Want students to thrive? Lock up their phones

There are a few things that most American politicians have agreed on, but it seems to be one of them to ban their mobile phones in classes. Based on the experiences of some schools that require students to give priority to learning about tiktok shift, there is also a pleasant side benefit: less conflict and more “Hellos”.

When the school starts in this autumn, according to a academic week gang, most of the US states and DC students will be asked to overthrow or close their smartphones in the whole or most school day.

Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Utah have prohibitions throughout the state. Another 24 states accepted the rules or laws that require restrictions on mobile phones, but left them to school regions so that they would not decide to ban or prohibit them. Two states offer district incentives to restrict phones. Another seven, local region recommends to implement its restrictions.

Methods and policy details show great differences between states, but the reasons for silencing phones are very universal. A growing research group found how much time children and developing brains spend on smartphones, the more negative mental health consequences – from depression to cyber bullying, not focusing and learning.

At the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, a child and adolescent psychiatrist Carol Vidal, social media deliberately made it addictive to örnek to expose users to an infinite flow of content ”. This is especially risky for children and young people, “Because their brains are still developing and they have less control over their impulses.” He said.

The laws are partly encouraged by the research discussed by Jonathan Haidt The anxious generation in 2024. The Professor of New York University has examined this theory, social media and smartphone usage, children and young people, after examining dozens of last work that connects the use of social media and smartphones, until the explosive increase in anxiety rates, including young people, including the emergency service visits from the classroom, to the explosive increase in the explosives of 2024 and the lawmakers and the governors of the law. Use between middle and high school students during the class. However, a theoretical prohibition is not the same as putting it into practice for a large number of worried parents who have not been able to communicate with their children during the school day.

This is something Ana Inge Esping noticed when it blocks phones from the classes in McPherson Secondary School in Kansas, an hour north of Wichita. When Esping started as a school principal in 2022, he realized that the increase in online bullying between students had taken place during the school day.

“When secondary school students try to make fun of someone, they are a little fame.” “They will take pictures of the person they have fun and share it through social media – especially during lunch. ”

Absenteeism and suspensions were rising, too many students stayed at home because they were afraid to face their tyrants or they were bullying for others. In the 2022-23 academic year, he and his staff decided to set a rule that requires students to close their phones and storage them in their cabinets from the first bell to the end.

Apart from a few exceptions, Esping said, “Simply accepted, the children growing up with mobile phones said. He had parents who protested.

Orum I don’t really think we really noticed how much parents have reached their students throughout the school day, Es Esping remembered. Many parents were afraid of not being able to communicate with their children, especially in school hours, during school hours. Others said he didn’t trust the school to inform them when their children needed.

He and his colleagues later launched an ambitious plan to convince their parents to the value that they could not reach their phones during school hours. He organized a return to school to increase communication, engaged in more parents in voluntary and visiting opportunities, and developed the warning system of the school, which declares families when it was an emergency.

As parents grew up to accept the new system, their children’s consequences were dramatic. In the first year, the school increased by 5% in state evaluation points in both reading and mathematics. According to Christmas, the suspension of the school fell 70% and remained in front of the ban. And absenteeism fell from 39% to 11% – because bullying prevented most of the harmful social media interpretations that prevented children from coming to school.

Other school regions with mobile phone restrictions have reported similar results in student discipline. Inspector Maria Vazquez told Florida deputies in January, the Orange County School Zone in Florida fell 31% of the telephone ban in 2023 and the fight fell 31% and the “serious abuse” problems decreased by 21%.

Such results are what encourages partially elected authorities to activate.

When the Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Arkansas’s mobile phone ban earlier this year, “Arkansas’s school -free schools program is not about getting anything.” “It’s about giving children the freedom of learning without distraction.”

The idea is also in Washington. One of the last actions of the Biden Management Ministry of Education was to give a recommendation for all states and regions to adopt measures to manage the use of smartphones in schools.

In February, Tom Cotton, a Democratic Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia and a Republican from Arkansas, launched a legislation to examine the effects of the use of mobile phones in schools. And this week, the Democratic Senator Elise Slotkin from Michigan called a ban on Social Media and Mobile Phones in every K-12 class in America ”. He blamed technology for intervening of the problem solving skills that will be valuable in the future economy ”.

However, the most concrete difference for teachers, Esping, called Kansas Secondary School Director in April, said that it was “great vibe change”. Teachers reported that students are more busy in class and school corridors.

“A year before the phone ban, you say ‘hello’ to a student and they ignore you and they will continue because they are very dependent on their mobile phones, Es Esping said. However, after the prohibition, especially in the lunch room and the students switching between classes, “Children were looking and talking to each other”. When they said, ‘Good morning’, they would say ‘Good morning’. “

As always, students may teach something to the rest of the nation here. Maybe more smartphone bans are exactly what we need.