Doug attended high school in the 1980s. In addition to this making him the “senior” member of the team, as we tactfully put it, this gives him some stories to tell from a different era. Here's one that his own kids find jaw-dropping:

He and his classmates were allowed to smoke in high school.

Actually, smoking was more than allowed. It was more or less enabled. There was a student smoking area with ashcans. It was marked on maps of the school.

Smoking was legal, after all, and one common argument was that it wasn't really the school's place to restrict it. People also argued that teenagers would smoke anyway. Why not give them one place to do it so there weren't butts everywhere on campus? Why not make it convenient so they weren't also late to class?

It sounds crazy now, but at the time the administration argued that high school students were adults entering a world in which, it was noted, there would be tobacco. They would have to learn to make decisions about tobacco. The administration's goal was to educate students to think for themselves.

They didn't really do much educating in practice though. There were posters about making smart choices and an occasional cautionary video, but we all know how well those work. Plus, if teachers were supposed to “talk to students about tobacco,” they didn't really know how. Occasionally one might remind students that they shouldn't smoke, but they were there to teach math, history and art. Plus many of them were smokers themselves. A few occasionally allowed students to bum cigarettes from them. From the students' point of view, this earned them status. Students liked to be “treated like adults.”

All in all, the argument was that it was clearly better not to come on too strong with the restrictions. The smoking area reflected school's acceptance of and respect for young people's autonomy.

At least that was how they explained it. It's possible they just didn't want to make rules about smoking because they didn't want the unpleasant job of doing something teenagers would have resented. Teenagers are good at making it difficult emotionally to do things they resent. It's also possible that they hadn't thought that a rule could be beneficial even if some people broke it.

All the while, everyone knew the truth about cigarettes. The data on the long-term health effects was readily available; it had been for years. The upshot was that a lot more people became smokers. Needless to say, they paid a very high price for that decision.

It was their decision, of course. They'd probably be the first to tell you that. But it does seem odd, looking back, that the school made it so easy to access a demonstrably harmful product that was designed to addict young people. And the 16- and 17-year-olds whom everyone was so eager to christen “adults” were of course not adults. They were teenagers. Their prefrontal cortex would not fully develop for nearly ten years (around age 25). This made them especially susceptible to addiction because they were at the point in their lives when they were most influenced by their peers and most likely to make decisions that ignored danger and long-term consequences.¹

Of course, the teens wanted to be seen as adults. They argued this especially vociferously when it might result in additional freedoms like staying out late, but the educators really should have been able to see the difference. Really, it's shocking that they just went along with it.

As you might have guessed, this story isn't really about smoking in schools in a bygone era but is intended to make a point about cell phones and social media in schools today—specifically tolerance of something so damaging and addictive to young people. We also hope to point out that the arguments about why schools can't or shouldn't restrict cell phones are similar to the ones made about cigarettes at Doug's school. Educators argue that schools shouldn't restrict cell phones because it keeps young people from learning to manage their phones for themselves, because rules don't work, because it fails to treat teenagers like adults.

And, sadly, as there was then with smoking, there is damning data on the danger of the product and of teens' particular vulnerability to it.

The analogy to smoking is flawed of course. People interact with cell phones and social media differently than they do with cigarettes. Cell phones are more harmful in some ways and less harmful in others. They are more directly disruptive to the cognitive processes of learning, for example, and are far more ubiquitous: absolutely everyone has one and, unlike cigarettes, left to their own devices students would and do use them in the classroom. A recent survey in the UK by Teacher Tapp, a daily survey app for teachers designed to gauge the experience and opinions of the field more accurately, asked teachers whether at least one pupil had taken their phone out during class without permission during the previous day alone. Of almost 4500 respondents, one-third said yes. Some teachers reported it happened to them multiple times every day.

On the other hand cell phones also have clear benefits. We'll merely acknowledge them here without trying to describe the obvious in terms of their capacity to provide access to information and facilitate communication in a hundred ways. And it's worth noting that while we hesitate to use the word “benefits,” there were also reasons why so many people smoked. The biggest one, probably, is relevant to the themes of this book: the sense of belonging and camaraderie that came from standing in your denim jacket sharing a cigarette on a chilly morning. It made you part of a community—one for which you were willing to make certain sacrifices to belong to.

To state the obvious, then, cell phones are not cigarettes, and the appropriate response should reflect the differences. But it should also reflect the fact that in our schools we tolerate a highly destructive product specifically designed to addict young people, and distract them from learning.

Should we restrict phones, then? Yes, though the age of students should also be a factor in the extent of the restriction. There certainly should be a complete ban in elementary schools. Middle schools should probably ban them “from bell to bell,” we think, with students forbidden to have phones out or on from the first to the end-of-day bell, but permitted to use them after or before school to, say, tell their parents where to pick them up. In high school a range of plausible solutions are possible, all of them more restrictive than what the great majority of schools now do. Our own recommendation is a well-enforced rule that they must be powered off and in a backpack or bag (not a pocket) during the day, except possibly in a designated area where students can go briefly and at limited times to be in touch with their parents, for example. The rest of the school should be phone free. A slightly more activist stance would be to say: we should never see them during the day and we presume that students will text their parents as needed before and after school. (You could allow them to text from the main office in an emergency.) We'd love to see that but recognize that the challenges might be prohibitive for some schools. Either way, permitting cell phone use (and saying we are treating young people like adults when we enable their addiction) is not a viable policy in an institution committed to learning and building well-being.

We note again that the job of restricting something teenagers don't want restricted is a difficult one. Many young people won't like it at first, though we argue that in the long run many are likely to see the benefit. Some parents and teachers will push back. And once a policy is set, there will still be teachers who opt to raise their status by letting students break the rules (possibly the same ones who were available to lend you a smoke back in Doug's day).

It's not going to be easy. But our students require schools that reconnect them to their peers, support their mental health, and address the historic academic losses of the pandemic. Schools that hope to address that many serious challenges at once must accept the necessity of smartphone restrictions.

