I'm Manny, I'm Noah, and this is no such thing. The show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On today's episode, why can't kids just use the school phone like I used to?
There's no no such thing, no such thing.
Such, thank.
Thank thank.
So.
A few years ago, my fiance Julie and I got into a disagreement about whether or not our future kids should have cell phones. My view at the time was, well, I made it through high school and most of college without a smartphone. You can do what I did and just use the office phone if you need to reach me or in your mouth to talk to people.
Yeah.
Yeah, ask one of your friends who has a phone, Yeah, because they have nice parents. Her view was that times have changed. I was in high school, you know, let's say fifteen years ago.
Yeah, yeah, like that, So I see you sad to hear that, and our phoneless child would be an outlier, a loser, maybe a pariah, and they'd be left out of things if they don't have a phone.
More and more states and school districts have been introducing cell phone restriction policies. California Governor Gavin Newsom putting out the call to all school districts to restrict cell phones in the classroom.
Governor Kevin Stitt once phones out of Oklahoma classrooms. Governor Glenn Youngkin issued a executive order requiring the state's Department of Education come up with policies to restrict or ban cell phones for all grade levels.
At least sixteen states have introduced legislation to restrict or banned phones in schools. It's kind of hard to keep up with as legislation is kind of in different stages. Here in New York, our Governor Kathy Hochel just unveiled a new plan to go into effect this fall.
That a bell to bell ban warning until the day is over, is not going to hurt your kids. It's going to help them emerge with stronger mental health and resiliency.
And that's broadly speaking. Teachers are in support of a bank. According to a p report, seventy two percent of high school teachers say phone distraction is a major issue, and a survey by the National Parents Union said that seventy percent of parents agree that cell phone you should be banned during class, but more than half think that students should be allowed to use them at other times outside of the classroom, so launch reesas between classes, et cetera.
On both sides, a lot of this boils down to safety concerns, so parents want to be able to reach their kid during an emergency, whether that's a school shooting or a mental health crisis. But on the other hand, many pro banned parents cite the harms of social media and cyber bullying and just playing distraction. So, having said all that, and a disclaimer that none of us have kids, but we have all gone to school and we all also own cell phones, what do you guys think?
Many?
Yeah, I don't mean to come off of the top rope here, but I think please, I just think like, if anyone's arguing that, like they need the phones in school, the easiest thing to point to is that we've done it before without the phones. As you said, times have changed and there might be new reasons that you know, new kind of factors at play today then when I was in school, that that might make you need a phone, But I just don't see it.
Yeah, Devin, Yeah, I think it's ridiculous to argue that kids and need their phones in school. A phone from bell to bell, So you don't need it during this Why.
Do you need at lunch?
I think I lean towards that you're both banned. Well, I'm barely even allowing my kid to have a phone.
Yeah, but yeah, I'm just interested to know what the real arguments are because I I've seen this debate a lot online, but I haven't really been that plugged into it, so in my head, I don't know. I'm not necessarily pro band, but I'm definitely anti this idea that kids absolutely need phones in school. Now, I also don't mind like all right, classes over, whip your phone out, tech your friends or whatever until the next class or at
recess or at lunch or whatever. Like I had a I did have a phone my senior year of high school, and it obviously wasn't a smartphone. It could only text people or T nine. Yeah, I had T nine texting, and I think I had like a really shitty deal or no deal game on there. But it just wasn't a piece of technology that I ever thought about killing time with.
Yeah, obviously, the smartphone thing is so different than even if you were like a texting addict. It's like that just pales in comparison to a smartphone where you have TikTok or Instagram or whatever. Ye like, even if your text all the time, you can only do so much, you know, because.
It requires someone else.
Yeah, I mean, just like taking the schools and kids out of it. It's like we're all addicted to our phones. Yeah, yeah, because of these things too. It's like, I think that's what makes it difficult too, is I think there are a lot of adults who can't reckon with the fact that maybe they also have an issue with the phones,
and maybe that colors how they treat the children. Like you said, we're largely unaffected by the school specific issue, but I can see there being a great argument for kids needing a place to not be on their phones, Like at some point during the day.
