Schools battle cell phone addiction - Record-Courier

All eyes will be on Crestwood High School this school year as it launches a bold new experiment to ban students from using their personal electronic devices throughout the entire school day.

"It’s a bold move we’re taking, but it’s the right thing to do for kids," High School Principal Dave McMahon said.

The district, which starts the 2019-20 school year on Monday, is the first in Portage County to outright ban cell phone use at all times of the day, including lunch periods, study halls and between classes. The Board of Education approved the new high school handbook policy at the end of June, aligning it with the middle school policy, and McMahon said that there would be a strong educational component to the new policy in order to get students, parents, staff and administrators on board.

"The high school staff and I want to make sure the creation was not perceived as an us against them, and settled on a strong education piece fronting our movement. Will there be disciplinary consequences? Absolutely. However, the bigger picture is identifying the students who get caught a second, third or fourth time because that’s the student we need to reach. That’s addiction."

Is cell phone addiction a problem?

This week, Michael Mercier, who has been researching teen smartphone addiction for four years, met with Crestwood staff, administrators, parents and students to discuss his research and to contextualize the school’s new policy, which increases repercussions for subsequent offenses.

According to Mercier, the founder and president of Screen Education, the problem lies in the combination of addictive content and unrestricted access.

"The bottom line is kids can’t control their cell phone use. [App developers] figured out how to channel our fundamental human drives — the drive to compete, achieve, master new skills, connect socially, escalate in social status, tell stories and engage in narrative — to an online environment that’s gratifying, feels good and is hyper customizable. Addictive content isn’t a problem when there are natural limits, but there aren’t any because we made it pocket sized and added wireless access," he said.

According to Mercier’s 2018 nationwide survey of 11,000 teens, 71% know that companies design apps to be addictive, 60% believe that their friends are addicted to their phones and 65% wish they had a greater ability to self-limit the amount of time they spend on their phone.

The result of cell phone addiction, he said, is a toxic online social environment, a decline in mental health, shorter attention spans, less physical activity, less productivity as passions are diverted to the online world and decreased academic performance.

Similarly, Jacob Barkley, Ph.D., a Kent State University associate professor of exercise science along with Andrew Lepp and Aryn Karpinski, found a negative correlation, though not causation, between between high cell phone use and GPA in a 2015 survey of 500 college students.

"It is possible that students that don’t have a great affinity for academics use their cell phones because they’re not as focused. If the phone wasn’t there, maybe they would still be doing something else like doodling or watching more TV, but the mounting evidence would suggest there’s a link between high use and poor academic performance," he said, adding that he would like to see if reducing cell phone use could have a positive effect on academic performance.

Barkley also found that people who report high cell phone use also report worse relationships than people who report low device use.

Why is Crestwood banning cell phones?

McMahon began thinking about a cell phone ban when he heard Mercier speak at a conference last year. When he returned, he met with staff and several families and decided that something needed to be done.

"Instances of bullying, cyberbullying, discipline and general distractions were on the rise and were having a significant impact on the academic setting here at Crestwood," he said.

In May, a group of high school staff members asked the board of education to support the policy change, saying that they hoped it would make students less dependent on their phones and more likely to have face-to-face interactions.

"The benefits we’re looking for are higher level of class engagement because we’re not going to be saying ‘get off your phone,’ increase student grades, decrease apathy, increase social skills, increase empathy, safer environment, more creative thinking and problem solving skills," high school teacher Colleen Ready told the board.

The group cited several reasons for the change including ongoing problems of students taking photos of tests, cheating on tests, online bullying, texting each other to vape in the bathrooms and not interacting with each other during lunch periods. Additionally, school counselor Karen Graves said that she frequently has students who are unable to function in class because of something they saw posted online or because someone did not immediately respond to a text.

"Schools witness how it corrodes the environment at school and deal with it every single day. That’s why [the schools] feel like they have to do something, let alone that students aren’t achieving and developing to their full potential" Mercier said.

The ultimate goal, he said, is to change the culture by creating a standard of behavior with the policy, providing education to explain why the policy is important and ingraining the value of less phone time and more face-to-face interactions in students.

What are other schools doing?

At the time of the policy change, Crestwood was the only high school to codify an outright ban in its handbook, although other Portage County high schools had already implemented various levels of cell phone restrictions.

Aurora High School and Waterloo High School, for example, give their teachers autonomy in deciding whether cell phones can be used by implementing a stop light system. Red, typically found in classrooms, indicates that cell phones cannot be used; yellow, typically found in hallways, means that any use should be brief; and green, typically found in lunch rooms, means that students may use their devices freely.

"Parents are very supportive here. They know they have to deal with it at home and they were supportive when we took phones away from study halls. It’s not a widespread problem, but it does play into disrupting certain students who are already dealing with social emotional issues and he phone only adds to it," Aurora High School Principal Paul Milcetich, Ph.D., said.