PLUSES AND MINUSES

We'll step down briefly from our soapbox briefly. While much of this chapter shares the how and why of taking a strong, restrictive position on smartphones, we also seek to make a balanced and two-sided argument about the role of technology more broadly. The equation has changed since the pandemic. There have been changes as a result of it that can be critical in helping schools succeed in the immense challenges we face. Here again we take Jean Twenge's guidance. She has been tracking patterns in the social behaviors and patterns among young people via detailed survey instruments for years and has seen her share of trends. Even though she describes a wave of depression and anxiety resulting from the smartphone epidemic, she also notes the necessity of seeing any issue as complex. Her research describes positive and negative outcomes of universal cell phone adoption—both the increased isolation of young people but also some resulting benefits: a dramatic reduction in teenage pregnancies and deaths by auto accident, for example. “There's a natural human tendency to classify things as all good or all bad,” she writes, “but with cultural changes, it's better to see the gray areas and the trade-offs.”

So we intend to make as balanced an argument as we can—one that talks about the gray areas and the trade-offs. Increased familiarity with and broader adoption of new technological tools during the pandemic can benefit schools. Besides, smartphones and social media aren't going away. A book that argues we should roll back the clock to a time gone by is a work of fantasy. In the real world the question is: How can we maximize what's good about the technology that pervades our lives, and simultaneously mitigate the downsides and minimize the costs?

A complex social trend playing out across society is complicated. There are more responses required than just restriction. So in addition to arguing that schools must summon the will and the fortitude to protect young people's well-being by restricting phones, we will start by examining ways technology can help address challenges and build community and connection.

NETWORK EFFECTS AND ZOOM

The term “network effect” describes the way a technology's value and utility increase exponentially when it becomes widely used. Something that's not very useful when only a few people use it becomes a game changer when everyone does. In the 1990s a few people had fax machines and the ones that existed were used among a small and quirky set of early adopters. Then, suddenly, they crossed a threshold. Faxing became universal. You could rely on every business to have one. People bought fax machines for their homes—they were indispensable. Fax functionality was built into copier machines and embedded on laptops. The more people used it, the more valuable it (briefly) became. Suddenly you had to have fax capability to communicate: a case study in network effects.

One silver lining of the pandemic was the network effect it brought about for a variety of technological applications, most significantly videoconferencing. Before 2020 only a minority of the populace knew how to use it. In the span of a few weeks, basically everybody learned how. Suddenly Zoom went from obscure to universal. Now you can presume Zoom usage, and that's a change that's actually quite significant.

To be clear—and with no disrespect to Zoom and Teams and Google Meets, which were godsends during the pandemic—we hope never to need to use them in lieu of teaching students in person again, but in their universal form such tools are highly effective at reducing barriers to meetings. This makes it easier for parents to be involved, makes it easier for students to be able to connect with teachers and resources outside of class, and makes missing class less onerous.

Parent meetings are critical to effective schooling, both in their plural form (a group meeting) and in the singular (a discussion with one parent or set of parents). Making it easier to meet “face to face” means making it easier to share information and easier to earn buy-in and get feedback. We can communicate culture and values and, just as importantly, invest in process. Here is how things will work. Here's why we're doing what we're doing. These discussions are far better on Zoom than in a newsletter, or in addition to a newsletter. It allows us to solicit feedback, for example, either intentionally or incidentally. This is especially important in a time when trust and faith in school are low.

In the last chapter we talked about process fairness being as important as outcome fairness. We will need to design intentional cultures and make rules—potentially challenging rules like those that restrict cell phone use during the school day—at exactly the time when institutional trust is at its lowest. Using Zoom (and recording meetings using it for those who can’t attend) makes process fairness much easier to achieve. A process that informs people of why, and that makes people feel listened to, heard, and understood even when they disagree, is critical to building and ensuring trust and credibility. Reducing the transaction cost of meetings where those things can happen is a huge benefit to school leaders and families.

Trying to configure schedules and availability is one of the biggest challenges to getting face to face with parents and caregivers, and lots of schools are finding that, having moved meetings online for the pandemic, they are inclined to keep many of them that way after. First, attendance is usually higher because the transaction cost of getting to school is lower. Watch where people are connecting from at a typical meeting in Denarius's school and you'll see them at home with small children they'd otherwise struggle to find care for, and sometimes logging in from work. Parents will be on the call from an Uber or walking home from the subway. Most of these are cases where the parent would otherwise be unable to attend. This doesn't mean there shouldn't be parent meetings in school; one of our rules of thumb is that a remote meeting is usually valuable in direct proportion to the rate at which we have also met with parents face to face and they have been in the building. So a mix of settings is ideal. And if we had to choose, we'd rather have all those parents with us in the busy moments of their lives than not.

Doing meetings through Zoom also means we can record and share for those who are unable to attend. This can be especially important at the beginning of the year when establishing policies. A teacher or a school leader can set it out exactly how he or she wants. If people don't attend, the whole story is still available. This means you can make your case (here's why we do homework like we do; here's why we restrict phones and what will happen if your child breaks that rule) much more richly, with graphics and discussion and in your own voice. “It allows us to share our vision, policies, and expectations, but also to gauge input and feedback,” one school leader told us. “It's our first opportunity to build trust and assure parents and families that our academic program is both rigorous and joyful, while also explaining what's required to keep that promise.” You can put that in writing, but hearing it directly from the school is and always will be a little different.

ACCESS FOR PARENTS

Parents have had “their own emotions and challenges in dealing with the pandemic,” noted Jody Jones, senior school director and senior director of school support at Uncommon Schools. Lots of times they'll say, “'I can't meet right now. I have to deal with this thing; I have to deal with that. That's always a challenge but it's a bigger challenge now with so much on their plates.” When we're able to make a meeting a lot simpler for parents, we get to yes a lot more frequently. Conferencing software like Zoom does that for one-on-one parent meetings and it's no small thing.

