A plea for community support for stricter school cell phone policies

By Emilie Throckmorton 

Throughout my 25 years in the classroom, I have watched approaches to education change, based on new research or evolving recommendations about how best to serve students. For example, I used to believe that in order to prepare students for their lives outside of school, we needed to teach balance around cell phone use. Five years ago, I would have told you that I let teenage students take their phones out sometimes — to set a reminder, to take a photo of notes on the board, or even to text a parent. However, after trying to teach while managing cell phones over the past few school years, I can assure you phones no longer belong in our kids’ hands, backpacks, or pockets during instructional time.

We’ve reached a tipping point. My experiences match what the research tells us about how very distracting and damaging cell phones are for students in school. Now that we know better, we need to do better. I am writing so that parents understand why their kids’ school may be considering tightening up cell phone policies — and to ask for community support.

In my classes, I have a no-phones rule, which is supported by my school’s expectation, but I spend so much time and energy managing this expectation, it inhibits my ability to give full attention to my teaching. Unfortunately, phones are not “out of sight, out of mind,” so long as students can still feel them buzzing with notifications. Many students are leaving for the bathroom to check their phones, or hiding phones behind books and laptops, and some students are so quick to default back to their phones that I cannot look away from them for one minute. 

I am a seasoned teacher who has a good rapport with my students, and I still find myself arguing about and policing phones constantly. Students, in my observation, seem emboldened about their phones and have come to believe that they cannot function without having them close by.

As parents and professionals, we often make hard decisions to set up our kids for success. Students won’t like having limited access to their phones, but adults in schools must take action in the same way that they decide many other things in the best interest of kids — school safety rules, curriculum and assessment decisions, lunch nutrition options.. Simply put, we are harming our students by allowing them access to their phones while they are attempting to focus and listen. In his book “The Anxious Generation,” author Jonathan Haidt argues “the fragmentation of attention in early adolescence caused by problematic use” of cell phones “interferes with the development of executive function.” This is what I see every day.

To be clear, I am not blaming the students; these phones were designed to demand kids’ full attention. In my experience, phones have the most detrimental impact on our most vulnerable students, both emotionally and academically. Imagine how much student attention spans and social skills would increase and anxieties would decrease if their focus were to be simply in the classroom, in the moment, at school.

I fully understand why some parents are wary of limiting access to phones. We live in a world where we have constant and immediate access to one another, and parents like to check in with their children. My youngest is a high school student. While I enjoy being able to reach him during the school day, knowing what I know as a teacher, I would give that up for his sake. I believe that if any parent were to sit in a classroom and watch how distracting cell phones are, they would be on board with restricting use.

I am confident that keeping phones away from kids during instructional time would have immediate benefits in academic success, engagement and socialization. We owe it to our students to prioritize their wellbeing and insist on phone-free learning.

Throckmorton is a high school English teacher in Maine and is the 2024 Penobscot County Teacher of the Year.