The good news is: parents and educators are asking important questions about whether or not the presence of student phones and smart devices interferes with children’s school experience. 

Twenty years ago, the iPhone didn’t even exist. The first model came out in 2007 and it took several more years after that to see iPhones appearing in the hands of teenagers. By the time I left the classroom in 2015, over 90% of my middle school students had smartphones (I surveyed them). 

So when we talk about whether or not phones should be allowed in schools, we need to first remember that this is really a phenomenon that has crested over the last 10 years. (A second and equally problematic issue is the presence of school-issued tech, which I have written about extensively here, here, and here, if you’d like to read more on that topic.)

Understandably, with any large shift in policy, some parents are concerned about banning student phones from schools. I hear several of the same arguments repeated in this debate. 

Let’s unpack them:

Argument #1: Students need their phones in school for safety reasons. 

For many years, I have heard from parents that an underlying reason why parents in America are giving their children phones to take to school has a lot to do with fears of school shootings. Let me state this up front: it is unconscionable that children in this country are subjected to even the potential threat of such horrific acts. That students as young as five have to practice regular active shooter drills, contemplate hiding places, and live in fear of violence is traumatizing. It should not be this way. As a parent myself, I would be lying if I said I did not have my own fears about this. 

I’m going to start with the obvious and most difficult part: When it comes to safety, there are several reasons why children having access to phones in dangerous situations does not increase personal or group safety, and in fact, may have the opposite effect. Again, as a parent, I understand wanting to be able to text or call my children if the unthinkable happens. Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies and experts have cautioned that in a crisis situation, children should be focused on adults, not devices. Additionally, phone notifications and rings can alert a perpetrator to where students are hiding, and risk interfering with communication signals as frantic parents try to contact their children. (Even as I wrote this essay, this essay popped up in my feed. I’m not the only one saying this.)

As a parent myself, I have to work daily to remind myself of these facts. While the fear and threat of school violence is very real and indeed can cause real harm to children, the reality of an actual active-shooter situation occurring in school is extremely rare. In fact, a child is much more likely to be harmed by gun violence in the home than in school. These much more frequent realities are not the stories that make headline news. 

When parents argue that their children must have phones in case of emergencies like active shooter situations, we have to balance our fear of that extremely scary but extremely rare occurrence with the very real and very dangerous harms presented by a child having a smart device. Increasingly, children are exposed to harmful content (like porn and violence) on their phones (whether they seek it out or not). The most recent research from the Center for Disease Control has found that children ages 8-18 average 7.5 per day on their devices. This is outside of school hours. Nearly three-quarters of teens have been exposed to pornography, and 46% say they are online “almost constantly.”  

The emergencies that are happening with kids and devices that happen at school are not real-world violence. The true dangers lie in the onslaught of violent, sexualized, inappropriate content that floods social media feeds and YouTube videos. We are in the middle of a youth mental health crisis in this country and social media and phones are linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. 

If parents are concerned about their child’s safety in school, the best way to protect their physical and mental health is to support a school ban on smartphones.

Argument #2: I need to be able to reach my child quickly. 

Parents: Stop texting your children while at school. I get it– it’s convenient, the message gets straight to your kid, you can fill them in on schedule changes, etc. But in addition to being highly distracting, you are setting the example that we should always be available to respond to people who text us at any hour of the day no matter what we’re doing. Is that the kind of adult we want our children to become? 

In this digital age, we’ve grown accustomed to almost instantaneous communication. For adults, there may be convenient benefits to this. But for still-developing children in a school environment, however, the presence of devices may be convenient for parents, but deeply disruptive for kids. 

Schools still have front offices and telephones. Teachers have email. And your children will be okay not getting messages immediately on their personal devices. There is also a skill-building opportunity to note here: children need to develop problem solving skills. When parents can immediately contact their child (or alternatively, their child can contact them, such as when they’re upset about a low grade or social situation), we are robbing children of an opportunity to build skills that do matter to their future success. 

Being able to contact parents in school is a really recent phenomenon. Imagine your own middle or high school experience– if you wanted to contact a parent during the school day, you’d have to leave class, go to the front office, ask to use the phone, and then likely make that call with several people standing around you. It would make us think twice about how necessary it was to contact our parents (and indeed, sometimes it would be!). Consider the possibility that for our children today, a little separation and disconnect from us during the day is actually extremely beneficial to their independence and growth as humans. 