The transaction cost of a meeting or conference at school is often high for a parent—with driving from work over to the school, plus arranging child care or coverage at work, it can cost two or three hours of a parent's time—not to mention lost pay from time out of work. If a school can show busy parents their child's work on screen at a cost of 30 minutes, they can meet more easily or more often, at times that are more convenient (both to parents and to teachers or administrators, who can also meet from other locations) and this builds goodwill and ensures alignment and understanding. We don't have to wait until things are really bad to justify a meeting. We can offer parents a 15-minute call to preview an upcoming unit and record it so parents can watch it any time. All of that means it easier to push out information and build transparency—critical organizational goals.

We learned of another way schools can disseminate information and emphasize transparency from Lagra Newman, principal of Nashville's immensely successful Purpose Prep. During the pandemic, Newman decided to offer a Facebook Live tour of the school during the day for parents. She—and later staff members—literally grabbed a phone and walked through the school, visiting classrooms with the camera rolling. The message was: We want you to know what happens here. It's important and we will go out of our way to make it easy for you. What a gift for parents to be able to see what their children were up to, what teachers were like during the school day, without leaving work to come down to the school. The transaction cost of transparency—and thus buy-in and understanding—was dramatically reduced. You can see an example of one of Newman's Facebook Live tours in the video Lagra Newman, Facebook Live.

The context parents get on Newman's tour is as valuable to the school itself as it is to parents. It's hard not to notice, for example, how joyful and also how orderly and productive the classrooms at Purpose Prep are, and how consistent they are as Newman walks from class to class. Suddenly a parent sees and feels why the school does things the way they do and what the results are. They have a clear sense of culture and methods. If I am a parent and you call me about my child having an issue in class (perhaps she's calling out in class), I suddenly have some context beyond my own experience in school (perhaps it was normal then for students to call out in class) to understand why calling out persistently might be a problem and how outside the norm it is. I can also see that the school is well run—that the benefits it delivers in its social contract with parents are worth working for.

Pushing out information like this makes parents feel welcome and important, builds faith in the institution. It helps parents understand and align with the school's vision and priorities. Seeing is, if not believing, at least understanding. Notice, for example, how much choral response there is in the first class, how attentive the culture is, how much eye contact among students, and how much joy and energy and learning. You can see and feel the enthusiasm! A parent who has reservations about their student being asked to track the speaker, for example, is much more compelled by an argument that it builds the fabric of connection and community when they have seen and felt the culture in the building.

This is doubly important because, as one school leader told us, in the wake of the pandemic, most of her parents have never set foot in the building. They don't have a sense for the place and its rhythms at all. This means that when they have conversations, they have far less context for how things work and what's typical. A parent who has a good mental model of the school and what it looks and feels like is a parent with whom every conversation starts ten steps farther ahead.

Some other key aspects of the video:

1. It's live! Notice that it's not pre-taped. As we've mentioned, this makes it feel especially authentic and transparent, and more personal too. At the outset Newman greets individual parents by name as she sees them log on, cementing a sense of connection for them as well. People feel valued when they feel seen. This sort of event would still be possible, but not quite as effective at connecting, if had been pre-taped.
2. Parents get to see their own child's classroom but also many others. Again, this demonstrates how consistent the school's approach is; there is a model. Newman even explains during the video why it's important that students are learning the same thing across second-grade classrooms. If I am a parent, now I see more clearly why there are schoolwide policies. But as a second-grade parent I also get to see what third and fourth grade will be like. I see the through-line of all the things students will do in the future that they are getting ready for now. If the school is challenging students to do hard things—to write more, to read complex texts—the rationale becomes clearer when parents can see very concretely what the future will hold.
3. It offers existence proof of the culture. Several of your co-authors have used parent classroom visits as a tool to support a student who was struggling to meet behavioral expectations. Come in and let's watch your child's class together for 30 minutes. When parents come to observe, they see the norm of the room and they get to see their child in context. In some cases, with the parents standing in the room, the child struggles. With parents and school leaders observing we can gather data, share observations, and discuss next steps. Sometimes, though, the child is perfect when parents are there, and this demonstrates that the child is capable of meeting the expectations of school if he or she chooses. Now we know he or she can do it is an important moment of realization because many parents only know their own child. Of course they sometimes wonder if their child can successfully meet the school's expectations. Seeing them do so and seeing other children do so affirms that they can, and that consistency, support, and the belief that they will succeed are the key pieces of the puzzle.

One of the best parts of the video is that pretty much every student is reading and reacting appropriately to the school norms. If a student is disruptive, it allows Newman to have conversations with parents in which they understand more clearly that disruption is outside the norm.

It turned out this video was just a starting point. The Facebook Live sessions were so successful that Newman and her colleagues continued them even after access to the building was restored to parents. It made it easy for them to keep in touch. Every parent who attended felt like they had a clearer connection with staff. Every subsequent conversation was a follow-up with someone they knew a little better and who knew the school a little more. Connection with parents matters, and welcoming them into the school, even virtually, is a great way to build faith and trust.

As a side note, there's a bit of accountability for the school too in making a video like this. It only works if the culture really is strong and positive, and students are attentive. Of course parents would be bothered to see their children in a school where classrooms were not orderly. Committing to more transparency also helps focus a school on making sure it is living up to its promises.

ACCESS FOR STUDENTS

Advances in technology made during the pandemic also make it easier for students to access resources outside of class time. If teachers offer afternoon office hours online, they're often easier for students to get to. Study sessions before a test are one useful way to use Zoom meetings to support rather than supplant classroom instruction. Reducing transaction costs—making it easier to get to such activities—will make some students more likely to attend.

Teachers can also share asynchronous learning materials to help students improve their studying, to catch up if they struggle, or to avoid falling behind if they miss class. A network effect similar to the one Zoom experienced also made Quizlet, Kahoot, and other quiz functions familiar to most students, and this makes the critical learning tool of retrieval practice far more flexible. This is beneficial from both an academic and a well-being standpoint. A student who feels hopelessly behind with little chance of catching up is a student who is likely to become rapidly disconnected from the classroom community; there is far less opportunity to participate meaningfully and cement connections with peers. After enough time spent struggling in isolation, a student is likely to seek allies in rejecting class and community norms.

