isn't an argument to be made. I spoke with emergency planners, police, and more about this (https://bradyteach.substack.com/p/the-one-about-phones-and-school-shootings), and they say, flat-out, they don't want kids on phones in the case of an emergency.
But with our weird blend of cowboy culture (call Dad, and he's coming to the rescue with his buddies and their guns), nostalgia (flight 93 and the people who called their loved ones from that plane and "let's roll"), Hallmark-ization of everything ("Her daughter's last chance to say she loves her mother and that she'll be waiting for her in heaven”), there's a belief that a kids with a phone will make a call and save the day or close out their accounts here on earth. There was maybe one case of a student giving helpful information during a shooting in the past few years.
The risks far, far outnumber the possible benefits.
The day the flood in Texas happened I told my husband this is going to be a blow for our phone-free childhood crusade… And what an immense tragedy for families who lost their kids and whose kids are still missing.
We are currently residing in Italy, where all phones in schools are banned. Phone-free schools has always been the case in most European countries. One of the reason I moved my kids from the US here two years ago.
Yet, the high school my daughter attends asks students to have their phones on their desks. This is because we live in a crater of an active volcano. We are in the heart of the most active seismic zone on earth Campi Flegrei and here we “enjoy” frequent earthquakes and are always in fear of a big one.
For this reason teens in our high school are encouraged to keep their phones on their desks during school time. Which is a very rare situation in schools in Italy. But last year my daughters’ class jeopardized a lecture with their cell phone flashmob. Right after it their phones were ordered to go into a box and were to stay there for the rest of the year during school hours, despite the earthquakes risks. As a parent I agree. Yes, I am very anxious how she is in case of a natural disaster and our zone is a national headline for its high earthquake risk. Yet I find daily routine without a cell phone distraction to be too important for teens to be ignored for the sake of safety.
Wow - that's amazing. I don't think "volcano risk" was on any phone-policy bingo card, ever until now. But...wow. And I agree with your final sentence - the good that will come from the loss of the distraction machine, in the long run, and for the vast majority of students, will outweigh the safety risks.
But parents' counterarguments for safety will always have a finger on the scale, I fear.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that is immune to facts and data. As a debate coach, I agree that, in an academic debate (typically with parent judges), the "kid needs a cell phone in case of emergency" will trump the facts almost every single time. But here are the facts - schools are among the safest place for children to be (the fear is based on the availability bias - incidents like Parkland and Sandy Hook overshadow the fact that the number of school shootings is infinitesimal compared to the daily damage with distractions and addiction over social media use - but we react emotionally.) Mortality data is well-documented and consistent: the CDC, FBI, and academic researchers all confirm that school-associated violent deaths represent a tiny fraction of child mortality. Drownings and fatal gun deaths outside of schools FAR outnumber child deaths IN schools. But, like almost everything else in our country, you don't convince people with facts.
I teach at an independent school in NY state where our Governor just signed a bell-to-bell no cell phone in schools bill. It does not apply to us, but there is a groundswell to ban phones in our school but we don’t have the parental support to do it for precisely the reasons you state - a very small but vocal minority shout “safety first!” and it swamps any other argument. You clearly know a lot more about cell phone policies than I do, but as much as I would like to see them banished from school - and keeping them in backpacks is a joke - I don’t see how we get over that hurdle. So that’s why your piece resonated with me.
That was full of facts. People will do things to give themselves a feeling of control over the otherwise chaotic world. And their kids having phone access at all times is a means of control.
And that's where it gets weird and lines start getting drawn when you point out things, like you rightly did, about drowning and guns. Many parents who insist upon phones to protect from the slight chance of a mass shooting or other emergency in a school probably have guns at home. Or don't supervise their kids carefully near water.
But when you walk down that road, now, you're making a judgment call (whether it was your intention or not) about how parents raised their kids. Look, I teach physics and chemistry, and I would rather work with radioactive materials and concentrated acid than do that.
I've been making my way through David McRaney's "How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion," and it's equally helpful and depressing. We're programmed to look for the bad stuff, and then our media habits reinforce those beliefs. Those thoughts and beliefs are like catching a severe disease, such as mono or pneumonia. You're generally not going to get better on your own, and the medication has to be given slowly, for a long time, with good habits, rest, etc.
No one has time for that anymore - the getting to know the person, hearing their fears and addressing them slowly, making a connection with the person. All we have time for, unfortunately, is shouting.