It's not like we're sending your kid off in the woods and saying they can't have a phone and there's no way to contact them.
They're at a school, you.
Know, the tough thing Like you're saying, it is like, all right, the US schools are in asafe as we want them to be. But I just think that you got to think of the trade offs, and I think having the phones and what that does to the kids is worth the off chance of something bad happening and you not being able to contact them immediately.
But I also don't have kids.
I also think there's this kind of strain where it's like people kind of want to treat kids the same as adults. Yes, which I get out of, you know, respect, these are humans, Yeah, they have rights. At the same time, it's like kids not be trusted to make the best decisions for them since course, like it's why we don't let twelve year olds drive cars. Yeah, yeah, you know, or like yeah there, I mean time their brains aren't developed.
It's like they're learning how to be a human still. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, like they might not like that we're taking the phone away, but I mean, in my opinion, they'll probably be better off if they can, at least for five hours of their life not have the phone. You think about like.
The you know, we've we've heard so much in the past few years, even in Congress, about like the harms of social media. So you think about like if you if you can imagine hearing a good argument for why kids should have phones at all, then you're like, Okay, yeah, maybe it's it's a lot easier to see that these five or six hours at school, they shouldn't have them.
So next, I want to talk to people on all sides of the issue. Let's hear them out, and I want to see how these policies actually work in practice. All of that after the break, All right, we're back.
I'm Manny, I'm Noah.
This is Devin.
So I want to start with the case for banning phones, since that's where the momentum is heading nationally. I spoke with the co founder of an organization pushing for phone free schools. It's aptly named the Phone Free Schools Movement.
I'm Sabina Pollack, and I'm co founder of the Phone Free School's Movement.
Sabina has a very personal backstory that got her involved in this issue.
Yeah.
So, unfortunately, it all started with a phone call out of the blue from my daughter's school counselor saying that she was suicidal, which completely floored me.
I had no idea she was struggling.
Turns out, the main aggravator to that mental health challenges that she was facing with social media and her social media use. Long story short, she ended up spending six weeks in a partial hospitalization program. I did a deep dive into the applications she was using. Was pretty horrified at what I was finding. Social media had pretty much turned her from a thriving young person with aspirations goals for the future, to someone that was unrecognizable, had no
aspirations anymore, had given up on herself. So when we finally sent her back to school, our school had a cell phone policy on paper, had trust that we were sending her back to a school where they kind of had her back taking the right steps. We found out pretty much at the end of that semester that her grades were falling, and we spoke to all her teachers and said, is she using her cell phone? And unanimously they all said, yep, she sits on her cell phone
all day during class. So here, not only did we think that we were sending our daughter back to this safe, healthy environment, but it was the complete opposite. No one was going to tell us that these problems were going on.
Sabina told me she met with the school administration, who said that they were aware of the issues with phones and students, but were hesitant to really do anything about it out of fear of reprisal from the community and In Sabina's view, this issue couldn't be solved individually because she tried to take her daughter's phone away but only alienated her daughter further from her peers and made the problem even worse. So I asked what she recommends.
We did the boots on the ground research to try to figure out, like what was making certain policies effective and what was making other policies fail. And what we found out was that it really needs to be an all day bell to belle policy, so that means it's not in their backpack, it's not in a personal locker. It has to be you know, stored away from the person or in a in something like a lockable pouch.
And especially with the classroom time only bands, were really putting the burden completely on the teachers to have to enforce that type of a ban. Some teachers are going to enforce it at a higher level than others, and then you have this inconsistency which leads to pushback from students and even the teachers that are heavily trying to enforce the policies. After a couple of weeks, they end up kind of giving up on the policy, and by.
The end of the school year. No one's really enforcing it anymore.
