Are children allowed to take their phones to school?

Get inspired by a weekly overview of how to easily live well. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and resources designed to improve your well-being.

CNN
—

Now that kids are heading back to school, many schools are not allowing them to bring their phones to class. Legislation to ban phones in schools has been proposed or passed in many cities and states. Most schools already have policies that prohibit phones for non-academic use, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Parents often question this policy because they want to be able to reach their children in emergency situations, such as a school shooting.

Yet research shows that not only is it a good idea for kids to put their phones away during class, but they shouldn’t bring them to school at all.

According to a 2023 study by Common Sense Media, approximately 97% of 11- to 17-year-olds use their phones during school hours, an average of 43 minutes. When they check their phones between classes or during lunch and recess, they’re likely focused on what’s on their screen and therefore spending less time talking, playing, or just hanging out with their friends.

Such preoccupation is not healthy, because as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote in “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” one of the most important things young people should be doing is playing with peers.

This teaches them to navigate social dynamics and build skills by figuring out how to do different activities. It teaches them that they can handle other challenges that they face in the future, which Haidt says can help protect them from anxiety.

But phones aren’t just intruding on kids’ time outside of class. In a June Pew Research Center survey, 72 percent of public high school teachers said cell phone distractions were a major problem in their classrooms. When kids sneak peeks at their phones, it’s impossible for them to pay attention to what they’re supposed to be learning. And a wealth of evidence tells us that the human brain can’t multitask—we can only do one thing at a time.

One indicator that students aren’t learning as much in school as they did in the pre-phone era is their scores on the ACT — a standardized test that measures whether they have the English, reading, math and science skills needed for first-year college courses. Last year, ACT scores fell to their lowest level in more than 30 years, according to the organization that administers the test.

As a professor who has taught at five universities since 2010, I have seen this trend firsthand. When I first started teaching, before smartphones became ubiquitous, many of my students were better able to concentrate and power through long reading passages than they are now.

Of course, it’s easy to imagine how kids will react when we ask them to leave their phones at home: They promise not to check them during the school day. Unfortunately, it’s unreasonable to expect them to resist the urge to look at products that are designed to be addictive, with features like infinite scrolling and constant notifications. According to the Common Sense Media study, the average teen receives 237 notifications on their phone every day — a quarter of which come during the school day.

Sending kids to school without smartphones forces them to focus on what’s happening in front of them instead of their screens, which is another important skill to learn.

“Life that revolves around talking on the phone makes it difficult for people to be fully present with others when they are with others, and to sit quietly with themselves when they are alone,” Haidt warned.

Smartphones and security

Furthermore, it is often a myth that children are safer if they have a phone with them.

Phones can be dangerously distracting for teens. At one of my recent talks at a private school, the school psychologist told parents that she regularly sees their kids walking out of school looking at their screens as they cross the streets of Manhattan. So phones can be a source of emergency in the first place.

If children have an emergency on the way home from school, in most places in the United States there are companies and people with telephones who are willing to let children call their parents.

Many parents want to reach their children in the unlikely event of a school shooting. However, children are safer when they remain quiet and focus on instructions given to them by school administrators or law enforcement.

What’s more, kids are often having extraordinarily dangerous experiences on their phones. In August, a report from Thorn, a nonprofit that combats child abuse, found that the vast majority — 59 percent — of young people said they had had potentially harmful online experiences. One in three minors and one in five preteens said they had had sexual experiences online with someone they thought was an adult, the report found.

It’s true that it can be easier to coordinate things like picking up kids from after-school activities if you let them bring their phones to school. If kids really need a phone to communicate with their parents — perhaps because they have a medical condition and need to be able to reach someone in an emergency or because their pickups are so complicated that a time and location can’t be set in advance — an old-fashioned flip phone is one option Haidt recommended. A flip phone lets them text or make calls, but it doesn’t let them log into social media apps.

It is unlikely that children going to school with smartphones will make them smarter or safer. Rather, it will distract them and prevent them from concentrating on learning.

Without a phone, kids can focus on interacting with peers, learning, and being fully present in their environment, instead of having these things compete for their attention with influencers and internet memes.

Kara Alaimo is an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her book “On the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — and How We Can Get It Back” was recently published by Alcove Press. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook And X.