Absences are also more frequent and longer in a world of post-pandemic protocols, and returning from an absence can be disorienting. Missing a week of class can cause students to fall far enough behind that, unabated, they can struggle with ever catching up. But technology can help. “Pre-Covid you'd have an absent student and you'd have to wait for them to come back and teachers would have to try to find the assignment to give it to them,” Jody Jones observed. “But now when a student is absent, it's so easy to post their work [i.e. on Google Classroom] and to let them know what's happening.” Often, she noted, they come back to school already caught up and engage positively in lessons that much quicker.

During the pandemic administrators at Park East High School in New York City designed the academic schedule with significant chunks of asynchronous time to address Zoom fatigue. This caused math teacher Lauren Brady to think about how she might use the time she wasn't in the classroom to help her students. She started editing the videos of her classes into condensed versions that students could review.

Now that the pandemic is over, she's continued with the videos. She videotapes her lessons on Screencastify into 10- to 12-minute videos: the extended highlights version of the big game. She then uploads them to Edpuzzle, where she intersperses a variety of questions. The result is a high-quality review tool that students who've missed class can access to make sure they don't fall behind. But students who are struggling also use them to review and catch up. Brady will allow any student to retake any test in algebra or AP statistics as long as they review a certain number of the video lessons.

And Brady has found the process valuable in unexpected ways. First, she says, “Sometimes the condensed lessons are better,” for two reasons. Her video lessons include some multiple-choice questions of the solve-this-problem sort, but also open-ended thought questions. (What's your hypothesis? What do you think the correlation is likely to be and why?) In a typical lesson, even a student who does every problem might not answer all of these “thought questions.” Maybe they raise their hand to answer once. Maybe they think vaguely about a few more of the questions. On the video version, the video pauses when she gets to the questions. Now, “every student answers every question,” she says. “That's a big advantage.” (She recommends about one per minute of video.)

She also notices how much time can easily be cut from lessons—time she spends repeating an idea a second time, or time she spends chatting with students about semi-connected topics. The process of reviewing through students' eyes helps her to think more deeply about how she teaches live.

The review videos work to supplement a lesson, not supplant it. They work because they capitalize on Brady's existing relationship and because they are perfectly aligned to her tests and lessons. They build off and amplify what she does in class but they wouldn't work as a substitute. However, they're a great way to make missing class far less costly to students. And though they are time consuming to make, they are evergreen. “They took me a lot of time to make but I'll have them for most of the lessons I teach next year as well.” What students “miss” when they are absent in the future will be far less than a whole lesson. And she notes that it would be easy to team up with other teachers who teach the same topic and reduce the workload by rotating video duties.

Better academic supports through both synchronous and asynchronous technology can make students feel more connected when they are out of school. Technology can also support with another theme of this book: the importance of making sure students feel seen. Eric Diamon, assistant superintendent for middle schools at Uncommon Schools in Newark and New York City, noted that in returning post-pandemic it was doubly important to find “opportunities to see and celebrate students.” Posting and celebrating student work via technology can dramatically expand the reach and thus the positive culture-building and emotional benefits of such efforts. Instead of just posting great work by ten students on a wall to make them feel like their efforts are important, their work can be posted online where hundreds can see it. Families can share it with relatives in other cities. Adding a bit of tech to posting student work can “allow for some really powerful relationship building for students—to know that teachers will celebrate them,” Diamon noted.

MANAGING THE DOWNSIDE

So there are lots of ways technology—and expanding familiarity with its platforms among families—can help schools accomplish their mission. But schools also have to recognize the double-edged sword it creates and so we return again to the topic of restrictions—delving now into the details of how and why.

Barring some compelling (and rare!) reason, phones should not be present in the classroom during instruction. How much cell phones are restricted beyond that is more open to question. While it might seem like the simplest solution is to say, “No phones in class, but you may use them on your own time,” the reality might be less simple. There is still an immense benefit to students in having time phone free outside the classroom when social interactions can be maximized. It's also important to be aware that phones used between classes mean students will be thinking about what they post and share (or what was posted and shared about them) in the classrooms before and after. Teacher Tapp's survey, for example, found that in schools where students were allowed to have their phones out some of the time, they were more likely to take them out in class than they were in schools where the restrictions were more comprehensive.

But the issue is broader yet. When young people are around their phones, when others are using them around them, when their phones are visible to them and thus capture some of their attention, it influences behavior.

The times when students can check their phones in school, in other words, should be more exception than rule. The more of a universal expectation “phones away in school” is, the more consistent and clearer it is, and the easier it is to build a habit around it. And that means building a habit of more connected and social interactions and more focused, attentive thinking. If it's inconsistent—if the rules change depending on where you are in the building, if it's left up to individual teachers to decide the rules—it's going to be a battle every time. Expectations will devolve to the lowest common denominator because a decision to enforce restrictions will appear “personal.” In all likelihood viable restriction is not going to happen under those terms. Building a “flexible” system where teachers have to ask for or announce limitations on phones (“Okay, we're going to have a no phones lesson today,” or “I know I sometimes let you use phones but I'm going to ask you to keep them off today”) is a recipe for resentment among people who do the right thing and for getting very little done for the first ten minutes of that lesson while students complain and argue and slow-play putting their phones away. And of course it is likely to awaken resentment. In the face of that kind of difficulty and with the payoff perhaps half an hour of phone-free instruction, frankly most teachers are not going to do it.

Much better to simply make it a consistent schoolwide policy: “We never have phones out during lessons here.” Or “We never have phones out during the day here.” Yes, students may initially argue. But the massive transaction cost of pushback happens once, people get used to it, and then you have a year of high-quality instruction that builds community.