Like, not even ten minutes ago, I was saying how I could see, like your phone gets banned in specific classes. But now now hearing her, I can easily see why all day makes a little bit more sense. Like teachers are already so burdened, and I like all these factors. They're probably so stressed out, they're underpaid. It does seem unfair to put like one more thing on them.
Now, just like kids.
Yeah, it's hard enough obviously to be a teacher. So another common thing you'll hear against bens is what if my kid needs to reach me. Here's what Sabina had to say to that.
So we're hearing from mental health professionals that you really need to equip these kids, even the ones that have anxiety, with other type of coping mechanisms. Even in the real world, they're going to have to have several different types of coping methods to be able to navigate a job and so forth. Kids having twenty four access to their parents
can sometimes fuel anxiety. Schools were typically the safe spaces, you know, It's the first place that they were independent from their parents and kind of could experiment through trial and are with navigating that independence.
When you look at the surveys, parents say they want the kids to have cell phones in schools in case there's an emergency. So obviously the most extreme and kind of top of mind one often is school shootings. Do you have a response to that line of argument.
Yeah, I mean, as a parent, I have to say, I get it right, Like, that's a hugely emotional thing that's on the top of all of our minds, but we have to kind of make sure that we're separating the emotions from the facts. So we know that phones make kids much less safe in emergency situation, and that comes from, you know, the fact that the phone could alert an intruder of the hiding location of students, tying
up communication lines to first responders. And I have to remind myself that the number one important thing is that they're safe and that these teachers are highly trained in these situations and to kind of rely on them and
their expertise to handle the situation. There's simple solutions that schools can take, you know, that are cost effective, whether it's installing panic buttons in each classrooms that allowed the direct line to emergency response I don't think that arming kids with cell phones and replacing one harm with another is the solution.
There's got to be something else.
Social Media obviously is a huge, probably the biggest kind of catalyst in this whole debate. So obviously school is only part of the day, you know, from whatever seven thirty to two thirty. So I asked if focusing on social media regulation might be a better thing to focus on than getting phones out of schools.
Fixing the problems with social media definitely, you know, it has to happen. We're obviously huge supporters of KOSA and bills like that. Unfortunately, those things aren't going to happen fast enough where our kids need it to happen. We need to find other solutions in the meantime. Number One, we are by no means suggesting that phone free schools are the only solution, but we do really feel like it's an important for at step and changing a community
norm around phone use. We do have to realize that these kids are addicted, and so giving them the seven plus hours a day to collectively experience life as a group, as a community without social media is really some of the best digital literacy that we can provide.
So Sabina mentioned KOSA. That's the Kids Online Safety Act. It's a bipartisan bill that was passed by the Senate in July twenty twenty four, but Congress hasn't voted on it yet.
Young people will take back control over their on law lives. Parents will have tools to safeguard those young people. They will be able to disconnect from the addictive features and opt out of those black box algorithms that drive at them relentlessly, be eating disorders, bullying, fentanyl, sex exploitation, self harm, and all too often suicide and bullying.
That Senator Richard Blumenthal one of the co sponsors of the bill. I don't want to get too far into the weeds here, but it's garnered a bit of controversy. Groups like the ACLU argue that it's a First Amendment violation, and they say it could be used to sensor info on things like sexual health and gender identity or getting help with eating disorders. Basically, what Constitute says harmful needs to be more specific. We're not going to debate KOSA,
but generally so like, that's not the point here. Yeah, do you guys agree that cutting social media use during school might help overall with maybe addiction outside of see.
Yeah, if you're not using your phone for seven hours straught today, it's going to make it easier for you to not be on your phone when you're not at school.
And lastly, I asked if being had any insight on how students actually are reacting to these bands, like how do they feel.
I don't know that we've heard from any schools that have really had an issue when it comes to students kind of adjusting to these policies and in many instances actually being very thankful that these policies were put in place.
I think school's biggest fear is they.
