I recently visited a small, all-male boarding school in Wisconsin for underprivileged students in middle and high school.
As I chatted with the students, I couldn’t help comparing them to other teens I know. Unlike those kids, these boys actually knew how to talk with an adult and carry on an interesting conversation.
Mentioning this to the school’s lead teacher, she agreed, attributing this unusual trait to the fact that her students were only allowed one hour on their phones each day, and were also given regular opportunities to converse and interact with adults.
All in all the experience was profoundly refreshing … which is why it was exciting to hear that other schools are following suit and jumping on the no-phone bandwagon.
Maple Grove Middle School is one of these. The school was recently profiled in the following WCCO-CBS News report.
“Starting last year, we went to complete ‘no cellphone’ use at all, for any reason, from 8:10-2:40, which is our school day,” Principal Patrick Smith said.
The difference is astounding and something that both teachers and parents are observing. Whereas before there were no conversations happening amongst students in or out of class, students are now interacting with others, while behavioral incidents have dropped.
“By not using the phones, yes, they can focus on their work,” one parent told the news station.
The idea that school sans cell phones brings more focus to academics appears to be more than anecdotal. “Th problem with cellphones is that young people using them switch tasks every few seconds,” author Doug Lemov wrote in the Fall 2022 edition of Education Next. This causes them to practice inattention as they grow used to constant stimuli.
Lemov continues:
Though all of us are at risk of this type of restlessness, young people are especially susceptible. The region of the brain that exerts impulse control and self-discipline, the prefrontal cortex, isn’t fully developed until age 25. Any time young people are on a screen, they are in an environment where they are habituated to states of low attention and constant task switching. …
In addition, the brain rewires itself constantly based on to how it functions. This idea is known as neuroplasticity. The more time young people spend in constant half-attentive task switching, the harder it becomes for them to maintain the capacity for sustained periods of intense concentration. A brain habituated to being bombarded by constant stimuli rewires accordingly, losing impulse control. The mere presence of our phones socializes us to fracture our own attention.
In a time when depression and aggressive behavior appear to be rising in our schools, while grades and academic knowledge seem to be declining, one has to wonder why we keep pushing technology in schools. At the very least, more schools should consider following the lead of Maple Grove Middle School, banning phones during class hours so that students can actually have a chance to focus, interact, and connect with both their studies and the people around them. We may see smarter and happier students because of it.
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