A restriction is different from a limitation, we note. A limitation might say, “You can only use your phone in the following ways or under the following circumstances.” A restriction says, “During the following times, your phone may not be present and must be turned off.”² How extensive the restrictions are is a reasonable question. If you want to allow access to phones at specific non-classroom times during the day, that's reasonable. The right answer probably depends at least in part on the age of your students. For a primary or elementary school, a full ban is a no-brainer. The rule should be: “No phones visible during the day, ever,” full stop. We're inclined to think that's the case for middle schools too. It's not unreasonable to say students may have their phones out to communicate with their parents about staying after for activities or how they're getting home, during a clearly demarcated ten minutes at the end of lunch or the end of the day. Just remember that a small window often becomes a large one. Ten minutes becomes twenty. A student says he wasn't able to during his ten minutes and couldn't he do it now. Another student says it's an emergency. Suddenly the expectation is inconsistent. It seems like more flexibility will be easier but the opposite is true. A bright clear line is often best.

High school is by far the trickiest and most challenging case. It's a building full of near-adults who expect and deserve some autonomy, but they are the most likely to have strong dependency and the most likely to use social media platforms that can be anxiety-inducing to their peers. So yes, some flexibility is often warranted for high school students, but allowing young people the “freedom” to limit the quality of the education they and others receive and to contribute to a climate that erodes community and connection is not a viable choice.

Before we go on, we pause to note that rules limiting cell phone access during school are generally simple, but the implementation of them is not. They are challenging policies to enforce for at least three reasons.

First, there is a significant incentive for some staff to be non-enforcers, to be the teacher who looks the other way. Teachers may succumb to the temptation to be well liked (we think they will garner only fleeting appreciation). They may be conflict averse. They may not believe in the policy and prefer to subvert it. Whatever the reason, you can be confident that someone will not agree and therefore that the policy will test the organization's culture. Ideally we discuss policies openly and candidly, but once a decision is made, everyone supports it. The degree of enforcement you get from teachers is in large part a test of your process. Staff should feel like they've been heard and respected, like they've contributed insights into the details of how it gets done even if the policy is different from what they themselves might choose. Difficult tasks—telling students they have to put their phones away; taking students' phones when you see them—are those most likely to reveal the cracks in organizational health. A school's leadership is going to have to be prepared for dissent.

Second, students are psychologically dependent on their phones. They will not want to give them up even if on many levels they know they should. One teacher we spoke with told us that students in his school were surveyed and overwhelmingly agreed that their phones were harmful to the purposes of schooling. They agreed that they would be better off without them during the day. But they resisted the resulting policy because, well, they wanted their phones. People who are psychologically dependent do not change their behavior simply because they know it would be good for them. And perhaps it's not just people in the grips of psychological dependence or bad habits. “Reason,” as David Hume put it, “is the slave of the passions.” It is characteristically human to use logic to justify rather than decide what we desire, and this is especially true of teenagers.³ Ironically, once the restrictions have gone into place, a great many students find they are happier. As in so many cases, young people need adults to help them make a change and, in the end, they come to understand and appreciate it.

The third reason why restrictions are hard to enforce is a practical consequence of the second. Kids are smart and when motivated can be clever. This makes enforcement difficult, especially since teens are generally more technologically adept than adults. One common way to restrict access is to have students turn their phones in somewhere, either in the morning or before class. Several colleagues who used this approach warned us that students would bring extra “burner” phones to turn in and keep the real one, or say they had left their phone at home and didn't have one to turn in. Students will be highly motivated to keep their phones. Some will naturally take pride in proving that any system of limitation—especially one enforced by a school—can be circumvented. That's normal and natural. Several of your co-authors hereby admit to having taken great pleasure in proving that “it” could be done—almost no matter what it was, just so long as “it” was a rule in school. Despite our not-infrequent success, we have no doubt that we would want similar rules today to many of the ones we broke long ago for sake of the young people we serve and care about.

Collecting phones raises several challenging logistical issues. Where will they be kept? How do you identify each phone and its owner? What will you do when someone says their phone has disappeared? So while we think it's feasible to collect phones, and while schools that can't be assured of reliable and consistent follow-through from all staff may have to, we generally think it's a better bet to spend the time and energy enforcing a policy of “I must never see it, and if I do, it will be confiscated.” But while a school has to ensure significant diligence in follow-through and monitoring, it is not necessary to find every phone. (Note: please don't tell this to the teenagers.) We say this because one of your teachers will point this out: “We'll never catch every kid who cheats; therefore we should not have the rule.” As Denarius observed in the sidebar “Living the Cell Phone Challenge,” he's aware of the times and ways that some students probably cheat. He's attentive to it but balanced. He knows it's the overall culture that matters. If one student in 50 sneaks to off to check a phone in a lonely bathroom stall, his private victory is sign of a school culture that does the work required of it. It has made classroom spaces safe for concentration and well-being. The occasional exception especially when students go to great lengths to work around detection proves the rule. It is telling you that the system is mostly working. What you want to watch out for is groups of students not trying to hide their use of phones. Let them have the bathroom stalls.

YES, IT CAN BE DONE

Despite the challenges, thousands of schools in the UK, all of them in France and some parts of Australia, and even some in the US have successfully and even happily restricted cell phones. One of your authors Tweeted about the topic recently (yes, we are aware of the irony of using social media for this) and the replies were instructive. In fact they make quite good reading (with occasional observations added):

1. We use Yondr pouches⁴ at our school. They are brilliant. Yes, students can break them open. Yes, sometimes students don't lock their phone away, but on the whole it has transformed the school. Social time is spent talking to friends and the like.
2. My last school had trays in each form room. Phones were put in at registration and collected at the end of the day.
3. We are a no-phone school, and students have them in their bags/coats, but we don't see them. If we do, they are taken away and the student is given a sanction.
4. Our students hand their phones in. They're kept in a safe in each classroom. I cannot explain the impact it has on their learning environment and their social interactions.
5. They're not “banned” but students are not allowed to take them out of pockets when on site. As with anything, the consistency of all staff enforcing this has resulted in a great culture and students really respect this!

