The results of a survey on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “bell-to-bell” statewide ban on smartphones in school during its first academic year were exactly as we predicted: an A+. Other states should follow, as it keeps kids focused on their class work and their teachers, not lost to online distractions. The only downside is that it should have been enacted years earlier.
Educators overwhelmingly found the ban to be positive for their schools and their students, prompting behavior like increased attention and stronger social ties. The fears of some parents of being out of contact with their children were just overblown silliness.
The impact of the ban is an admittedly difficult thing to measure; while evaluators can point to things like test results and grades as more determinative proof of the success of pedagogical decisions, the idea of student focus or socialization is obviously more subjective.
Yet we can all intuitively understand the power of something like a screen limitation, if only because practically all of us at this point suffer some measure of the screen addiction that is so pronounced among our students. Anyone who’d visited a school in the run-up to a phone ban could see it: students in hallways, lunchrooms and even classrooms themselves, eyes focused on the glow of screens and oblivious to friends and instruction.