You do not need to reach your child quickly; you want to. That’s not a reason to justify smartphones in school, especially when their harms and negative impacts on learning are well-documented. 

A note about smartwatches:

As many parents turn to smartwatches as an alternative to the phone (possibly to evade the new school phone bans), one problem is just being exchanged for another. Smart devices– watches or phones– are distracting, not just to the children wearing them, but to the children around them, too. There is ample research that shows that the mere presence of smart devices negatively impacts focus, attention, and performance, and “secondhand screentime” (your child may not have a smart device but the kid sitting next to them might) can be equally distracting. (So you can be doing everything “right” by not sending your kid to school with a phone or smartwatch and they will be negatively affected by the presence of other kids’ smart devices). 

I’ve heard other experts suggest smartwatches as a phone alternative. I strongly disagree. Even a smartphone can be put in another room or zipped into a backpack. A smartwatch is worn on the body. If the goal is to increase focus and decrease distraction, wearable smart technology is going to have the opposite effect. A smartwatch is just a small smartphone on a wrist. Skip them. 

Argument #3 I need to be able to track my child’s location.

According to Pew Research, the top three parental fears in America are:

1. Youth mental health

2. Bullying

3. Kidnapping

As mentioned above and in several other essays I’ve written, it’s no surprise that mental health is at the top of that list. The U.S. Surgeon General announced last year that we have a true crisis on our hands. And of course, being a target of bullying will absolutely affect mental health. 

But “kidnapping” is on that list too, even though the risk of being kidnapped is statistically nil (almost 1 in a million). It’s also one of the top reasons I hear for why parents feel the need to give their child a smartphone in the first place– so if a child gets kidnapped they can call for help and a parent can track their GPS. Why is this such a big fear? 

First, parents are also consumers of click-bait news and social media stories that sensationalize the very rare occurrences of “true” kidnapping (as opposed to children who run away, for example.) So even though the risks are virtually non-existent, we feel like the risk is real because we see those scary stories. (And many of us were raised fearing “stranger danger” and that is still with us as parents today.) 

Second, we live in a world that is increasingly justifying the use of surveillance in the name of safety. This is a slippery slope– we may want our government to protect its citizenry from threats foreign and domestic, but how does that extend to surveilling our own children’s location 24/7? I understand the convenience– if a child has a phone, it’s very easy to find their location, so why is it so bad to check? It’s not that we can’t check; it’s whether or not we should and our reasons for doing so. 

As Lenore Skenazy writes about in her book and speaks about in her activism through the Let Grow movement, we really need our children to have independent experiences in the real world to build skills like resilience and courage (the true 21st century skills our kids need, I would argue.) But when we place a tracking device on them and monitor their every move, we’re implying that we do not trust their ability to navigate the world. 

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting you drop your 4-year-old off on a random street corner– of course not. We need to teach our children what safe street crossing looks like (having a phone in their hand absolutely presents a safety threat, by the way), and how to ask for help from strangers (“stranger danger” increases fear rather than teaching street smarts!). 

Our children’s autonomy and privacy is an important part of their development. Surveillance not only erodes trust, but it is a violation of their growing personhood. One parent told me that on senior prom night, she was with a group of parents who were all tracking their high school seniors– some 18 years old!-- on their phones all night. I can’t imagine that any of us would’ve felt good knowing our parents tracked our every move when we were teenagers. (And that’s another question– do your children know they’re being tracked?). 

Tracking our children’s location is about our own anxieties and fears about the world; not about keeping our children safe. In fact, surveilling our kids can have the opposite effect. As with so many parts of parenting in the digital age, if we want to raise self-aware, confident, resilient children, we also have to know when to let them go. We have to trust that we’ve equipped them with skills and experiences that will let them navigate the world in front of them (both the real and, hopefully, the digital). 

There are a lot of articles and stories about phone bans in schools. I highly recommend the Phone Free Schools Movement website as a resource for more information on this. One very important note about effective phone-free schools is that the ban has to be from first bell to last bell– a ban “just during instructional time” is not a phone ban and will not net the same benefits. In fact, I would argue, it just muddies the water. 

For parents, this may be one of the most difficult parts of parenting in the digital age: knowing when to let go. Smartphones and social media impede development and growth. Giving our children a break from smart devices during the school day– at the bare minimum– is good for their brains and their future. 

If the thought of a school phone ban causes us great stress, then that is a good indication we know where the work needs to start. 

e