Summary
Several states, including Alabama, Maryland, and New Hampshire, are introducing legislation to ban or restrict cellphones in schools.
The measures claim to reduce distractions and address concerns over teen mental health linked to heavy social media use.
Proponents argue such bans help students focus, but opponents, including parents, warn of safety and communication issues.
“If something were to happen in the school, my child should be able to have their cellphone to be able to call for help, to be able to call me,” said parent Jeara Underwood.
Experts emphasize teaching responsible tech use rather than imposing broad bans.
Experts emphasize teaching responsible tech use rather than imposing broad bans.
This. Discipline the student for having it out during an inappropriate time. Not punish the group. Is that so hard?
I’d say yes. Teachers have very limited ways to deal with students. There’s no harm in banning phones during school hours, in fact, you could argue that it’s beneficial to the mental development of children to reduce phone times.
When school staffing has one teacher per forty or so students? Yeah.
That said, I still think these measures are stupid and punishing the group for society’s failure to fund and staff our schools appropriately, but I can understand why teachers often support them.
Shouldn’t this be a school district issue why does a state government need to get involved?
Right after they stop letting guns in there maybe
There won’t be any mass shootings if kids can’t call to report them 🤷♂️
the “if we just stop testing, there won’t be any more cases” approach to public health, what a pleasure it is to exist in america.
… there’s already laws about that
I was talking to a teacher over the holidays, and apparently some kids will have one or more dummy phones (fauxns?) to hand over if asked when they try to sneak their real phone into class.
Fauxns is fantastic lol Yeah, I have several students that use that stunt.
Since the days of flip phones, my friend
“If something were to happen in the school, my child should be able to have their cellphone to be able to call for help, to be able to call me,” said parent Jeara Underwood.
Exactly. My son keeps his phone on him, and I keep mine with me. I don’t care what the school or my workplace says, the phones stay with us. There was a hoax call to his school that said there was going to be a shooting. In the moment, we weren’t sure what was happening. Thankfully, it was a hoax, and he and I were able to keep in contact throughout.
Ok? This isn’t banning having cell phones on you. It’s banning their use. Obviously if something were to happen, that rule kind of goes out the window.
Have fun closing that little box.
Your comment almost launched me into the third tirade in as many months about how the story of “schools putting in litter boxes” was nothing but anti-education nonsense that doesn’t take into account the fact that most school boards are made up of people who would never do anything like that in a million years just on cost alone, then I re-read lol.
Weird that some parents are against this. I live in a country where we have a ban and grades have been going up, there’s less problems in class, teachers are more relaxed again, kids have started playing again during recess and they are overall less chaotic.
Its almost like cell phones would be entirely negative if we didn’t need them to navigate
Out of curiosity, I searched for China’s approach and found that they banned children bringing phones to school without written parental consent. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55902778
I’m still figuring out where I stand, but I’m not sure I disagree. School shooters have been linked to high social media use. I wonder if a ban could help at all in this regard.
On a side note, I don’t really see how banning cell phones could be interpreted as punishment. If anything, it should help reduce apparent disparities and avoid punishment for inappropriate use
They should implement age verification for social media so people stop using it.
… to make the life of school bullies easier and empower the teachers that help the bullies.
Build faraday cage in to classroom walls.
Hey it only took us a couple of decades!
Understanding media is going super well you guys.