Think we're going to have pushback from students, and we're seeing very little of that. But for the most part, we're hearing positive things. I mean, if you think about it, just kind of going to a school worrying that you might drop your lunch tray and you might be videotaped and all of a sudden, it's you know, all over the internet. But it's just a lot of pressure and when you remove that, they're all kind of breathing a
sigh of relief. I think one of my pet peeves is when people say, well, my child has a right to have a phone, and going through this experience, you know, to me, I feel like my child and every child has a right to a distraction free education, a right to choose to go to school without a phone or put their phone away and not feel isolated from everyone around them.
Kids have a right to that. They have a right to a healthy school day.
I had a visceral reaction to my kids have a right to have a phone. I'm sorry, it's so I get why you want your kids to have a phone.
My kid has a right to have a phone.
Obviously, she wants to she wants to implement these policies.
So I wonder like she's.
Broke if all of the kids were so positive about it.
I think one issue is obviously kids it's harder to survey the same way you can adults. Yeah, so there's just wayless data on what students think about these things.
M hm.
So a lot of this stuff is both fore and against. It's pretty anecdotal, you know. So you'll see story about school that put this in and there'll be one quote from some kid who said, yeah it's cool, you know, or I don't want this, you know, and it's like, well, all right, well that's what Matt from this town.
It's like, okay, Well, if I was, you know, not neutral, I was leaning towards restrictions at the beginning of this episode. Listening to her made me go a little bit further towards that direction. So I'm interested to hear the people on the other side of the argument. After the break, we'll hear from a parent on the other side. But first, some friends of the show shared their perspectives.
Do you think school should ban phones?
I think they should mainly because it used to be like people participate in you got your side conversations.
Now when you.
Walk through the hallway just scrolling on TikTok Instagram reels, it's like the hype is going about school, Like the only fun part of school is like getting died down. It's like nobody's even like talking in class, so you don't even get the social activities anymore.
So it's just a school, school, school, work, work work.
It's not like I'm not that person I can discross for I need things to do, you know.
Yeah, and especially a.
School when you have all these people around you, all these friends or people that could be your friends, and then you're just on your phone. It just defeasts the purpose of a school.
You know, as someone who has worked in a middle school in New York City for the past seven years, I have seen the benefit of rules against students having their cell phones. We collect our student cell phones first thing every morning. We don't entirely know the long term effects that this generation will have and their access to social media or the remote years of school due to COVID.
I love being in a school in classrooms where you don't have to worry about kids being distracted by their phones, and see it as a unique opportunity. It's so beneficial to provide kids a sacred time and space away from the outside world social media and just focus on their education and building relationships with people in person.
And we're back.
I'm Anny Noah Devin.
So now that we've heard from the phone free school's movement, it's time to turn to the other side. Fifty six percent of parents say students should sometimes be allowed to use their cell phones during the school day, and this is according to a survey by the National Parents Union. So I wanted to hear that a union. That was my first question. Yeah, so that was My first question is what is the National Parents Union.
My name is Carrie Rodriguez, and I am Matthew Miles and David's mom, and I am the president of the National Parents Union. The National Parents Union is the united independent voice of modern American families. So what we seek to do is to bring together pockets of parents power.
We've got about eighteen hundred of them in all fifty states, DC and Puerto Rico, with about one point seven million members and reaching between eighteen to twenty million families every single month through our infrastructure, where we seek to bring together parents who want to make sure that the priorities of American families are actually at the center of our
policy building, our legislation, and our politics. The majority of American families actually do not want to ban cell phones, which you know, may sound crazy when you think about it, but it's actually pretty logical because what we have found in our research is that parents view cell phones as communications devices and really value the ability that we have to have that direct line of communication with our kids because in modern American life, whether it's the fact that
you know, half of families are divorced and we've got folks sharing child custos, and you know, we no longer have this nineteen fifties model where mom is waiting at home or mom is going to the school and pick like kids are by themselves, they're on public transportation. Having that line of communication where we can track our kids, know where they are, make sure that we are there for them is something that is a part of modern life and modern American culture.
Like Sabina, Carrie brings up the mental health crisis among children, exacerbated by social media, but her argument is that because of this, kids rely on direct lines of communication for needed support.
