The battle against bringing smartphones to school is being won. The evidence is overwhelming that smartphones are linked to falling test scores and rising rates of teen mental illness. Parents groups have successfully taken the phones out of schools in Oregon, Virginia, and the Los Angeles school district in February.
"At least 19 states have passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in schools statewide or recommend local districts enact their own bans or restrictive policies," according to an Education Week analysis.
The effort appears to be bipartisan and is gaining steam every month. Cookbook author Jessica Seinfeld, wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, was one of the initial cheerleaders for the New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's book, "The Anxious Generation." Haidt's New York Times runaway bestseller is based on years of hard-headed research and shows an alarming fall off in verbal test scores and mental health issues since 2014, the year that Haidt began sounding the alarm about smartphones not only in schools,
“We have the first generation of kids who are native to phones and social media,” Seinfeld said, adding that “the addiction got really real” during COVID. “I can’t tell you how many moms have come up to me and said, ‘My kids hate me because I won’t let them get a phone, and I’m the only one.’ ”
No longer. We might never be able to put the social media genie back in the bottle. However, parents can limit the use of these highly addictive apps on smartphones by tightly regulating their children's access to them. It's not going to be easy. But protecting our children never is. And in the process of regulating phone use, it just might give parents the opportunity to strike up real conversations with their kids.
Apple, Inc. introduced its first iPhone in the summer of 2007. But it wasn't until the pandemic hit in 2020 that their use for classwork and in schools became ubiquitous.
Jean Twenge, a psychologist specializing in generational differences, has also been sounding the alarm about social media and smartphones.
“There’s been a lot of progress in the last year after years of relatively slow progress,” said Twenge. “A lot of that has to do with Jon’s book—it really pushed the conversation even more into the forefront. It’s inspired a lot of principals and superintendents to put stricter rules in place.”
It's amazing to me that a book, mostly on the printed page, still has the power to change the world.
Part of the book’s power is its simplicity. Haidt spells out four “foundational rules” to inspire a “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” They are: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones at school, and more unsupervised play and independence for kids. Haidt has consistently repeated these talking points at talks around the country and on his Instagram page, where he has 341,000 followers.
When I was about 9 years old, my mother bought all of us school-age kids seven pairs of white socks. We wore them with our Stride-Rite school shoes and Red Ball sneakers when we went out to play after school.
Soon, all the other kids were making fun of my "white socks." I was mortified. "I'm the only one in school who wears white socks," I sobbed to my mother. That did the trick. She got some black socks soon after.
Today, the sobbing child is begging parents for a smartphone.
“Every parent thought, ‘I don't want to give my kid a smartphone at the age of 10, but she comes home and tells me, ‘Mom, I’m the only one.," Haidt told the Free Press. "That’s the magic phrase—‘I’m the only one who doesn't have one.’ ”
Even so, Haidt told me he is “astounded” by how quickly the movement has spread throughout America, even rippling across the pond to the UK. “The only other example of social change I’ve seen that has moved this quickly is the fall of the Iron Curtain,” he told me. When I asked him why it took so long, he called it a “collective action problem,” in which the general public resents the status quo, but individuals are too scared to challenge it.
Haidt concluded that by next September, “I think we’re going to have the great majority of schools in the United States phone-free.”
There are some incredibly bad things about smartphones and the internet. There are also some incredibly good things about them. To have an encyclopedia, the best in literature and music, and the answer to any question under the sun, as well as the ability to connect to anyone in the world with a smartphone instantly, has changed our world for the better.
Other aspects of smartphones may eventually destroy humanity. We can choose which way the human race goes by using our intelligence and wits wisely.
