School-issued laptops can also have monitoring software, allowing teachers to see what’s on every screen and to shut down screens that are on off-label websites. I’m all about using tech for teaching, and my students use Google Classrooms and Docs and Sheets, and I’m happy to send them to outside websites for research, and have gotten various sites unblocked because they need (for example) a year’s worth of stats on MLB teams for a statistics assignment. But being in control of the tech helps me, as a teacher, keep them focused, so they’re learning instead of playing games or planning a fight in the bathroom.
So phones are kept in a student’s pocket/backpack/or anywhere other than in their hands and face-up.
I acknowledge that teachers are asked to do too much. My personal opinion is also that far too much BS behavior by students is tolerated under the guise of mental/emotional/whatever issues.
If it’s a true emergency then the parents can call the school’s office and the office can go and get the student.
Thanks for the laugh! I needed that! 
On the flip side, phones are used just as often to record bullying and post the bullying on social media to further humiliate students. Which seems to be a factor in our rapidly increasing teen suicide rates.
This is an exellent summary of the problem and issues.
I’m always bemused by the folks complaining that kids these days are socially stunted by their phones. The current generation of children is the most socialized in history. The reason kids are so attached to their phones is precisely because they offer so much more opportunity for socialization than is possible without them, and we, as social animals, crave that.
That said, there is a time and place for everything. Most teachers at my school have a hanging rack of numbered pockets in their room, and students are required to put their phones in a pocket when they come in. Their classrooms, their rules, but personally, I disagree. Yes, their phones can be distractions. So can the laptops that they’re required to bring with them to all of their classes. But both can also be used productively. In my room, my rule is just that productive use of devices (any devices) is allowed, and distractive use of any devices isn’t.
And I do see productive use made of devices, both computers and phones. And, of course, I also see distractive uses of both-- Students aren’t perfect about following the rules. But I see a lot more distractive use of the required laptops than I do of phones.
If kids are going to have phones, lean into it. If a kid has a phone in class they have to run an app that connects to the school. It has the student’s schedule. It lets the student signal to the teacher if they have a question or need a bathroom break. It mirrors whatever the teacher is presenting on their screen and records a transcript of the lesson and helps the student keep track of projects and homework. It can do instant quizzes to determine if students are paying attention and learning the material. It can even have student-to-student chat (with no expectation of privacy) and some fidget-toy levels of game built in for the more ADHD students. Also, it records if students navigate away from the app for any reason.
I work a manufacturing job where management considers phones a distraction, but if they embraced them in a similar way, even just letting all of us log into our Microsoft Teams account from our phones to quickly share information, they’d see greatly improved efficiency. I think generally it’s a mistake to see phones as purely negative. Embracing them as an additional tool would be better for everyone in the long run. For better or worse, smartphones have become as ubiquitous and necessary for modern life as cars, and just like cars they’ll permanently alter culture in ways both good and bad.
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My work literally still has an official rule on the books that you can’t even have your phone physically on you, your phone needs to either be in your car or in your locker at all times. Nobody follows it, but literally every month when they go through the whole rule spiel for any newbies that everyone is forced to attend, they always bring it up.
I dunno about socially stunted, but there’s a good amount of evidence that they contribute to depression and anxiety, especially in teen girls. I’m not sure if you’re aware how much worse mental health has gotten for adolescents since about 2010, but the statistics are pretty dire.
Teen depression doubled between 2010 and 2019, well before COVID-19 lockdowns. It then continued to rise during the pandemic years at about the same rate
Is it just that teens became increasingly comfortable admitting to problems? No: Behaviors linked to depression such as self-harm, suicide attempts, and deaths by suicide also increased, especially among girls. For example, the CDC reported in 2017 that emergency-room admissions for self-harm among 10- to 14-year-old girls tripled between 2009 and 2015.
There is an enormous difference between meeting friends for coffee and scrolling their social media pages.
Also a big difference between watching random tiktoks or youtubes created by people you don’t care about and will never meet versus txting (or whatever messaging app) your actual IRL friends. Or playing fidgety games.
I think there should be rules about phone use, but they shouldn’t be forbidden. Unfortunately, today having access to a phone could be a life saver.
A friend and I were just talking this morning about how years ago we used to make 5-hour and longer car trips all over Texas through some pretty remote areas with no way of making contact. Now my phone is pretty much within arm’s reach. I keep the ringer off a lot, but I live alone and it’s there if I need it. In 2007 I fell in a parking lot and broke my ankle. It was the ONE TIME in years that I didn’t have my phone in me. I had to lie there until some people found me.
I know kids are engaged with their phones at a level that I, as an old lady, can’t comprehend. But for the child and the parent to know they can make contact in an emergency is necessary to both parties IMHO. That one time when there is an active shooter, or a car accident, or any other life-threatening situation makes it worthwhile and necessary to find a way to live with phones the rest of the time.
It’s the same story as any technology: It greatly expands the scope of the good that good people can do, and also of the evil that evil people can do. And yes, we need to do more about cyberbullying. But I don’t think that banning phones in schools would help, there: One of the things that makes cyberbullying so insidious is that there’s no “safe place” from it. Teens can bully or be bullied from their own homes.
Policy at my son’s middle school is that phones stay in the locker and any phones out (even in hallways, etc) are subject to confiscation and being kept in the main office. They started out the year more lax but said that repeated issues with distractions, bullying and “inappropriate photos” required strict enforcement.
They kept the policy throughout the second half of the year so I don’t think there was some massive tide of parent rebellion. Not enough to change policy anyway.
I’m fine with the policy. The odds of my son having some shitty photo taken of him and passed around as a meme and bullied is much, much greater than the chance of him needing a phone in some school-based emergency.
I would think better education should trump the concerns of a dozen parents, if these concerns can be dealt with reasonably in other ways. But I don’t claim any knowledge of the subject or difficulties
My bold.
The trouble with thinking of it in terms of “odds” and “chances” is that the One Time that turns out to be the exception could well be a matter of life and death. If there is an immense tragedy (and the “odds” of that happening are by no means zero), will you look back on this decision and be able to live with the outcome? I KNOW we can’t think along these lines about EVERY possible safety precaution, so y’all, please don’t bombard me with gratuitous counter-examples. Just sayin’.
Also, I’m not keen on the idea of a $1,000 phone left in a locker all day protected only by a dial-up lock.
It’s a lot more secure there than being carried around by a teenager. Seriously, for as attached as teens are to their phones, you’d be amazed how careless they are with them.
I mean, probably. If the counter-example is people bullying my kid and making his life hell but “Yeah, but what if one day…”
It’s not only the narrow odds of a tragedy, it’s the odds of a tragedy where having a phone in hand would make any difference (and, technically, my knowledge that him having a phone in hand would have made a difference). Balanced against the much more real odds of phones being used to make the school day shittier and less productive, I’m accepting of the risk.
Don’t give 14 year olds $1,000 portable electronics would be my solution.