My youngest is a sixth grader. I've gotten calls from the bathroom from a kid who's on a five four plan. My youngest son saying to me like, Mom, can you come get me? My teacher's not here. They don't know, they don't know how to calm me down. I'm having a panic attack. What can I do? I hop on FaceTime with him to help him.
To de escalate.
What's interesting is there's already even just in this there's so much that she does agree with the other side, especially on social media and mental health and these things. It's more like, do we go after the phones or do we go after the apps? Yeah, because if you both again, it sounds like if they got rid of the apps and the phone was kind of like our phones in school and it was just the dumb phone where Okay, I can call my mom if I really need to. Yeah, that might solve most of the issues.
For that's a good distinction that it's not really like banned phones. It's like ban the distractions on the phones.
Maybe.
I think where I disagree with her, and I think she had a lot of valid points right about, like, yeah, should this be more of a conversation. One point that really stuck with me is her saying, you know, I understand these I don't know what it's like to go to school or be at a young age and go through COVID. I know a lot of people had a tough time with that, even our age, so I can't imagine being a kid and losing that development time.
I think.
I just don't see a world in which it is is good that your child is reaching out to you throughout the day as a crutch.
If you have a situation that severe, you know, then there should be something else, YESD like yes, okay, I need to go to the bathroom and call my mom.
Yeah, like you should get a note, you should get a doctor's serious.
And yes, like there should be other things in play.
It shouldn't be the norm, it should be an exception. At a certain point, they're not going to be able to call you when they're in a tough situation, so they're going to have to learn that skill. And yeah, you would want to ease them into that, But I don't think the response should be, well, I should just always be available to my kid. It's like, yeah, when we were growing up, we couldn't talk to our parents during the day unless it was an emergency, right, Like, you have to just figure it out.
So I asked Carrie what an ideal policy would look like. Her emphasis, again was on including parents and students in the policy making and underlining the reality that we we do live in the cell phone age, for better or worse.
An ideal policy incorporates the concerns that teachers have around distraction disruption, but also takes into the account the fact that we are pushing our kids into a digital society where they're going to have to be competitive in a global economy where these devices are going to be a part of everyday life. And it's also our obligation to teach our children the behavioral management skills to have a
healthy relationship with technology. Now we can ban things, you know, we try this with a lot of stuff, like maybe abstinence education. The best way not to have pregnant teenagers right is just to tell them don't have sex, right, don't do drugs like that's always our go to is to be like, well, just tell them not to do it. That doesn't work. Well, you know, it's never been an
effective strategy. I also see the antiquated classrooms that our kids are spending hours a day, and with the idea if you know, they're never going to have access to this technology to help them with their everyday skills that they're going to utilize, it just seems like a missed opportunity.
The abstinence thing doesn't make sense because we're saying, basically, during this period of time, don't do the thing.
Yeah, we're not saying don't be on your phone. Period.
We're saying, during this period of time, we're not going to ask you not to be on your phone.
And to be slightly fair to her, I think like the analogy about abstinence and drug use, Like wasn't the best analogy, but I do understand the point of like, instead of banning something, you know from the ground up, you can be you could, I don't know, focus more education about it and like help kids understand what the problems are and.
Who, like who's responsible for that now in this scenario where the kids are having the phones, who's responsible for teaching the kids how to have that balance?
Now?
The teachers are Now that's the current situation wherein and it's not working right. Yeah, So the parents are on doing a good job of teaching their kids when to not use their phones, and the teachers are struggling with it. Like we're not at this point because it's not a problem and someone just decided.
Yea great, Oh actually it's just take the phones away.
Yeah, there is a problem and that parents are not doing a good job of it and the teachers are struggling with it.
Yeah. So kind of last on this, she again really stresses wanting her voice to be heard, and she understands the difficulty of enforcing some of these policies in practice.