Theodore Roosevelt High School in Kent also allows their teachers to decide whether cell phones can be used in the classroom, and several teachers have cell phone baskets in their classrooms.

Starting last school year, Ravenna High School banned cell phones from classrooms. Principal Beth Coleman purchased cell phone holders, similar to a shoe holder, that were placed inside each classroom door. Cell phone use is still permitted during hall changes and lunch.

"We found our cell phone policy has been very effective. At the beginning of last year, the pouches were full, but the students figured out to leave it in their lockers, because if they get caught, it’s a major consequence," Coleman said.

At Streetsboro High School, unless a student has express permission from the teacher currently supervising them, cell phones are to be turned off and out of sight, including during lunch, restroom breaks and intervention.

"Our policy is effective when teacher supervision of use is well done. Cell phone use is not the primary problem; social media use during the day is our primary concern and has proved to be the most intense distraction to students that access these sites during school," said Streetsboro High School Principal James Hogue.

In Ohio, the Bexley City School District near Columbus and Mansfield City Schools have banned cell phone use during the day, and throughout the country, individual districts have implemented cell phone bans, including a city-wide ban in New York City that was in effect from 2005 to 2015, although the New York Times reported it was inconsistently enforced.

Bans are also happening across the world. Last year, New South Wales, Australia’s largest state, banned cell phones from primary schools and France approved a nation-wide cell phone ban for students under 15. French high schools could choose whether to adopt the ban.

In September, cell phones will be banned during instructional times in the Canadian province Ontario, although how to enforce the ban is up to individual schools; and in 2020, the Australian state of Victoria will also ban cellphones in the classroom for primary and secondary students.

How will stakeholders respond?

After talking with many schools and teachers, Mercier said that every stakeholder group — students, parents, teachers and administrators — holds a spectrum of opinions on cell phone bans.

"With students, we find that some will be frustrated but then they’ll be glad after a while and others will resist it completely," he said.

But, he said, "Kids are telling us they want relief. My own kids wouldn’t admit they had a problem and needed help because they won’t admit it to someone who can take away their phone, but when I’m doing a survey and it’s anonymous they tell the truth."

According to his survey, 41% of teens feel overwhelmed every day by the quantity of notifications they receive and 69% wish they could spend more time socializing with their close friends face-to-face and less time socializing online. A little over a quarter of teens wish that someone, their school or parents for example, would help them reduce their screen time by imposing some reasonable limits, and 32% want to stop using their phone but find themselves unable to do so every day.

Additionally, 67% of teens say their schools ban the use of phones during class, and 53% of those students say they are glad their school bans phones.

"With parents, some realize it’s a problem and they’re glad the school is addressing it, but others like to be in touch 24/7 because of emergencies or after school schedules changing. Those are valid concerns, but it’s a cost benefit, and Crestwood is saying that the benefits are greater to have restrictions, and in the end Crestwood feels that the benefits are tremendous against the cost of not being able to access your kids whenever you want," he said.

Among teachers, he said the biggest issue is consistent enforcement, and among administrators, the biggest issue is fear of parent backlash.

"You have to understand that when a school or organization implements a new program, there will be a rocky stage. You launch it and there’s some resistance. There will be challenges, and there will be punishments, but eventually, I would say in a month or two, things will smooth out. They’ll start to accept it and start to internalize it as the new normal," he said.

How can parents help?

Mercier recommended a number of ways that parents can help support the new policy, but focused heavily on keeping the conversation going and periodic digital detoxes.

"Don’t blame the kids. What I hear is that they feel their generation is being unfairly blamed when their parents are as addicted as they are. Admit that this is a global problem that hits every age group and that you have challenges too," he said.

He also recommended speaking to other parents about their challenges and creating opportunities for digital detoxes, such as phone-free family dinners or sending teens to camps that ban cell phone use.

One such camp is Camp Y-Noah in Clinton, which offers one-week overnight camps where cellphones are strictly banned. The policy has been heavily enforced by Executive Director Carl "Rocky" Wargo since he returned to the camp in 2015.

"The reason we started to really enforce it is it can be so hard to make a connection with a person sitting next to you when your face is glued to the screen. It can be a way to remove yourself from what’s happening around you, and the whole purpose of camp is to make lifelong friendships, to try new things, to be in scary situations. A cell phone can remove you from really, really developmentally important situations," Wargo said.

In his experience, parents, not the campers, are the most opposed to the policy. Wargo noted that he once had a parent sneak three phones in a camper’s luggage.

"If they call home, it takes the work away from the counselors and they don’t get equipped with the ability to work through their issues," Wargo said.

"I think social media and phones can be a beautiful thing, but like all beautiful things, they have their place and time."

Reporter Krista S. Kano can be reached at 330-541-9416, kkano@recordpub.com or on Twitter @KristaKanoRCedu.

2019-08-25 04:58:11Z
https://www.record-courier.com/news/20190825/schools-battle-cell-phone-addiction