These posts reflect some of the key themes we've tried to stress: that consistency is key; that the change in culture is usually swift and stunning; that the fact that you may never achieve perfect compliance is not a rationale for not employing restrictions. They also demonstrate the basic options for restriction policies: students turn them in to a central place in the school; students turn their phones in to individual teachers for each class; students are allowed to hold onto their phones but a policy of “If I see it, I take it” is enforced.

6. We have no-phones on campus rule. Older high school students have a designated terrace area where they can use phones. Middle schoolers must have them switched off and away. First time seen: asked politely to put away; next time or repeat phone users, parent collects.
7. My school has a strictly enforced policy this year and it's amazing how lovely the conversations and eye contact are during breaks, lunch, and passing time. After school, they're on their phones like [a drug], but all day, they get a break. Parents love it.
8. No phones at my school. We have a “see it, hear it, lose it” policy. On the very rare occasion we see a phone, the pupils hand it over and parents have to come and collect at the end of the day. Works really well for us.
9. The key has been our staff. If we see it, we take it. Consistent enforcement from all is key. Can't be “the cool teacher.”
10. All phones have to be in backpacks at all times. If I see a phone, I take it, turn it into the office, and write a referral. The consequences change based on the number of referrals. First time—warning and turn phone into the office before school.
11. Phones are banned. Must be switched off during the day. If it's seen, it's a 45-minute detention. Clarity, consistency, and communication is key!
12. [Staff] collect phones from students at the beginning of the day and return them just before they leave school. Phones are confiscated for two weeks if not handed in. The system works very well and we rarely have to confiscate anything.

These comments show the details of a variety of approaches to enforcing the rule. In some cases the phone is taken if it's out when it's not supposed to be. There's no “consequence” for the student other than the phone is given back later—sometimes significantly later—or given back only to a parent. This last move can be very effective but, as we'll discuss in a moment, it's most useful when parents are carefully informed and engaged about the policy. In other cases there's a sanction—a detention, for example, sometimes on the first instance, sometimes after multiple infractions. Comments 6 and 11 share another key detail we've heard multiple times: it's not just phones away—it's turned off and away. Otherwise it's just too easy to grab them or hide them in the blink of an eye. Comment 6 provides some ideas for a differentiated policy: older students have a designated and circumscribed place where they can have their phones out. We also like the detail of asking politely. Comment 7 is a good example of how parents in fact support the change when they're informed of why. Comment 8 reveals a clearly thought-through process to support the policy. We heard the theme of comment 12 repeatedly: when there is clarity and consistency, students adapt quickly and negative consequences are rare.

13. We allow phones outside but not inside. By facilitating when the phones can be used, we reduce the possibility of setting a climate of deceit from the start.
14. Had a “no phone can be seen” policy for years and it's run very successfully. Once implemented you quickly move to a position where you hardly ever see one out. Clear communication on why—everyone accountable—and process in place to confiscate and escalation if repeated.
15. It's policy in all Victorian Government schools here in Australia. Start of the day till the end. No phones. Many students said that they were relieved when it came into operation.
16. My son's school doesn't play. Phones go in lockers. You are caught with one, it gets taken and you get detention. Uncomplicated, unambiguous, effective.
17. No phones at my kid's middle school. You have to hand them in to your homeroom in the morning and you don't get them back till dismissal. All the kids comply.
18. The school I used to teach at forbade them on campus, period. Parents and students had to sign something at the beginning of the year agreeing that it would be confiscated, and parents had to come inside to sign it back out. Very effective actually.

Some themes in these comments. The importance of clarity and consistency again—then students react quickly. The benefits of engagement and communication with parents. When people understand why, they are far more likely to support an initiative. That idea should be applied to students and probably to teachers as well. They too will be more likely to support it if they understand the science (we'll be presenting some momentarily). Comment 13 is another example of providing a specific but clearly circumscribed place where students can go to check their phones. Comment 15, from Australia, reminds us that such steps can be taken at scale. If governments in other countries can do it,⁵ so can ours. So can a school or district.

19. Our whole school [is] “no phones in class.” Keys to success include lots of groundwork: surveying parents/students/staff and sharing results; drip feed of neuroscience re impacts of phone use; versus clear policy; consistent implementation w leadership support. Interestingly, in the student surveys beforehand, the students were quite clear that they thought their in-class phone use was affecting their learning, but they were also clear that they didn't want to give up their phones.
20. We do it successfully. We simply frame it this way: red lights are restrictions that allow the system to work. They are not a punishment. Phone restriction is the same.
21. Yep, works in my son's school. Would genuinely rather get him a new phone (eventually) than try to get one back from the front office staff.
22. Our government (AUS) has mandated that phones are off and away all day. It is so nice walking around the yard seeing students actually interacting again, and no distractions during class.
23. The difference is amazing, and everyone seems happier when the phones are away.

We loved comment 19 because it stressed not just informing parents of the policy but informing them more broadly—of the science and the rationale. Notice that even students were involved in the discussion, starting with surveys. As we discussed previously, when people feel like process fairness is in place—they are listened to, and their opinions valued—their perception of outcome fairness shifts; they are more comfortable supporting decisions they don't agree with; they understand that there are necessary sacrifices to positive broader outcomes. Students benefit from understanding the rationale as much as parents do, even if they disagree, and both they and parents are more likely to support it if they see the clear logic of it. Comment 20 shows a school that has spent time thinking carefully about the messaging and framing. Comment 21 is from a parent who's been inconvenienced by having to pick up a phone at school but still supports the rule. Majority parent support is a likely outcome of a phone restriction policy—several of us are parents and can attest that parents struggle at home to manage the pervasive and negative influence of social media. They're often happy to have the school be an ally. A few may resent the policy. There will be some angry phone calls. But most will appreciate it. They will do so silently and won't call your office, but they are out there in numbers!

