Around 500 people, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and administrators and school board members from the New Paltz Central School District (NPCSD), attended a conference in Albany last month called “Disconnected: A convening exploring the impact of cellphones, social media and technology on children, schools and learning.”
Hochul has been considering statewide action to keep cell phones out of the classroom for some time, and at the Disconnected conference held on Friday, September 20, she said the momentum appears to favor such a move.
“We could not have imagined a day like today a year ago, to have so many people here willing to stand up and do what is right,” Hochul said. “We will look back at this time and say we finally saved the next generation of kids and it all started in a room like this right here in Albany.”
That groundswell also returned to the NPCSD, with trustees and sharing their perspectives during a meeting of the Board of Education held on Tuesday, October 1. Superintendent Stephen Gratto, board Vice-President Liz Bonhag and board members Heather Kort and Olivia Treubig all attended the conference.
Treubig was not at the school board meeting, but did send a statement, read by Kort, in which she covered much of what she’d learned at the conference.
“In the last decade, increasing mental distress and treatment for mental health conditions among youth in North America has paralleled a steep rise in the use of smartphones and social media by children and adolescents,” said Treubig. “We are faced with making what would be a bold, progressive, and possibly controversial decision for the betterment of our students. I believe in making decisions based on what is in the best interest of a child.”
Treubig said she believed cell phone use, particularly on school grounds, was unhealthy for students.
“Unrestricted cell phone use takes away the freedoms of face-to-face peer interactions, facing one’s emotions and feelings, feeling temporary discomfort that comes with socializing with new people and sharing one’s ideas in exchange for the lasting skills of communication along with relationship building with peers and adults and teachers,” she said. “Restricting cell phones enables adolescents to fully engage with their five senses, be in the moment, detach from dopamine ups and downs, unhook from the addictive algorithms that social media companies use to keep kids tethered to their apps for inauthentic engagement such as likes.”
Bonhag said the discussion was multilayered.
“There’s a layer of students having phones in class, which is one thing you can address,” she said. “But then there’s another layer even if you say, ‘Okay, we’re going to park all the phones in a little cubby at the beginning of each class period.’ And you have the next layer of students having phones in school in general, in the cafeteria, in common areas, and that comes with other issues, other problems that exist outside of the classroom setting. And then on top of that layer, you’ve got kids having phones in general, which as the school district, we can’t do anything about.”
Bonhag said many of the issues around children with smartphones will not go away if they’re banned in classrooms or on school grounds.
“A parent chooses to give their child a cell phone and access to the internet 24/7, that’s not up to us,” she said. “That’s their choice.”
Bonhag was impressed by reports from districts who’ve had cell phone bans in place for some time.
“The Bethlehem District said they saw fear of missing out reduced, because even if you ban phones (in the classroom), if you know that your friend who’s sitting in study hall has access to their phone, there might be a conversation going on while you’re sitting in social studies that you’re missing,” she said. “So this sense of FOMO, fear of missing out, is completely reduced if nobody’s on their phone all day long.”
The Kingston City School District is in the second month of a ban on cell phones in secondary schools, and they’ve had pushback from parents who say they can no longer reach their children during the day. At the Disconnected conference, Bonhag said, school districts reported that the need for that connection was reduced rather than enhanced.
“They had parents coming to them saying, ‘My child has anxiety. They require a connection to me via the phone all day to get through their day at school,’” she said. “And according to the folks at Bethlehem, they said these cases were actually relieved by reducing the dependency on the parent. The students’ anxiety seemed to respond positively to having that connection severed.”
But just banning cell phones is a losing strategy, said trustees.
“One thing that was stressed heavily was that if you were going to take students’ phones away, you need to add back in-person engagement,” said Bonhag. “There’s a vacuum that’s created because the students are not accustomed to interacting with each other in the hallways and the cafeteria the way that they might have when all of us were in high school or middle school.
So these districts added a foosball table in the cafeteria, and other in-person gateways to interaction.”
Kort said giving up due to the prevalence of mobile phones and smartwatches isn’t helpful.
“One of the arguments is, oh, well, the technology isn’t going away, so let’s give it to them now and let them try to figure out how to manage it in person in real life,” she said. “We wouldn’t do that with anything else that’s addictive. We would take it away immediately. So why are we in the face of how unhealthy this is, letting them continue?”
Banning cell phones on campus was a question on a recent community survey conducted by the district, and the results heavily favored taking action. But Gratto said should the district consider going down that road, they should discuss it with the school community first.
“Keep in mind, 491 people answered the survey,” he said. “Only 191 answered that question.”
Maeve Eisenhalder, a student representative to the Board of Education, said she and her friends don’t generally have their phones out during lunch.
“I think in general, we try to keep them away, but I don’t know if that’s consciously or subconsciously,” she said. “But I think that we do a good job doing that.”
Eisenhalder added that a ban should include a component that educates students on the perils of cell phone use, particularly as there are likely to be fewer restrictions for those moving on to college.
“Those professors are not going to tell you to put it away, they’re just not going to pay attention to you,” she said. “So I think there also needs to be some education that allows students to, you know, mind how they are using it as well, not just in school, but just in general, so that we’re able to move forward as adults and be responsible for technology.”
Ahead of discussions with the great NPCSD community, trustees are planning visits to other school districts where cell phone bans are already in place to see what works — or doesn’t work — for them.
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