You can put whatever policy you want, I will tell you that, Like, even when I do a TikTok about this issue. The comments that I get from American families are like, great, have your little policy. Let me tell you about what's going to happen with my child, because if you think I trust you like that in a day and age where it is a standing possibility that they could be shot to death and murdered in a classroom, you're out of your mind. I will send my kid
with a burner phone. I don't care about your little policy. We have made a decision in this country that we are not going to do anything about gun violence. So if all you got for me is thoughts and prayers, all I got for you is my kid's going to have a cell phone hundred percent.
Like.
The argument will be, well, those are those are so rare, which again I don't buy because you've had more than two hundred and fifty instances of gun violence and we're only in January. Friend. Oftentimes policies like this they come to me after the cake is baked. I want to be asked, are you hungry?
Do you want cake?
Do you want a hamburger? Like That's the part of the process that we need to be brought into so that we can actually bring up these points about like what we're concerned about, but unfortunately, you know, you bring
us in afterwards. What ends up happening is again the concerns that I have, which are real and valid, around kids being hurt, being unsafe, Like if you're not considering like instances like that our special education community, frankly communities of color and families that unfortunately have these policies more directly implemented down upon them and unfairly subject their kids to school discipline because there's just a bigger crackdown in
communities of color, Like these are very real things that need to be considered.
A really good point I think about who's going to get in trouble for having these phones? You know, we already know black and brown kids are disproportionately punished for doing the same things as white kids. Is just just another excuse to be like, hey, Dayshan, why.
Are you always on your phone?
Meanwhile, Billy's doing the same exact thing, but Dashawn's getting suspended for it and Billy if not.
Maybe this just makes me feel like restrictions but flat like blanket once they need to be stressed, because if they're not blanket, then you do run into all these issues area she's talking about, who's going to get in trouble, our parents, going to give people second phones, that kind of stuff. Now, maybe I'm just sliding slightly more to or to the bell to bell versus class to class.
I will tell you anecdotally from what I have seen in focus groups, what is so compelling to me is the lack of understanding around why we are allowing them to be victim to the algorithm. And that is why the National Parents Union and me personally, I am such an advocate for KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, because the real problem that we face is the lack of regulation around social media and the lack of protection for our kids and what they are allowed to be influenced by.
And frankly, every minute that we waste kind of having this convoluted conversation is it the device or is it the app? Like I'll tell you, it's the app we actually have as parents, cell phone device management software that we utilize many of us utilize at home. And this is where it gets kind of crazy, right because again, as I said, the very real concerns that folks bring up about distraction, like there are ways that we can innovate our way out of this. I know in my house,
I use an app called Aura. It's literally like I have control over my kids devices. I can control when they're on the Wi Fi. I can control exactly what apps they use. I can track their text to make sure that there's no like there are keywords, so that if there are issues that they're dealing with that they
get flagged. For me, why aren't we doing that? It would be so smart and so easy to be able to create that bubble over schools, or have folks register these numbers so that they could be restricted during the school day while at the same time giving parents the access to their kids and having that open line of communication.
Let's break this up first on. She talks about having these apps like Aura that can really kind of control everything on the phone. To me, the way she lays at that sounds like a pretty good solution that doesn't seem impossible for a school to implement.
I don't know how it would work. I am skeptical of that.
Do you think kids would be able to get around it?
Kids?
Did you have like yeah, like face like the school computers that wouldn't let you on Facebook?
Yeah, we had specific stuff like I The issue is the kids know more about the stuff than the parents. To do whatever solution you're going to have to implement, you have to be able to implement with everybody. And I can see that working in some schools, right or some classrooms where everyone is down. But what if three or four of the kids' parents are like, actually, I don't want that installed. The issue is like whatever you put into place, they are going to people who don't want to do it.
The technology doesn't seem that complicated, like if on my sports gambling app, for example, if I'm in a certain state, it's just as bloop, you can't use it here. Yeah, so that seems easy if they do implement some kind of like bubble over these schools that like don't let you use.
