Gov. Hochul is right about this one: If smartphones are banned in New York public schools, and they should be, the ban should be bell-to-bell. Which is to say, no lunches where kids sit staring down at their devices, and no breaks between classes where kids frantically scroll through TikTok to update themselves on the latest video. The benefits of a smartphone-free environment go beyond encouraging classroom focus: This is also about building a better social climate in which kids can actually look each other in the eyes, be present and have conversations.
We understand the objections of administrators and others who say such a ban is too strict. Let students reach for their phones in the hallways, or while eating, or in homeroom, or whatever. But the camel’s neck gets under the tent much more easily after its nose is already sniffing around. Easier for there to be a clear, rigid rule that says schools are learning environments, not places for distraction machines to burn holes in kids’ pockets, turning teachers into enforcers all throughout the day.
This isn’t to say that schools should become isolation booths in which kids should be systematically denied access to the outside world. Under Hochul’s proposal, sanctioned simple phones — which allow phone calls and texting — would be permitted.
These are distinctions with meaningful differences: Smartphones are full-on computers in the pocket, tempting kids with nonstop streams of posts and videos and music and so much more, including instant access to AI bots that make cheating that much easier. Other devices pale in comparison.
American tweens and teens have been sucked into the vortex of an always-on internet, with social media that gives them stimulation and affirmation or doesn’t, whipsawing their sense of self and pulling them out of the spaces and the moments they’re supposed to be in.
Simultaneously, American tweens and teens are in the throes of a mental health crisis, feeling adrift and beset by depression.
The verdict is out on whether correlation is causation — it’ll be out for decades — but that doesn’t mean we sit around and do nothing. Responsible adults who read research and have an intuitive sense of how smartphones routinely interfere with family dinners and interrupt their own trains of thought know deep down that they shouldn’t overtake schools too.
Smartphones aren’t all bad, and those who portray them as such are overreaching badly. Kids can learn how to do almost anything on YouTube. They can combat loneliness by connecting to people like them, even if there seems to be no one like them in their hometown. They can instantly answer countless questions. They can discover new music. They can make art. They’re genuine technological wonders.
But in the hours when a kid is in school, he or she should be prohibited from carrying around a portable TV, or what geezers like us would call a boombox, or any number of other things that get in the way of kids focusing on what their teacher and other students are saying and doing.
Keep smartphones out of classrooms and hallways and lunchrooms and gyms so that more kids grow into healthy, happy, balanced and well-educated young people. This is really not that hard.