Last week, educators, political officials, and other interested parties met in Raleigh to talk about their different views on the use of cellphones in schools.
The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation held the meeting on September 12 and the main goal was to make rules about phone use instead of banning it completely.
“When we ban things, we make groups,” said Catherine Truitt, the superintendent of the state. “We divide people into groups who support and oppose, and then we often give those groups some moral weight…”
This is the reason why bans are so bad. This shouldn’t be about making smart phones illegal. It should be about making rules that are good for kids, their families, and teachers, so that all of our students can do well.
The Pew Research Center says that about one-third of K–12 public school teachers think that cellphones are a big problem in the classroom, while another 20% say it is only a minor problem. The figures show that 72% of high school teachers say that students using cellphones is a big problem.
A lot of people think that phones are annoying, but a lot of parents and guardians want their kids to have phones at school, mostly so that they can call them in an emergency.
A policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures named Lauren Gendill said that since 2023, eight states have passed laws against cellphone use in schools, and at least 22 states have introduced laws on the subject.
Of those states, North Carolina is not one of them. However, in May, a bill from both parties was introduced that would require a study of schools’ cellphone rules.
At last week’s meeting, psychologists, students, teachers, policy analysts, and others shared their different points of view. Speakers and guests talked about how cellphones can help students learn and have other social and educational benefits, but they can also be a distraction and hurt their mental health and development.
Lucy Ashburn, a student at Enloe Magnet High School, spoke at the meeting to give a pupil’s view on the matter. Ashburn said that her teachers often let her use her phone in class to do things like fill out Google Forms or play Kahoot!, a site for game-based quizzes.
Ashburn said that letting kids bring cellphones to school is usually a good thing because it lets them call their parents if they need to, but phones can be distracting for both the person using them and the people around them.
Ashburn said, “I think it’s good to have something in your pocket.” “Technology is helpful because it lets you text your mom or dad if you need something at school.” But also the constant thought, “Did someone text me?”
Does my friend text me? That’s always there since you carry it around in your pocket and in class. It can be hard to deal with that when you’re trying to stay involved.
Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer of the American Psychological Association and John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill, said that young students don’t know how to switch between tasks well, and having phones around can make it even harder for them to concentrate.
He said, “If they have access to a device, even their own personal device, and they’re able to do that during school, it’s probably going to be related to distraction, which is likely to affect how well they do in school.”
Opportunity for education
Some people who spoke said that cellphone use in schools can be used to learn.
Anne Ottenbreit-Leftwich, the Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology at Indiana University-Bloomington, said that teachers can teach kids about how to use technology well in ways that they might not get at home.
It’s possible that our students won’t be as competitive as students from other states who are able to use these tools to express themselves, according to Ottenbreit-Leftwich.
Mimi Ito, a cultural researcher, said that cellphone bans can also cause unfairness because they are often enforced differently in different schools, with stricter bans being put in place in public schools with lower incomes.
Ito said that this means that students from higher-income families, who may already have better access to technology, are more likely to know how to use their gadgets well than students from lower-income families.
What Ito said was that “there’s a tendency for the rich to get richer” when IT is used.
Ito said that even though different types of technology have come out and changed over the last few decades, adults always respond with fear or a desire to limit what young people can do when they use technology they didn’t have when they were younger.
“It is a long-standing pattern that the shaming and fear of technology among teens and young adults has led to new conflicts between generations,” Ito said.