No-phone policies are currently all the rage in US schools—15 states, and numerous smaller localities, now restrict classroom device use. The goal, apparently, is to address the escalating youth mental health crisis by protecting kids from the isolation and self-esteem issues smartphones create.
I don’t think phones are harmless, but I can’t help feeling skeptical about these policies’ real intentions. When you ask teens themselves, most report that the benefits of smartphones outweigh the harms—and student responses to no-phone policies are far from positive. Online, they share tips for breaking into locked phone pouches and start petitions against restrictive policies that neglect their actual needs.
After all, phones aren’t just used for Instagram. Kids with diabetes use apps to monitor their glucose, while students who can’t afford laptops rely on them to get assignments turned in. And in the US, where school shootings are disturbingly prevalent, students need a way to contact parents and emergency services during lockdowns.
My point isn’t that we should accept school shootings as a part of life—instead, I’m wondering why we’re banning phones and not semi-automatic rifles.
When you ask students what causes their distress, they most often mention school. In a nationwide 2020 survey, nearly two-thirds of teens reported primarily negative emotions during the school day—while suicidal behaviors in youth are correlated with whether school is in session. If we want students to feel better, there are much more substantial issues to tackle:
Teaching to the test. Drilling makes class material dull, which has serious consequences for intrinsic motivation, or the drive to perform tasks out of genuine interest. Studies find that intrinsic motivation gradually decreases throughout childhood—but in homeschoolers, it remains stable, suggesting that school plays a role in this decline. Unfortunately, intrinsic motivation is crucial for mental health, helping us feel in control and reducing the helplessness associated with anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, chronic boredom contributes to everything from substance abuse to self-harm to sadistic behavior.
Constant evaluation. As much as we fret about preteen girls comparing their bodies to Instagram models, we rarely think about the anxiety of having adults endlessly scrutinize every aspect of your behavior. Teens actually report feeling significantly more pressure to achieve academically than to look good or fit in with peers—and even many adults remain plagued by stress dreams about school.
Restrictions on basic needs. Interoception, the ability to detect internal bodily cues, is vital for good mental health—studies have even linked it to lower suicide risk. However, school schedules counteract this, conditioning kids to ignore these signals. Schools impose strict mealtimes, which can be as early as 9am and as short as seven minutes. Classes start early in the morning, even though this promotes depressive symptoms and attention difficulties. Kids who want to use the bathroom may find themselves earning fake money to “pay” for breaks or scanning a QR code that tracks their time away from class—leaving them anxious and alienated from their bodies.
Mistreatment. We tend to worry about children bullying each other without considering that they may be imitating behaviors they see in adults. In the US, about 10 percent of students are sexually abused in school, while schools continue to discipline students with disabilities by restraining or isolating them. Worst of all, corporal punishment remains legal in 23 US states—so why are our efforts focused on TikTok and texting?
In truth, I don’t think phone bans are about mental health at all. While these policies aren’t well-supported by students, or even parents, more than 90 percent of teachers endorse them—and they rarely cite student well-being as a reason. More often, teachers express exasperation with managing classrooms full of distracted students.
While this frustration is understandable, I wish we’d stop throwing around the term “mental health” without thinking about what it means. What happens after school, when students can scroll through Instagram as much as they please? Isn’t it worse for their mental health if we keep them sheltered from their devices, unable to develop the self-regulation skills they’ll need in a world where phones are everywhere?
When it comes to smartphones, “mental health” is rarely defined by how students feel—instead, it’s about how they perform. This is key to explaining why lawmakers suddenly care about this issue: test scores in America are dropping, and schools need to steal students’ focus back.
But phones don’t actually have the “gravitational pull” we often assign them. It’s true that higher screen time is linked with significant drops in test scores, but that doesn’t mean smartphones are fully to blame. Addiction doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and even heavily controlled substances only become addictive in certain environments.
By banning phones outright, we forget to ask why students are seeking stimulation in the first place—are phones really the problem, or do they just expose the uncomfortable fact that the classroom environment isn’t meeting kids’ needs?
I taught GED at a Job Corps Center. The center refused to ban cell phones during the school day. What was problematic about this was that our supervisor constantly threatened us with write-ups if they observed the students using the phones in our classrooms. Not only were we required to write up students for cellphone use but also for sleeping.
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It’s a talking point, mobile phones, as is social media sites, as is conspiracy theories, as is electoral politics, as is media influence, as is the influence of thought leaders and cultural leaders, as is the other almost infinite aspects of a highly technologically enabled society that has only existed in it’s current form for a couple of decades. Do we have to confine our enquiries and our thinking to these talking point issues? Because if we approach from the whole structure of society we can make sense of the parts. If we just have a rather technocratic and academic discussion of parts we don’t go beyond the part and don’t grasp it’s significance in relation to the whole. Really only the whole has reality and gravity because the part is a mere movement within the whole.
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Zoe Cunliffe – I wont ask what they called you at school. Don’t worry – my surname sounds like Arse-Fart.
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Hello Zoe. Yes, banning phones won’t do much. The fact that most school systems and pedagogy modalities are very much outdated has been variously demonstrated for the longest now. And the latest and rapid technological advances made such system and modalities even much more obsolete, unable to adjust and update itself to the new socialization and acculturation processes faced by the these latest generations. Kikelop.
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Maybe school children being drugged correlates to Rising school shooting incidents and rising drugging of school children correlates to declining of schools as they become more regimented and as more parents end up in badly paid insecure work?
Rising poor mental health might mean declining social standards as the rich get richer and tech might have little to do with it.
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