There were also a few responses that were more complex, so our gallery walk ends with them:

24. One of the side effects of the phone holder—when students grab their phone on their way out—[is that] most of them walk out of the classroom checking their phone for everything they missed during that class time.
25. I envy anyone who's not had to play whack-a-mole with a classful of kids trying to spend as much time as possible on social media, messaging or video sites on their phones—sometimes with the excuse (“Can I use my phone as a calculator?”), sometimes without.
26. We have students who will actually refuse to put the phone away. They know we can't physically take it from them, and they just flatly refuse. Sadly, there are no consequences for this behavior, so some teachers just give up trying to enforce the rule of phones “away for the day.”

Comment 24 reminds us that the nature of the restriction can result in perverse outcomes—as soon as they get their phones back some kids are more likely to dive in deep. Thus perhaps another argument for more pervasive restrictions. It's a safe bet that those students who grab their phones and are checking their accounts before they leave the door are, in fact, thinking about social media throughout much of class. The prospect of getting them back is a source of distraction in much the same way that—research tells us—a nearby phone is still a distraction for students even if it's turned off or turned over. An ideal policy would reduce the number of “transactions” (i.e. times to collect and give back during the day). Each such transaction requires work and follow-through and poses opportunities for lack of follow-through. Comments 25 and 26 come from teachers in schools where enforcement is not consistent and therefore difficult. They remind us of just how time consuming an inconsistent or nonexistent policy can be. And how frustrating.

KNOWLEDGE (OF THE WHY) IS POWER

As we discussed earlier, starting with the why—explaining the rationale for a policy to the stakeholders you will ask to follow and implement it—is critical to the success of any complex or controversial policy, especially one that will be as visible and challenging as a cell-phone restriction policy. The why should ideally be grounded in research and data so that teachers, parents, and students understand its logical basis and see clearly that its purpose is to exercise care for students' best interests. When people feel faith in the process, they are more open to outcomes they may not initially agree with. Taking the time to make a full and transparent case at the outset will save far more time and effort in the long run.

In the section below we've tried to make a model case for restriction based on three primary reasons. We hope it's useful in building one of your own. We note that it repeats some discussion points from the introduction. We've done this so you won't have to go searching and can find the relevant information in one place and perhaps even share the arguments directly with students, parents, and/or teachers.

BUILDING IN THE ANTIDOTE

More than merely providing a respite from screens and social media, schools can provide an antidote to the drawbacks of the online world. When Sam Eaton and her colleagues at Cardiff High School in Cardiff, Wales, welcomed students back from the pandemic, the school's rules included restrictions on phones. But the school didn't just tell students what they couldn't do. It made it easier for students to do positive, enjoyable things that rebuilt their social connections and relationships with their peers. The school's staff devised a variety of settings where students could interact during recess—for example, tables to sit at with cards and board games provided, ping-pong tables, spaces for other outdoor games. It gave students something explicitly social to say yes to.

Frequent informal interactions while playing games are a great way to rebuild social skills and rekindle feelings of connection. Playing cards requires eye contact and reading facial expressions. There are funny under-the-breath remarks and momentary disappointments over losing a hand. There are lots of low-stakes opportunities to get feedback on whether what you said was well-suited to the moment—gracious or funny or made you sound like a sore loser. That sort of thing rebuilds the interactive skills that wane when the phone dominates young people's lives. Students can use those skills to build positive relationships. It also provides a stronger feeling of connection than just standing around wishing you had your phone.

This picture of students playing chess in the courtyard at Cardiff High School is a good example. Small tables have been set up for serious players; there's a giant set for those who want something a bit more lighthearted.

This giant Jenga set facilitates short lighthearted interactions with a more impromptu group of peers.

Add to that ping-pong and card tables (cards provided!), as seen in these pictures.

Suddenly students have a whole range of informal but constructive ways to connect and interact. There are constant small signals about greeting and belonging and turn-taking via eye contact, facial expression, and body language. If you are a student, you look around and you see those things and the resulting connectedness everywhere, in a dozen different ways. You are reminded of how human interaction works. And it's easy to feel belonging because there's likely to be something for everyone.

Family-style meals are another example. They have been a godsend since the pandemic, Jen Brimming of Marine Academy in Plymouth, England, told us. Lunch at Marine Academy means kids and one or two adults around a small table in easy social and socializing chatter. It doesn't have to be formal or topical; the adult doesn't lead a discussion of current events. It's lightly structured togetherness, eye contact and talking as a group for a sustained period. People have a place to belong to. Some schools actually serve meals family style or include family-like responsibilities; when one of us ate at Michaela School in London, students brought over a tray with the meals and others bought a pitcher of juice or wiped the table afterwards. Other schools let students get their lunch cafeteria style but provide a warm and welcoming seating face-to-face that makes the sorts of interactions that let all students feel connected far more likely. Everyone has someone to talk to.

You can see that in the pictures Jen sent us.

Note the eye contact, the group interaction, even the slow pace implied by a conversation involving an adult and a real knife and fork.

Sam and Jen's schools have both made small adaptations of familiar activities to create what we think of as antidotes—activities during the school day that work to facilitate positive interactions that counteract isolation. They recall for us the data from Jean Twenge's research we shared in Chapter 1 showing that certain activities correlate negatively to anxiety, loneliness, and depression such as playing a sport wherein young people engage in purposeful shared endeavor, cooperation, eye contact, and turn-taking, not to mention managing disappointment and success. Things like that do more than just disrupt screen time; they replace it with something actively curative.

The school day is full of moments that could be optimized—recess or lunch as at Sam's and Jen's schools, but also arrival, dismissal, passing time, or morning meeting. Our caveat would be that quality has a greater effect than quantity. Better to have one or two really meaningful interactions per day than several that don't quite come off and only sort of build culture. Poorly run activities tell students that the institutions of their lives are fragile, weak, and unable to connect the people within them, just as a poorly run class with low academic expectations suggests to them that their time isn't especially valuable.

And of course, schools can provide more antidote time via more or better extracurricular activities as well—vibrant well-run clubs, teams, and interest groups.