I'm just sorry, we can't get like schools books. We're gonna be implementing bubbles Like this is the thing with these apps and stuff. It's like, yeah, it's gonna work at like private schools or schools that already have a lot of resources. The schools that really need this the most are not gonna be able to implement this stuff.
They can't get like Trump is currently.
Trying to Bend a department of education, and we're talking about getting smartphone apps. We gotta be realistic about what it's like, what we're going to be able to do. And I think installing apps on every kid's phone that goes to that school is the most roundabout way to just stop kids from using their phone.
Just take the phones away.
Yeah.
She also before I even had a chance to bring it up, she had a response to my go to answer of just go to the front office like I used to back in the day.
And the other thing that I just I have to address because I know our friends are going to say, well, if you want to contact your kid, they want to contact you, just go to the go to the phone.
In the art.
I say, this is my when I first was having this conversation, this is what I was thinking. So what's your answer to that?
Freaking wild I want to be like, do you have kids in a school, like an actual school. Have you ever tried to call and get a hold that God blessed that school secretary. Okay, here in Massachusetts you got two three thousand kids in a high school trying to get a hold of your child in that school building or having them get a hold of you in a line of kids, and that's that's not again in keeping with reality, the schools have yet to figure out how
to effectively communicate with parents and families. So there's a lot of work to be done on the other end so that schools can earn our trust that they've got it.
Fair point. I think Jesus one hundred valid.
I think if you want to take people's phones away, you should be able to notify the parents. If there's a drill or a lockdown, you should probably figure that out.
And then lastly, to close out, she told me that it's not just the phones that are creating this disengagement in the classrooms, but maybe teaching methods need an update or a change.
The issues that we have with cell phones and the obsession and the amount of engagement we have with this technology is really a symptom of a greater disease, and that is the fact that kids are disengaged from our classrooms. We don't have good classroom management. You know, the little four year old kid who can't wait to tell you everything they know about dinosaurs and all the facts and
everything they've learned. That fire is extinguished, that sparkle leaves, and that's the real problem, is that our teens, their brains are seeking that engagement. So I think that, like when we double click on this, like, shouldn't we be asking the question like why are our kids who are so hungry for knowledge, who want to learn, why are they so checked out about what's actually happening in the classroom.
Because where you will see a difference, teachers that have the ability to engage kids, that have really good practices around classroom management generally don't have a hard time around keeping kids off cell phones. And that is really if we really want to address the issue and get to the core of it, I mean, you could ban it. I guess is it really going to address the problem? I don't think so.
Talking about like the real world work is boring. A lot of times, you're going to be bored in places. Not everything is going to be engaging, And I think part of learning to be an adult is learning how to be bored in a way that is productive.
Yeah, and I think.
That just because your teacher is boring shouldn't be an excuse for you to be on your phone.
Yeah, I mean, of course not.
But I do agree that.
Just getting rid of phones does not mean that kids are strongly going to be better at learning. You have to complement that of also engaging them in new ways. We're not suddenly matching China in terms of education because we took the phone.
Well, it's a lot easier to believe that, you know, you know, a kid's not going to excel just because you take their phone away. But it's a lot easier to believe that a kid is failing to excel because their phone is there.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So this leads me to the next thing I want to look into when we get back is do these bands even work? Okay, so now we've heard from Sabina who is for the bands, and then we heard from Carrie who's against the bands. But I wanted to find out if we've actually seen any results as far as academic performance or mental health. Do these bands even work? So looking into the research, it's pretty difficult to sort out what's actually effective and what's not.
There's so many different variables across schools, states, countries, not to mention social media algorithms always changing, COVID, etc. All of which is a long way to say there's no clear, conclusive evidence at this point. To say phone bans are good or phone bands are bad. But there have been some studies with more to come on the way, So
here's a little bit of what's out there. One study from twenty sixteen out of England saw schools that had bands had improved test scores, especially among low performing students. The researcher said the effect of the bands was roughly equivalent to an extra hour of schooling per week. A twenty twenty two study in Spain saw a reduction in cyber bullying and two regions with cell phone bands and
positive test scores. Question of mental health is a little murkier and points to some of the issues are experts discussed earlier in the episode. For example, one study from the University of Birmingham in the UK compared mental well being among students with restrictive and permissive school phone policies. They found no evidence that restrictive policies helped mental health outcomes in students and ultimately said that these policies need
further development. So now that we've heard all of this, have you guys changed your minds at all?
