Phone silence — with conditions — can enhance learning

Yahoo

17-02-2025

The Nebraska Legislature is considering a cell phone ban bill backed by Gov. Jim Pillen. (Aaron Sanderford/Nebraska Examiner)
Even though it may be late to the party, the Nebraska Legislature is making the right call by advancing a bill banning student cellphone use at school. A number of school districts already curtail students' phone time on campus.
If passed, Legislative Bill 140 would require Nebraska's 245 public school districts to get on the 'ban wagon' by adopting policies that would be within the scope of the law while preserving a district's prerogative to shape its own local details. LB 140 was introduced by Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue at the request of Gov. Jim Pillen.
Aside from the mind-numbing, time-wasting game of whack-a-mole teachers play patrolling their classrooms for cellphone use, the research about screen time's effect on students' minds and academic performance is clear and emerging. One study published in the 'Journal of Experimental Psychology' also identified cellphones as negatively impacting social development among middle and high school students.
In his book 'Stolen Focus,' Johann Hari cites research that indicates today's young people have far less concentration power than previous generations. And, as the title of his book suggests, their focus was 'stolen' from them through a combination of devices, algorithms and marketing.
Some of these studies reported that the average college student spends at most about 65 seconds on a task before needing to refocus.
Refinding your place or your thought or even your bearings after an interruption — what Hari calls the 'switch cost effect' — can be debilitating. We increase our mistakes, decrease our creativity and poke holes in our mind's ability to retain. He cites studies, which reveal that once our focus is interrupted — via classmate, text message, TikTok video, whatever — we need 23 minutes to reach the level of concentration before the interruption.
While LB 140 is rightly aimed at our youngest minds, adults are neither immune nor invulnerable to cell phone disruption. Hari, whose book was highlighted in this space several years ago, said the average office worker's continuous concentration tops out at three minutes, and the average Fortune 500 CEO gets about 28 minutes of uninterrupted focus a day.
The data is clear: Banning cellphones in schools has science on its side. Plus, perhaps the art of face-to-face conversation, on life support in many of modern society's precincts, may live to tell the tale.
A principal, in one of the state's largest high schools, in its second year of students checking in their cellphones before the first bell and picking them up after school, told me that the strangest thing was happening, especially at lunch. Students were talking to each other.
Before we give LB 140 the checkered flag though, let's tap the brakes a little. I love my cellphone with the fervor of a high school student. In my pocket I have a computer, a camera for stills or video, a jukebox, an editing studio, a small theater, a word processor, an interpersonal and professional communications hub, an encyclopedic information retrieval center, a personal valet who can order coffee, find a weather forecast and write a 500-word essay on the symbolism in 'MacBeth,' and, remarkably, answer seemingly any question my life poses.
Shutting down such a universally-useful device for hours on end should come with solid rationale and certain conditions.
For starters, young people have an innate and perhaps outsized sense of hypocrisy. As we develop policies that reduce phone use in school, the adults who maintain these guidelines would do well to model the same behavior. Leveling up on Candy Crush Saga while you monitor study hall would be a poor play.
Let's also remember that many parents get a sense of security knowing their children have phones they can use in case of an emergency. Sadly, we live in a world of active shooters and other distempers with which schools are faced. If LB 140 becomes state law, in addition to determining when and where students can use their phones on campus, districts would do well to have an unambiguous plan that underscores student safety and defines clear lines of communication in emergencies. The bill itself contemplates exceptions for emergencies.
I occasionally play 'There oughtta be a law.' Perhaps you do, too. Here's one: A cellphone conversation in a restaurant loud enough for the entire section to hear not only steals my focus, it can ruin a nice meal. And, if that law oughtta be, let's double the fine for using the speaker setting.
Too much? Not the Legislature's lane? Sure. But being on the proper side of the fight for our children's focus, concentration and, in a very real sense, their futures, is just right.
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