United States: Mobile phones usage debate

“It’s like they don’t trust us,” says Eva King, a 14-year-old pupil at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, DC. Deal’s administration has banned mobile phones during the entire school day. Pupils must store their devices inside Yondr pouches — grey padded cases that supposedly can be opened only with a special tool. Adults unlock the pouches with special magnets as pupils leave for the day. Unsurprisingly, pupils have hacked the system. (“What do you expect?” Eva says. “We’re middle-schoolers.”) The girls recite a list of workarounds. Those magnets have become hot commodities, and a few have gone missing. Pupils have been seen banging pouches open in toilets. Debates about teenagers’ access to phones and their use in schools have heated up lately. Some state legislatures in America are passing laws to stop phones from being used in classrooms, without banning them from schools altogether. A popular book published in March, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, has drawn fresh attention to evidence that social media, mostly accessed through smartphones, may be to blame for a sharp rise in anxiety, depression and self-harm among young people today. Some researchers are unconvinced that phones are causing mental illness. Although America and Britain have reported a rise in problems as social-media use has surged, not all rich countries have had similarly correlated increases. “Adolescence is influenced by multiple things (sic),” says Margarita Panayiotou, a researcher at the University of Manchester. “It would be unrealistic to expect that one thing — social media — is driving adolescent mental health.” Most parents want their children to have phones available at school. In February, the National Parents’ Union, an advocacy group, polled 1,506 public-school parents and found that a majority think that pupils should be allowed to use phones during free time. Larry McEwen, a parent at Deal and the school’s basketball coach, agrees. He believes pupils should have phones for emergencies. He and Eva King cited a lockdown last year at a nearby school because of a gun scare. That was when having phones came in handy. Yet the devices are plainly disruptive. Pupils can receive more than 50 notifications during a school day, according to a study of 203 children by Common Sense Media, a non-profit group based in San Francisco. Teachers complain that pupils watch YouTube and use other apps in class. Phones can be instruments of bullying, and pupils have been secretly videographed while using toilets or undressing in locker rooms. These days, the notorious schoolyard fight can be organised by phone. It is also clear that mobile phones can undermine learning. Several studies have found that their use decreases concentration in school, and the phones don’t only affect the user. “There’s a second-hand-smoke effect,” says Sabine Polak, a founder of the Phone-Free Schools Movement, another advocacy group. New state laws seek to enforce phone-free classrooms while keeping pupils and parents connected. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law last year that bans the use of mobile phones by pupils in…