NC Family Staff | September 14, 2024 | SHARE: 
Across the nation, schools are starting to realize that having a phone during the school day is proving to be detrimental to students’ education and health. As a result, some schools are prohibiting students from using their phones during school, and others are considering adopting similar policies.
This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Clare Morell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of their Technology and Human Flourishing Project, to discuss how phone-free schools work and their potential to improve the health and education of students.
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TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Many families hope that giving a phone to their school aged children will help them stay connected to them during the day. However, it might be causing them to disconnect from school. This concern is leading to limits for student use of phones in the classroom. Clare Morell is a senior policy analyst at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and directs their Technology and Human Flourishing Project. She joins us today to discuss her recently published policy memo entitled Getting Phones Out of Schools. Clare Morell, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
CLARE MORELL: Thank you so much for having me on.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: What are the problems that you’re seeing with student phones in schools. Just give us an overview. How bad can it be?
CLARE MORELL: A growing recognition is that phones are distracting students from learning, and we’re seeing academic outcomes really plummet. Reading and math scores in the 2022 national assessments are at an all-time low since the 1970s and that kind of result is backed up by research on the impacts of children having phones with them in the classroom. There’s been studies that have been done that show even the presence of a phone when children aren’t on it is mentally distracting, because their brain knows there’s things happening on the phone, and so their attention is still divided, even if they’re not actively using it. So, I think we know that the presence of phones on children during the school day is having a negative impact on their learning environment and on the academic outcomes. Also, there’s a negative impact on the social environment. Children are turning to their phones instead of socializing with their peers in person, and a lot of schools have seen rising levels of discipline concerns related to bullying or to even student altercations being videotaped and spread on social media, rumors, gossip being spread via text message and social media during the day that are then also having a negative impact on students’ mental health, their social relationships, and then even their learning environment, because the distractions of those growing social concerns detract from the school day. And so, you know, we know that school is primarily an academic environment for children, but it’s also a social environment, and the phones are interrupting children’s normal social development with their peers, as well as distracting them from their learning. And it’s also a very frustrating experience for teachers, because they’re constantly having to police students, reminding them to get off their phones. And so, it’s really important that schools consider going phone free, trying to remove the complete distraction of phones from the school day.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: This makes a lot of sense, I think, especially as adults. I mean, we know how addicting phones can be in our own lives. But this is not just speculation, right? I mean, there’s a lot of hardcore data behind these claims that are being made. Can you just give us an example of the kinds of statistics about how bad the phone use is and about the differences when they’re removed from the schools? Answer some of the concerns that parents might have about their children not having phones in school.
CLARE MORELL: So just to give a brief overview, some of the data has shown on the negative side, that 97%, you know one survey found of tweens and teens, are on their phones during the school day. And so even if you know a parent is thinking, I’m sending my kid to school with a phone so I can stay in touch with them, it’s still it’s a distraction. Students are constantly picking them up, checking notifications. And so, the research does show that children are on their phones during the school day, which is problematic. On the positive side, studies are now being done on schools that have removed phones from the school day and are seeing huge positive results. So, one study out of Norway found that students’ GPAs rose, their mental health outcomes improved. Also in Europe, this was measuring the middle school students, and it found that the schools that had gone phone free, the students were much more likely to get into a very competitive high school track. And so, there’s clear positive results in terms of academic outcomes and improvements in learning, but also the mental health aspects, there was a large decrease in the kinds of mental health issues teens were seeing their general practitioner, their doctor for. Other studies out of the UK found that, again, national test exam scores increased by 6% among the school’s students that went phone free. And here’s another really fascinating finding from that study, is that the scores improved the most for the students that were most behind. They improved by 14%, their test results. And this is a no cost solution. It’s just getting rid of the phones can have huge improvements, and again, especially for those to maybe in the most kind of vulnerable situation, academically, they’re seeing the greatest improvements. You know, one concern is parents really value and prize being in touch with their student throughout the day. But there are other means to do that, and I think that schools who have implemented these policies have actually been able to do it successfully by working with the parents to assure them that they will be able to get in touch with their student during the day if needed, by making sure all their classrooms are equipped with a landline phone so if a parent needs to relay a message, they can call the office. The office can call that classroom so the teacher can pass that message along to the student. Making sure students can access a phone in the main office to call parents as needed, and so they’re trying to make sure there are alternative methods of communication available for parents to get in touch with their kids. And then another big concern of parents would be about emergency situations. You know, heaven forbid, there would be a school lockdown or an active shooter situation. How am I gonna know my child’s okay? How am I going to be able to get in touch with them? And what school security experts say that phones during an emergency event, particularly an active shooter situation, actually makes students less safe. They’re tempted to be distracted by what’s going on on their phone. Trying to get in touch with people instead of listening to instructions from teachers or school officials that are trying to keep them safe. It can also alert dangerous individuals in an active shooter situation to where a student might be. And so contrary to what parents might think, the phones are not making children more safe in those types of emergency situations. And then I would also just add to that, the teachers are equipped with cell phones, and so the teachers would be able, then, in an emergency situation, if needed, to get in touch with parents, let them know their child is okay. And so, I think again, schools are absolutely trying to keep kids safe, and there are actually ways to do this, by removing the phones. And so, it’s not going to be an impediment to child safety at school, but hopefully increase their safety.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Let’s talk about some of the specific policies that you are encouraging schools and districts to consider, then.
