How Are School Smartphone Bans Going?

Angela Fleck says this was the typical scene last year in the sixth grade social studies classes she teaches at Glover Middle School in Spokane, Washington: Nearly every student had a smartphone, and many of them would regularly sneak glances at the devices, which they kept tucked behind a book or just under their desks.

“They’re pretty sneaky, so you wouldn’t always know that that was the reason,” says Fleck. “But over time, I’d realize no matter how engaging my lesson was, when it was time to turn and do the group activity or the assignment — something that wasn’t totally me directing the class — there would be a large number of students that had no idea what we were doing.”

What students were doing with their phones, she says, was most often using Snapchat or other social media or texting with students in other classrooms, which she described as creating drama: “And then it would just spread rapid-fire, whatever the situation was, and it would sometimes result in altercations — meeting up at a certain place, and they’d arrange it all day on the phone.”

This year, though, the vibe has changed. Spokane Public Schools issued a new districtwide policy that bans the use of smartphones or smartwatches in classrooms during instructional time. So now students in elementary and middle schools have to keep devices off and put away during the school day, though high school students can use their smartphones or watches between classes and at lunch.

Now, she says, she feels like she has most students’ attention during classes since she no longer has to compete with buzzing devices. “In general, students are ready to learn,” she says. “As a teacher, I need to make sure that I have an engaging lesson that will keep their attention and help them to learn and help them to continue to want to be engaged.” And she says there are fewer fights at the school, too.

The district is one of many across the country that have instituted new smartphone bans this year, in the name of increasing student engagement and counteracting the negative effects that social media has on youth mental health. And at least four states — Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida — have enacted statewide bans limiting school smartphone access.

For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we set out to get a sense of how the bans are going. To do that, we talked with Fleck, as well as a high school teacher in Indiana, where a new statewide law bans smartphones and other wireless devices in schools during instructional time.

Fleck is a fan of the ban, and says she hopes the school never goes back to the old approach. But she admits that she misses some aspects of having phones available to integrate in a lesson when needed.

In the past, for instance, she allowed students to take pictures with their phones of the slides she was showing. And she would often designate a student as a researcher during lessons who could look up related material online and share with the group. Now she’s finding ways to adapt to keep those positive aspects of online access, she says, such as having student researchers use a computer in the classroom, or to make more use of the school-issued laptops for some lessons.

Adam Swinyard, the superintendent of Spokane Public Schools, acknowledges that there are trade-offs to the new ban when it comes to the use of tech in instruction.

“We absolutely have lost some power of the opportunity that those devices provide, whether that’s, ‘I can really quickly look something up,’ or ‘I can quickly participate in a class poll’ or ‘I can tune my music instrument,’” he told EdSurge. “But I think where we landed in our community, for our schools and for our kids, is what we gain in their level of engagement and ability to focus far outweighs what we’re losing in a device being a powerful pedagogical tool inside of the classroom. But I think it’s important to acknowledge.”

What they end up teaching students, he argues, is more important. The mantra for the district is that there is a “time and place” for smartphone use, says Swinyard, and that a classroom is not the right setting or occasion, just as he wouldn’t pull out his phone and write a text while he was being interviewed for this article, or sitting in an important meeting.

Some schools with new bans have faced pushback from students, especially where there has been a zero-tolerance for phones even during social time. At a Jasper High School in Plano, Texas, for instance, more than 250 people signed a petition calling on the principal to revise a new ban on smartphones, which forbids use of devices all day, even during lunch and in the halls between classes. “Before the restricted use of cellphones was prohibited, they were a social link, connecting students during lunch and hallway breaks,” the petition reads.

And some parents have complained about the new bans, out of concerns that they would not be able to reach their children in the event of an emergency, such as a school shooting. A new survey by the Pew Research Center found that about 7 in 10 Americans support cellphone bans during class, while only about a third favor an all-day ban.

So one takeaway is that how schools design their smartphone restrictions — and how they communicate the policies to students and parents — are important for how well they work in practice.

Hear more about the pros and cons of new smartphone bans on this week’s EdSurge Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on the player below.