5 Actions to Reduce Smartphones in School

If your school is dragging its feet on a full ban, here's what concerned teachers, administrators, and parents can do.

My kids’ public middle/high school has done nothing serious to ban smartphones. They will go back to class next week and, thanks to the Ontario education ministry’s insipid new policy that is based more on wishful thinking than actual science, nothing will be any different than it was last year. Students between grade 7 and 12 are still allowed to keep phones on them, but they’re not supposed to check them. Good luck with that! I sincerely hope I’m proven wrong, but it seems unlikely.

In the meantime, I have been thinking about a number of small actions that individual teachers, administrators, coaches, and other adults could take if they wanted to help shift their school away from smartphone dependence. These actions would be enormously helpful to students such as my kids, who don’t have smartphones and may feel singled out by carelessly phone-centric school policies.

These actions might incentivize parents who are on the fence to delay giving their kid a smartphone for another year or two. We know that holding out benefits kids enormously. We also know that collective action is desperately needed, that we are aiming for that magical 30% number, the hypothetical tipping point at which is becomes far easier for parents to say no to their kids when they ask for smartphones.

Take a stance in favour of unplugging.

If you are an administrator, please consider issuing a statement at the beginning of the year that outlines the school’s stance on digital devices. Be explicit. Say something like, “We support the recommendations made by Prof. Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation not to give kids smartphones before high school, not to let them use social media before 16, and not to send phones to school.”

You could be even tougher: “We agree with Dr. Jean Twenge that owning a smartphone requires maturity on par with getting a driver’s license. We encourage families to wait until 16 to give kids a smartphone and to avoid social media altogether until 18.”

This doesn’t have to be an official school policy; it could be merely a statement of support for those families who choose to wait. The school could say, “Recognizing that there may be necessary exceptions, we support all efforts by parents to keep their kids screen-free for as long as possible.” Every word of affirmation makes a difference.

The school should also say it takes no responsibility for phones that are damaged, lost, or stolen after being confiscated by teachers for misuse. That might disincentivize kids from bringing a $1,000 device into the classroom and empower teachers to be more strict when it comes to cracking down.

Create a protocol for parental communication.

Many parents send phones to school with their kids because they want to be able to reach them throughout the day. First of all, please don’t do that. It’s insane to compromise the quality of your child’s education just because you want to tell them some minor piece of information. Notifications disrupt kids’ ability to focus and are disrespectful toward the teacher, who already has an incredibly hard job to do.

Second, that’s what the school office is for. The problem is, many parents forget or bypass the office; they go the easier route and send a direct text instead. Even I feel daunted by the prospect of calling the office to convey a message to my kid; I’m not quite sure how or when he’ll get it. Surely this system can be improved.

I suggest that schools tell families exactly how to get a message to their kid. Make it crystal-clear. Issue a statement along the lines of: “Please do not text your child during class. Call this number instead, leave a message, and it will be delivered to your child within 30 minutes.”

Better yet, why not a text message system? My youngest son’s elementary school has a special number where I can send a text to say he’ll be late or absent. It spares me a phone call, pressing an extension, and waiting through a lengthy voicemail recording. The text number is monitored by someone in the office, who sends confirmation of receipt. The same thing could be done for relaying messages, so parents can still text, but it goes through the office instead.

Avoid using social media for teams or clubs.

All too often, school sports teams, clubs, and bands decide to use social media platforms for group chats and mass communication. They may create a group on WhatsApp or Snapchat. Teachers and coaches might make an Instagram page to post what a class or team is up to. The same goes for apps with practice and game schedules.

Author Timothy P. Carney shared a depressing anecdote in his new book, Family Unfriendly:

“A friend in Maryland reports that tickets to the local high school basketball game are only issued electronically. If you do not have a smartphone, you basically cannot get in. In effect, the school is forcing kids to get smartphones.”

These thoughtless choices drive families to adopt smartphones and social media prematurely, and they are grossly unfair to kids who don’t have access or have simpler “dumbphones”. If any group is affiliated with a public school, it should not require a smartphone to access information. Teams and clubs should be required to come up with more inclusive ways of conveying information. I don’t know what form that might take—possibly a regularly updated website or blog or email chain, maybe combined with an old-fashioned bulletin board—but surely there is a workaround.

This is an issue of accessibility. We talk so much about accessibility in other contexts, installing wheelchair ramps and improving visual aids and accommodating all manner of disabilities (all of which is wonderful), and now we need to expand that to include kids who do not have smartphones but still want to be part of a school team.

Don’t use QR codes in class.

QR codes are a way of saying, “Exclusively for smartphone owners!” They cause problems for students who do not own smartphones, not to mention potential embarrassment at being singled out. They also open a can of worms; no one who pulls out their phone to scan a QR code can resist checking their notifications, which immediately pulls students’ focus away from the topic being discussed.

Schools in Ontario issue laptops to every high school student (which is a whole other issue), but teachers and presenters should at least try to fit their presentations to the limitations of the technology that they know every student has equal access to. In those cases, providing a URL instead of a QR code makes a lot more sense.

Parents, talk to your kid’s teachers!

I intend to send an email or have a conversation with each of my kids’ teachers early in the school year to inform them privately that my kids don’t have smartphones. I will tell them that I support any efforts made in class to curb smartphone use, limit screen time in general, and engage in analog activities. For my younger son, I’ll ask that he be exempt from “iPad fun time” and playing Roblox on school computers several times a week (yes, this happens). Instead, he can read a book, do art, or go outside.

In the past, teachers have responded positively. Most have expressed gratitude and even relief for my stance, saying they are more accustomed to hearing from disgruntled parents who want greater access to their kids throughout the day via personal smartphones, or who are angry their kids’ phones were confiscated for misuse.

To be clear, such introductory emails are not an attempt to tell teachers how to do their job or add to their workload, but to make them aware of the fact that there’s a kid in their midst who is being raised with a different philosophy. In some situations, it may make no difference, but it’s still worth a try.

We have to start somewhere.

In my dream world, the school would simply ban smartphones and say, “Not allowed on the premises,” just like guns, drugs, alcohol, porn, and peanuts. In another one of my dream worlds, every parent would intercept their child on the way to school and prevent them from leaving the house with a smartphone in order to focus on learning. But in reality, for the upcoming school year, I can only hope that some wise and influential teachers and principals take my words to heart and try to make some changes from within.

If teachers are serious about building a positive educational culture that is optimized for learning, then they should be pushing back against any and all expectations that a smartphone be required for participation in anything.

You Might Also Like:

Why I Don’t Homeschool
Sometimes You Just Need to Be the Parent
Study: Tweens Need Parents to Establish and Model Screen Rules

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Exciting News!

• I have been hired by the Globe and Mail, Canada’s most widely read newspaper, to write a series of columns on digital minimalist parenting. The first one ran on Wednesday, August 28. You can read it here: “My teenage son still doesn’t have a smartphone. Here’s why.” I delve into the 3 questions shocked parents typically ask me when they find out he’s phoneless.

• Please have a listen to this lovely podcast interview with Katie Marquette at Born of Wonder. We discuss “the practicalities of life as an analog family, what drives [my] decisions around screen use, how [I’m] raising analog teens in a digital world, and why parents need to get honest with themselves about their own screen use in order for there to be any real change for kids.”

• I was on CBC Island Morning (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island) this morning, August 30, to speak with host Laura Chapin about smartphones and back-to-school and what I do with my own kids. Link to come!

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