Posted on 11/15/2025 2:56:37 AM PST by daniel1212
Over the past few years, a huge number of schools in the United States and around the world have banned cell phone use among their students.
Gothamist spoke to students about their experience with the ban, and the number one takeaway didn’t have to do with anything to do with hot-button topics like social media addiction or cyberbullying. Instead, it was that kiboshing phones is forcing kids to actually talk to each other in meatspace again — and it’s making schools way noisier, for better or worse.
“Sometimes I would take naps in the lunchroom, but now I can’t because of the noise,” 15-year old Queens high school student Jimena Garcia told the site. “But it’s fun.”
That’s a bold contrast, the Gothamist reported, from previous semesters where kids sat in the lunchroom silently on the phones, creating an environment where you could “hear a pin drop.”
As of now, at least 31 states and Washington DC have implemented some sort of restrictions on cell phone usage in schools.
and it’s making schools way noisier,
“Where mah fone? I needs mah fone!”
Return to normal behavior is deemed abnormal.
In the cafeteria, Ryan Tripathi, 16, was paging through “Lord of the Flies,” which he said is slow-going. “I'm just not used to reading,” he said. “I’m usually on my phone.”
Shanna Burrows, who oversees restorative justice at the school, said staff members are collecting around 30 contraband phones a day. - https://gothamist.com/news/ny-smartphone-ban-has-made-lunch-loud-again
The early findings were released by Phones in Focus, a nonpartisan research initiative supported by the National Governors Association (NGA). The project, led by Angela Duckworth, Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of psychology in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences and the Wharton School, and a team of leading economists,
“So far two patterns stand out: The stricter the policy, the happier the teacher and the less likely students are to be using their phones when they aren’t supposed to. For example, ‘bell-to-bell’ (also called ‘away for the day’) policies are linked to more focused classrooms,” says Duckworth. “We’re also finding that focus on academics is higher in schools that do not permit students to keep their phones nearby, including in their backpacks or back pockets - https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/angela-duckworth-over-20000-educators-share-insights-school-cell-phone-policies
Sorry for the typo ("or) with my stiff arthritic fingers: I was distracted from looking at my screen.
No cameras in class rooms?
Interesting how teachers got on board.
They are still all on tablets.
Thanks to extended family, I’ve always been able to catch a nap if needed, even if there are screaming kids running about.
They should be banned in all buildings including resteraunts, movie theaters, bars, etc and all businesses should have jammers as well.
I had to write that 500 times in second grade.
If I was the professor, I'd say..." If I hear it ring or if I catch you on the phone, I'm dropping your grade."
And with a phone not at hand, it’s harder for them to cheat.
Now that phones are banned, they’re loud again.
It’s called living not hiding in a tiny screen diaplay.
In my schools, we’d have had to write a huge number of proper sentences for using idiot slang like ‘meatspace’ in a writing assignment.
My teachers would admonish us young skulls full of mush whenever we used the word “AIN’T”.🙂
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