I think after everything we've heard definitely really good points that I hadn't thought about before on the against band side, especially with the implementation of the bands or restrictions, I think I'm still leaning a little bit towards some kind of restriction, maybe not a flat out band, but hearing some of the data from Europe where we all note there are not school shootings happening, and hearing the story from Sabina, like, I'm just like, there's there's enough information
out there for me to be like, we should at least try it.
Yeah, it's not as clear cut as maybe I wanted it to be at the.
Start, and I'm certainly you know, there seem to be people who are like I guess more alarmists about the phones and schools than we are. Like, I just think it would be a healthier environment for kids. But I'm not like going to protest or anything.
Like don't have kids.
School.
They won't let me within ten feet school.
For another episode, Devin, you were you were pretty.
Frank, came in flat than Yeah, pro you feel I still feel that there should be a flat ban bell to bell before this, I would say we should do
it yesterday. I do think there's some some work needs to be done way to Yeah, I don't think we should do it tomorrow, because I do think there's some valid concerns of like, yeah, I didn't think it, but you know, I went to a school with like three hundred people, so I didn't think about the fact that, yeah, if you have three thousand people and you have one phone line, even if it's not a school shooting, if I'm just trying to call my kid because of something
it's busy, yeah, yeah, you may get the busy signal.
It's like, but we figured It's like, there's there's ways those things.
It seems like a couple hundred bucks could fix a lot of it.
I think we should.
Yeah, we should put our efforts into making those things better, right, Like are notifying parents, making it so that parents can call the schools and not like hit a busy signal versus I want to put my efforts into allowing kids to keep their phones but putting apps on it and a firewall on the school.
I'm like, take the phones away.
Just make it easier for parents to get in contact with their kids and for kids to get in contact with their parents. But I just think that kids, I just there are adults who don't know how to communicate, and I'm very worried that these you know, like we call them the iPad kids are going to have a real tough time in a real world because they're just using that phone as a crutch day in and day out. And I think it is so easy to get distracted
in school. We get distracted without phones. So it's like, yeah, as much of the distractions that we can eliminate, the better. I don't think it's a magic I guess we were saying before, like.
No more phones. Everyone knows is at an OFFICIAD thirty six on the Act.
But yeah, but like, let's not have more thing Like it was hard enough for us to go to school without phones, and like pay attention. Let's not allow more distractions in the classroom if we can go back.
To Yeah, I think taking into account a lot of the things that I was most surprised by how much these people did agree on things, especially with social media, and there are these clear practical solutions that don't seem they would like they would be particularly difficult to incorporate, and I think addressing those would help alleviate this the kind of distrust that exists because of kind of how chaotic it sounds like it can be to be a parent in this day and age.
Yeah, and I wonder just kind of looking forward. Devin mentioned earlier like Trump is probably going to sign an executive order. It might be signed by the time the episode comes out that basically eliminates the Department of Education. I do wonder how much that would play a role into the school bands or keeping the phones in there, Like if there's even gonna be resources for this, because we're already so limited. Damn yeah, we might not even be here. There might not be schools at all.
Thanks for listening to know such thing. This show is produced by Noah Friedman, Manny Fidel, and Devin Joseph. Our theme song is by Manny. Our guests today were Sabina Polac and Carrie Rodriguez. For more, you can subscribe to our newsletter at www dot no such thing dot show. I'll be dropping links to our guests, websites and other information I look that while producing this episode. Let us know what you think or if you have any rex
for more info. Lastly, please give us a five star rating and write a nice review wherever you're listening to us. We really appreciate it. Thanks and talk to you again soon. God bless, Get off the phones, Oh Pappa on Ring
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