Smart Phone Bans Make Sense In Classrooms - Maybe It's Time To Disconnect Now And Then

When I saw the headline of this post I had no reason to doubt the veracity of it’s claim as I had seen some of the effects first hand.

Growing Body of Evidence That Phone Bans in Class Can Make a Big Difference in Student Performance.

Banning smartphones in class improves student performance, especially for lower-income students, and forces kids to interact with each other in ways they never did before. These conclusions and others are from a spate of academic studies that are just now being published after a few years of phone bans in several states.

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Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University in England says that “parents, schools, and policymakers are being scared by some really unhelpful rhetoric in the media.” He believes that parents and educators are looking for “immediate solutions because it feels like we’re in an emergency and need to do something quickly.”

Etchells is wrong. Students attended school for hundreds of years without the distraction of smartphones. And we are in an emergency. The plunge in test scores is alarming and needs to be addressed.

I have to agree that smart phones are a problem and have done so for a long time, whether it’s in schools, at home, at work, or out with friends or family. As I have written elsewhere, “I find it ironic that a technology that was seen as being able to bring people together instead separates them.”

I can’t count the number of times I have walked into a break room, cafeteria, or restaurant and seen them filled with people...and none of them are talking to each other. Instead they’re texting, web surfing, on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat. Their heads are bowed almost as if in prayer and their attention is focused entirely on the screens of their smart phones and not the people they’re sitting with. They don’t actually talk to each other. They’ll text the person sitting next to them rather than talk to them.

It’s no different in classrooms.

Banning smart phones in classrooms makes sense as it brings students’ attention back to their teachers, their education, and away from the addictive environment portrayed on the screen.

There is a movement afoot to keep the distraction of cell phones out of classrooms, and it is rare these days of division. People and politicians on both sides are lining up to take action on a shared goal. Make Cell phone use in the classroom a thing of the past.

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Is it better than nothing? I don’t know, but cell phones are undoubtedly a distraction, and I can’t say I wouldn’t be paying more attention to it than classroom instruction…

The classrooms have problems of their own, but smart phones add to the problem.

As I mentioned earlier, I have seen just how distracting and isolating smart phones can be. I have seen – personally and on YouTube and Rumble and Locals – a couple at a restaurant and one of them has their nose buried in their phone, texting away. Their attention is not on their dinner companion at all. Their companion might as well not be there. I saw on more than one occasion the ‘invisible’ companion realizes their date wasn’t paying any attention to them, so they got up and left.

On the two occasions I witnessed personally, the woman was oblivious to anything but her phone and the man she was with finally had enough and left. On one of those occasions the man just left and on the other the man stopped long enough to pay the bill before leaving. And on both of these events the woman didn’t realize her dinner companion had been gone for some time. That’s sad.

Of course you probably want to ask me if I have a smart phone? I do. I tend to use it for four things – making phone calls, texting (generally a couple of times a day), taking pictures, and as a paperweight. That’s it.

Then again I grew up in the pre-cell phone/pre-Internet era, so my peers and I didn’t have to deal with the level of distractions kids and younger adults experience today. I don’t have that Fear Of Missing Out that so many others have. I don’t need to be connected all the time. I don’t feel naked or anxious if I don’t have my phone with me.

I guess I’m a throwback to a simpler time despite the fact that I work in the telecommunications industry.