Summary
Florida’s Broward County Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest districts, implemented a cellphone ban across the school day, sparking debate among students, parents, and teachers. The ban affects over 200,000 students.
Proponents, including board member Lori Alhadeff, a Parkland victim’s mother, argue the ban improves focus and safety.
Critics of the ban raise safety concerns, particularly in light of the 2018 Parkland shooting, where cellphones played an important role in communication.
Kids are getting an unhealthy amount of screen time. An unbelievable number of parents are not doing anything about it at home (well, maybe it’s believable; they’re addicted, too). Phones are becoming increasingly more addictive year by year as marketers learn new tricks to capture brain time.
Kids brains are still developing and social interaction plays an important role. As the teacher says in the article, phone bans result in more face to face student interactions and less work avoidance. Many schools that are implementing bans lately also reference a study that demonstrated having a cell phone even in pocket or in reach distracted students thoughts (how many times have you checked time/notifications, then absent mindedly checked again within a minute?)
Safety wise, I don’t buy that kids having their phone in a school shooting situation would help anything. Every classroom has a phone, MOST of which these days have a built-in “lockdown” button that immediately signals police and triggers a school wide lockdown announcement. My bigger fear is how many will make their main character selfie blogs that we’ve seen come from bigger high schools during shootings or crying to their parents on the phone when really they need to be silent and not endangering everyone else. I get that parents want to know right now that their kids haven’t been shot, but that information doesn’t do anything to help the situation.
The only case where this gets iffy is when the building is evacuated and phones are left behind. This is especially problematic as people no longer know each other’s phone numbers and couldn’t simply borrow a phone to contact family.
In the end, the day to day is what really matters. I’m not a fan of the districts that hyper focus on safety structures when building community and a welcoming environment should be the focus of a school.