CLARE MORELL: I’m encouraging schools to go phone free. And by that I mean removing phones from the entire school day, not just classroom or instructional time, but also during passing periods and lunch breaks. Those results I quoted earlier, they really studied policies and looked at the difference between what they would call effective phone bans, which was removing the phone from the entire school day, versus classroom level bands that was just prohibited during class, and they found that the outcomes were much greater for removing them from the entire school day. As I had mentioned earlier, there’s studies that show that even the presence of a phone on a student is distracting, even if they’re not on it. And the other issue is enforcement. When it’s on individual teachers in these individual classes to try to enforce, it’s very difficult for teachers to stay on top of it. Teachers can vary in their levels of enforcement, and they’re still having to kind of constantly police the classroom for phones. When schools remove the phones from the entire school day with methods like having students deposit their phones in a central location where they check them in at the beginning of the day and check them out at the end of the day. Or some schools use an invention called a Yondr pouch, which is basically this soft, magnetic pouch that the student puts their phone in at the beginning of the day and it gets locked and so they actually can’t unlock it until at the end of the day on their way out, there’s like a demagnetizing strip that they just run the pouch by, it opens their phones. They can use it when they leave school. Other schools don’t even allow children to bring the phones on the premises of the school grounds. As I mentioned, there’s alternative means for staying in touch with parents, then, instead of the phones, and so all of those types of policies that really protect the entire school day have had the greatest impact. It also makes it easiest for teachers and school administrators to enforce. And the biggest positive benefit is, then, children during passing periods and lunch are actually building in-person relationships and creating a healthy social environment, which is difficult again, with having phones being part of the school day, even for the parents that try to keep their kids off of phones, they are affected by the entire social dynamic of phones being the medium through which kids are communicating, and so even kids who aren’t on their phones are left out. But if you just remove all the phones completely, you create a very healthy in-person, social environment for all the kids, as well as an environment that adults can see and speak into. Part of the problem, as I’ve talked with teachers, is that they cannot see into the virtual world where kids are socializing on their phones, and so they can’t speak and correct issues of bullying or gossip or rumors, because the adults are actually not privy to that when the children are all doing that on the phones, and so it’s a much healthier environment for the school day when their phones completely removed and they’re able to focus on their academics and socialize in a healthy way in person.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Several states have tried some no phone policies. Talk about those, and how are they going?
CLARE MORELL: Florida was the first state to pass a law trying to get phones out of the school day, and now the state law really only prohibited them from classroom time, but a county in Florida, Orange County, decided to go a step further, because of some of this research and because of really discipline issues they were seeing in their district. And I spoke with one of the school board members, she said that they recognized they had a discipline problem and that the phones were behind it after they put together a disciplined task force, it was clear that it was the phone. So, they decided we’re going to have our school districts go completely phone free, and the results were amazing. She told me the story of just walking through this high school campus, seeing the kids playing pickleball at lunch and talking to each other. She said the use of their libraries increased exponentially. Kids would go check books out during lunch or use the library to play games or do other things, and so they just saw an instant increase in student social interactions becoming much more positive, as well as more focus in the classroom. And they also really saw the discipline issues decrease dramatically. From just taking the phones away, students weren’t able to engage in those kind of harmful behaviors of cyberbullying or gossip or videotaping things and uploading them to social media. And the students shared that it was a huge positive increase for them. You know, one senior girl shared that it was a stress for her to feel like every day when she went to school, she didn’t know if people would be taking photos or videotaping her just during the school day, and she felt such a pressure then to look and appear perfect and kind of project this perfect image of yourself all the time. And so, I think that the phones have just created this environment where there’s constant comparison socially, and it’s really harmful for children’s mental health. And so just taking the phones out of the school day, the students themselves actually saw the difference. They may not have liked that kind of policy initially, but several students expressed just how much freer they felt during the school day to be themselves, to interact with friends and to actually like focus on their academics. And I would just add this experience in this county of Florida was very positive. The parents all found that they loved the policy because they recognized their kids not being on phones during the school day really increased their academic focus and some of the behavioral issues they were dealing with, and they had no issues getting in touch with their students, as they may have initially been concerned with the school board member I spoke to said that she had really, very, very little complaints from parents, and actually she had a lot of parents reaching out to her, thanking her for helping get this policy passed that was having such positive impacts among the students. And so that’s just one example from one county in Florida, but I think that just speaks to the kinds of results that can happen.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: I understand that our neighbor, South Carolina, is enacting a new law, which is coming up, I guess in the next year or so?
CLARE MORELL: Yes, so I believe it passed as part of their state budget. They’re asking all the districts to adopt a phone free school day policy, and they’ve asked for that to go into effect by January of 2025, and so I think some school districts have actually already started in South Carolina, they’re trying to implement it from the get go this fall. I think others are maybe taking a little more time to kind of figure out exactly what their policy will look like in terms of what enforcements or consequences there will be for violations. How they’ll deal with the phones, what methods they’re going to use to kind of secure them away. The goal, though, is that all school districts, in order to consider receiving state funding, have to have a phone free policy in effect by January.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Yeah, very interesting and compelling incentive for them. If you want state money, get rid of the phones. That’s great. Well, we’re just about out of time for this week before we go, where can our listeners go to follow all of your work, and especially your work on this topic?
CLARE MORELL: I have a scholar page at the Ethics and Public Policy Center .org so it’s just eppc.org. You can find my name, Clare Morell, and all my writing is there. I also have a substack where I will be regularly posting this type of content and resources for schools, for parents, on tech issues. So, if you just Google Clare Morell substack, my substack will come up. You can subscribe. And I also have a forthcoming book that’s due out next June called The Tech Exit. It’s a book directed at parents for how to navigate tech issues, and there’s a whole chapter dedicated to schools, so you can follow me there.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Clare Morell, thank you for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.
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