Teens can’t put their phones down. Here’s what some schools are doing about it

Last October, Claire Pauley and her husband Mitchell Rutherford found out they were expecting their first child. However, Rutherford kept forgetting that his wife was pregnant. Something else was on his mind.

“I mean, when I went to school I forgot we were pregnant and I came home and didn’t remember it until my wife said something about it,” Rutherford said. “I came home and just collapsed on the floor. I sometimes had suicidal thoughts.”

He was a high school biology teacher in Tucson, Arizona, and his students’ near-constant smartphone use was affecting his well-being. When summer came after his eleventh year in the classroom, he gave up.

“I realized that the phone addiction the students were struggling with was causing me severe mental health issues and preventing me from being a good husband,” Rutherford said.

Some states are attempting to introduce laws against pervasive phone use in schools. Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana have statewide restrictions — and states like California, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Virginia have policies requiring districts or schools to adopt phone ban policies, according to findings Education week.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, Rutherford said his students were significantly less interested. He felt like he made no difference.

“Most people in the class have their headphones on, they have their phones on. They’re not really listening,” Rutherford said.

He says that as a teacher with ADHD, he has benefited from the energy of his class.

“I’m very conscious of whether anyone is listening to me or paying attention to me,” Rutherford said. “And this year,” he told NPR at the end of the 2023-2024 school year, “I was just like, ‘I can’t… They’re not interested in what I have to say.’ And that’s honestly why I had to leave.

In addition to phone use, students weren’t interacting with each other and sometimes wrote in journal entries that they were anxious, depressed and lonely — which led them to become deeper into their devices, Rutherford said.

Find the focus again

Teachers NPR spoke with about phone use in class say students’ inattention and social isolation have gotten worse during the pandemic.

“It was really stressful dealing with phones on a case-by-case basis,” said Emily Brisse, a high school English teacher. “Nobody trains to become a telephone police officer. We want to be able to concentrate on our content.”

Her school in Golden Valley, Minnesota, was among those that implemented a phone ban in recent years.

As soon as it went into effect, she noticed that students were more engaged and some admitted on feedback forms that they appreciated it.

“(It) forced them to kind of relearn how to socialize, how to entertain each other, how to engage in learning, even in moments of silence, even in moments of boredom,” Brisse said.

It’s not a bell-to-bell policy – but Brisse is fine with that. Although they talk on the phone every now and then, she said, “there’s a lot of chatter in the hallways, too.”

Some schools are taking things a step further – by banning students from accessing devices throughout the day, not just during class time.

Once a week, English teacher Abbey Osborn goes to work ten minutes early to do phone pickup at her high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since 2018, her school has been collecting students’ phones every morning as they enter the building. Phones will be returned in the last hour of the day.

“The students are focused. There’s definitely still a lot of chatting and a lot of relationship building,” Osborn said. “I have also found that students are more willing to work together in groups if they do not have a cell phone.”

At the end of the day, when the cell phone case is delivered to class, students crowd around it “like vultures,” according to Osborn.

Once the phones are returned to students, they immediately look at them, she says. According to her, this shows that “they do not have the self-control to cope with the demands of school and access to a cell phone.”

They benefit from not having to think about their phones all day.

Because of age alone, young people already have more problems than adults with controlling their impulses: The prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is involved in impulse control, is one of the brain regions that has recently fully matured – and, according to the statement, continues to develop into adulthood further publication in 2021 in the magazine Neuropsychopharmacology.

The human brain is also designed for socializing – something that is often a top priority for adolescents – and much of that now happens online.

“As an adolescent, you are well prepared for social belonging, social recognition and status. Plus, the brain isn’t fully developed yet,” said Zach Rausch, lead researcher for social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose 2024 book ” The fearful generationdescribes in detail the damage that almost constant smartphone use has on the well-being of young people.

“So when you combine those things together and you have social media platforms that are all about social validation, it’s hard to stop self-regulating,” he says, adding that’s why teenagers spend so much time on their phones .

Learning these skills becomes even more difficult when faced with a near-constant barrage of notifications. A 2023 report from Common Sense Media found that teens received an average of 237 notifications per day.

Ban phones from schools

Julie Scelfo founded the advocacy group Mothers Against Media Addiction after reporting on it rising suicide rates among childrenwho spend more and more of their lives online.

Scelfo believes smartphones have replaced the in-person experiences necessary for building healthy social and emotional health as well as academic success.

“I thought I could give these products to my children and teach them how to use them safely,” Scelfo said. “But there is no such thing as ‘safe’ when they are designed to be addictive,” she said, noting: “The more time they spend on these platforms, the more money these social media companies make.”

When her three sons first got smartphones, she used parental controls to prevent them from seeing “harmful content,” but regrets not waiting longer to give them smartphones in the first place.

“We don’t take our kids to the casino and say, ‘Okay, you can play a little, but you should leave.’ “We don’t give our children alcohol or drugs” .

Many schools are also turning to lockable bags to keep students away from devices.

A decade ago, Graham Dugoni founded Yondr, which makes lockable phone cases and sells them to schools for students to carry. At the end of the day, they tap the bags on a magnet, which unlocks them.

“Many districts and schools that come to us have tried different methods and end up coming to us because they didn’t work for one reason or another,” Dugoni said.

When phones are kept in cubbies in classrooms, students still check them occasionally, he said.

According to Dugoni, more than 2 million students in America use pouches today. He says that in schools that use Yondr bags, more library books are being borrowed, there is more social contact and clubs are being revived, according to Yondr.

Telephone bans are not a panacea

Despite the apparent benefits of phone bans, schools don’t always have the resources to enforce them. Some students look after their siblings after school and have to coordinate with their parents. Students whose first language is not English may benefit from using a translation app during class.

If society continues to rely on smartphones, students will eventually need to learn to use a phone without constantly checking social media.

Megan Grady teaches eighth grade in Sterling, Illinois, and she doesn’t think phones should be banned in the classroom so her students can learn discipline.

If she sees a phone, she takes it and returns it at the end of class. For repeat offenders, she brings the phone to the office to be picked up by a parent or guardian at the end of the day.

“You need to learn a little more self-control,” Grady said. “I think it would benefit them in the long run if they learned at a young age that there is a time and a place where we can use our technology.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Abbey Osborn’s last name as Osborne. It has been updated with the correct spelling.