As bumper stickers go, “Put the phone down and nobody gets hurt” has a lot going for it: It’s clever, mildly thought-provoking and unlikely to spark road rage. And now that Vermont and New Hampshire have adopted the sentiment as official state school policy, we hope that more people will heed its excellent message.
As our colleague Alex Hanson reported last weekend, both New Hampshire and Vermont enacted public school cellphone bans this year. The ban is already in effect this year in the Granite State, while Vermont’s does not take effect until the 2026-27 school year. In so decreeing, the Twin States are now among 26 states with bans in effect or in process.
This strikes us as a win for students, teachers, administrators, staff and their communities. Digital distraction is a major impediment to learning and teaching, and cellphone use can facilitate antisocial behavior such as cyberbullying.
By and large, the students with whom Hanson discussed the issue did not seem unduly distressed by being unable to check their phones during the school day. Some even appeared to welcome the opportunity to concentrate on their work without the lure of distraction and to interact face-to-face with their contemporaries.
“We’re not as distracted, and people are, like, talking to each other,” said Matt Thompson of Lebanon High, a school for which the statewide cellphone ban formalized the existing practice of phones being shut off and put away during class time.
It’s notable that community advocacy provided the impetus for cellphone bans at Thetford Academy and Woodstock Union Middle and High School, where, principal Aaron Cinquemani told Hanson, “The vast majority of students want to engage in a cellphone-free or distraction-free learning environment.” That certainly must have been music to teachers’ ears; one can only imagine how the opportunity to check cellphones during class presents an almost insurmountable obstacle to the always difficult task of holding the attention of students.
And although the inability to readily contact their children in real time during the school day is bound to be anxiety-producing for some parents in this fearful age of mass shootings, severing the cellphone link for a few hours a day would seem to benefit obsessive parents as well as children, and to enhance family life in general. Independence day.
Plenty of research suggests that reading comprehension on digital devices is inferior compared with printed text. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, released last week, document that the reading skills of American high school seniors are the worst they have been in 30 years. Nearly a third of those tested last year did not have basic reading skills, and only a third had reading and math skills sufficient to do college-level work.
Although factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic may have been at work in this stark decline, the wholesale abandonment of printed text in favor of screens among both adult and adolescent Americans surely played a big part.
Many a revolution spawns a counter-revolution, and the digital one may prove to be no exception. We hope so. Maybe school cellphone bans are the first step in putting cellphones in their place as useful tools instead of masters of the social, cultural and political universe. And adults take note: This is not solely a kid problem. Checking your phone constantly while walking, dining, working out and myriad other daily activities deprives you of an essential part of the human experience, engaging with others and your surroundings. Whether you are on an urban street or a forest trail, real life is not to be found in your hand, but in your head, your heart and your senses.