In Chapter 5 we'll describe more extensively how Charlie Friedman, executive director at Nashville Classical Charter School in Nashville, Tennessee, and a group of teachers redesigned extracurricular activities after returning from the pandemic. One of the key things was to focus on audience-building. “We really focused on giving those students a chance to perform,” he noted, but the performance feels more meaningful if a lot of people come. Yes, you want your parents there but you want your peers there as well. You'd like a few friends and maybe a few classmates you'd like to know a bit better there. “We thought a lot about how to incentivize and encourage people to come and watch performances and games,” Friedman said. Of course not every kid was able to participate, but the interesting thing was that by building the audience experience they not only made it more fun to perform, they made it more fun and meaningful to attend. You felt belonging when you were engaged and connected in the stands. Singing and chanting and celebrating together can be as meaningful as performing together.

That said, it's important to also offer extracurriculars where participation does not require a specific cultivated talent. Many of the most common extracurriculars like sports and music are based on activities that reflect a lifelong commitment. As athletes and musicians ourselves we love these activities and fully endorse them. But the downside is that if you are 15 and looking for something meaningful to add to your life and haven't played soccer or sung all your life, those things are out for you. So clubbish activities that you can join based on enthusiasm and interest and still feel belonging are also really important.

Speech and debate have been critical additions at Strive Prep in Denver, Elisha Roberts told us. Anyone can join; it just takes willingness. And it features all the social benefits you'd want: eye contact, teamwork, turn-taking. But Roberts also described one of the small routines that facilitators used to build community. “You count however many kids are in the class. It starts completely silent and then one person has to say ‘one,’ and then you have to listen and feel for who is going to say ‘two,’ ‘three,’ and so on. Seeing middle schoolers do that and be in tune with each other and be trying to get to 25 and to say, ‘Oh, we couldn't do it in 30 seconds.’ There was a connectivity that was playful and simple but powerful in terms of socioemotional connectedness.” It reminds us that small moments can be built in anywhere, that in fact a school might assemble for teachers a list of simple collaborative games they could play in two minutes or less at down times—before class, at communal lunch, in the hallway, or as a reward for a great class discussion.

The CDC's survey bore this out. Teens who said they felt connected to people at school were “far less likely to report poor mental health than those who did not feel connected at school.” We don't have to find everyone a best friend; we just have to make them feel seen, cared about, relevant, fully present in the life of the institution and the perception of their peers. A well-run school “can be a protective factor” in students' lives, the CDC's head of adolescent and school health, Kathleen Ethier, told the Washington Post.

We note especially the term “well-run.” No one feels a connection to and belonging within a poorly run place that wastes their time and can't get things done or that can't cause people to behave positively. The chess tables and ping-pong at Cardiff High School only work if pupils reliably respect and protect the equipment and if the school can make sure there's a fresh supply of unbroken ping-pong balls and full decks of playing cards. Orderliness is surprisingly central to belonging. Doing things well, especially including the core of the daily work of school—having classes that are well-taught and productive and feel meaningful to students; having the institution efficient in running core activities and reliably able to do what it sets out to do—those things also affect the belonging students feel.

“I think folks want to be claimed,” David Adams, CEO of the Urban Assembly's network of 23 district schools in New York City told us. “There's this idea that teenagers don't want to belong to things. Yet they go out into our communities and … are claimed by antisocial groups. It's okay to claim them and say, “You're ours,” but we have to understand that there is a contract that is part of that. People want to be a part of something and we can help them do that If we can deliver on our part of the contract.”

Too many students go unclaimed by schools. This has always been true, but it is doubly challenging now when young people live with a clever device in their pocket forever whispering to them that it will find a place for them in the world. That device can deliver a million bright and alluring “interactions” no matter where they are.

Consider how this has rewired two small aspects of young people's lives compared to those of a generation ago.

One is the decline of waiting, and therefore mind-wandering. Think of how much time you spent waiting when growing up—for a ride from your mom or for a bus; in line at the pharmacy or the department of motor vehicles—all of them spent with “nothing to do” except observe the people around you, the traffic going by, wander through the thousand almost-nothings in your head (some of which became ideas and beliefs after a time). Young people today never do that. There's less waiting anyway (you wait in a virtual queue) but if they do they simply scroll through their phones instead. There is no mind-wandering downtime.

Another difference is the end of one of previous generations' most anxious moments: having to eat alone in the school cafeteria or a restaurant. Movies from the sixties, the eighties, even the aughts, are full of cafeteria scenes where the protagonist stands with his or her tray at the entrance to the cafeteria and … Well, we didn't need more than that to know what the scene was about. Now young people simply take out their phones and engage in another world. They eat alone all the time.

The convenient accessibility of a simple form of connection, we are saying, has rewritten the equations of social interaction in ways that are complex (not always good; not always bad). We cannot outcompete the phone based on convenience—on the speed and variety of interactions. Having lunch alone and scanning Instagram is less painful than eating alone and having nothing to do but look around and chew, so of course young people (and adults!) chose it. But compared to having lunch with friends—to laughter and smiles and familiar patterns—it is paper thin.

We compete with that device to claim young people, to cause them to decide they belong at least in part with us. As institutions (the most important institutions in society, we'd argue), we can only hope to compete based on quality—on rich interactions that bring humanity and camaraderie into the foreground and make those the characteristics of the places where we learn. There are fewer and fewer places to have a laughter-filled lunch with friends. That is just maybe the window through which we climb and claim kids to school (and implicitly to community and shared endeavor).

After all, there is a reason why technology (despite the Ted Talkers announcing the arrival of a seamless future of frictionless, learner-led, at-your-own-pace learning) showed during the pandemic that it could not come near the classroom—even the flawed version of it we offer most young people—for learning outcomes and resulted in massive learning declines. It matters to be in the room with other people, to read the body language of others as they present or listen, to feel the room when the insight drops. The classroom is still the room where it happens because of the power of individual connected to group and all of the signals that creates. If we can build enough flesh-and-blood connection into the day (we will take up that topic in subsequent chapters), we may find even the students initially opposed to giving up their phones to be glad they did.