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7 August 2024

Why We’re Banning Phones at Our School

Russell Shaw

In the early 1960s, when my parents were in high school, they received free sampler packs of cigarettes on their cafeteria trays. To the cigarette companies, it made sense: Where better to find new customers than at schools, whose students, being children, hadn’t yet established brand loyalties? This is hard to fathom in 2024.

I believe that future generations will look back with the same incredulity at our acceptance of phones in schools. The research is clear: The dramatic rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicide correlates closely with the widespread adoption of smartphones over the past 15 years. Although causation is debated, as a school head for 14 years, I know what I have seen: Unfettered phone usage at school hurts our kids. It makes them less connected, less attentive, less resilient, and less happy. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written for this magazine, smartphone-based life “alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.” It is time to remove phones from schools.

At the entrance to our high school is an indoor amphitheater we call the Forum. The space acts simultaneously as a living room, dining room, library, and town square. When making my rounds during the school day, I will often stand at the top of the Forum and observe our students in their natural habitat. A group of sophomores plays hacky sack in one corner while a lone senior leans against the wall reading Moby-Dick, highlighter in hand. Students share a pizza. A duo prepares for an upcoming chemistry quiz. It is a hive of activity—one visitor to our school described the atmosphere as having an “intellectual crackle.”

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