Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
Students retrieve their cellphones after unlocking the pouches that secure them during the school day at Bayside Academy, in San Mateo, California, August 16, 2024.
School massacres, like the one this week at a Madison, Wisconsin, private Christian school, are rare, and rarer still when committed by young girls. But it would be wrong to console ourselves with this data. These acts can also be traced back to a more commonplace manifestation of school violence in America: school fights that students record on their cellphones and post on social media for sheer entertainment and notoriety.
This week, The New York Times took a deep dive into the problems posed by the use of cellphones during fights at one suburban Boston public school. The story may have shocked anyone outside school ecosystems, but every day in America there are hundreds of middle school and high school students, teachers, and administrators dealing with fighting, cellphones, and harmful social media posts in every corner of the country.
A 2024 National Center for Education Statistics survey found that during the 2021-2022 school year, nearly 20 percent of students reported being bullied during the school day. Bullying and fighting in schools is not new, but producing curated violent attacks for the student body to stream is a poisonous twist on an old problem in an era of mass shootings.
One teacher on an r/education subreddit dated the decline in student mental health to the debut of the iPhone in 2007. By the mid 2000s, schools had banned phones but relaxed those rules, citing the potential educational uses. Nowadays, games, movies, and texts have polluted classrooms. Schools began moving toward bans roughly a decade ago, and there’s been legislative momentum behind the drive to wrest back control of classrooms from distracted students.
California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Virginia have banned or restricted cellphones. Another dozen states are considering limits on their use or are implementing pilot programs to try out bans. Using federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds from the pandemic-era CARES Act, Massachusetts launched a $1.3 million pilot that provided one-year grants to school districts for the 2023-2024 school year.
According to Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data, of the 79 recipients (such as school districts and charters) that applied for funds, 77 were approved for grants that averaged $16,345. Most schools used the funds to revisit their mobile device policies and to share those policies with students, families, and others, and to procure special phone pouches, lockers, or other equipment.
An October Pew Research Survey found that 64 percent of adults support bans in middle and high school classes, with one-third of adults supporting bans for the entire school day.
The Boston Public Schools, which obtained a $25,000 grant, bans all personal electronics, and students use Yondr pouches to store their devices. The district has a three-year, $1.3 million contract with the phone storage company. The state of Delaware is another customer, allocating $250,000 for a Yondr pilot in middle and high schools. One Delaware lawmaker noted that getting rid of cellphones was number one or two on teachers’ lists of the best ways to regain control of classrooms and halls.
The steep drop in academic attainment after months at home with phones, screens, and other electronics during the pandemic is another motivating factor behind the restrictions. This decline in students’ social interactions also worried educators as they become more reliant on apps and games rather than meetups or other time spent developing relationships with actual living and breathing human beings.
“When we came back from the pandemic, it wasn’t just an occasional text,” a Chicopee, Massachusetts, administrator told School Administrator magazine. “It wasn’t just, ‘I’ll look at my phone really quickly.’ It was literally students who were watching Netflix and videos and just refusing to put the phone away. And we had some big fights, and these fights were recorded. Some of these things happened pre-pandemic, but afterwards it just notched it up to a whole new level.”
One Minnesota school discovered, as do many schools with similar policies, that teachers and principals notice positive developments in student behavior. And even students, when prodded, agree that taking cellphones out of the school-day equation has made them more productive, social, and happier overall.
An October Pew Research Survey found that 64 percent of adults support bans in middle and high school classes, with one-third of adults supporting bans for the entire school day. The issue transcends party lines, with majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents supporting bans.
When queried about their reasons for opposing a ban, most people cited the ability to reach a child in case of emergency: 70 percent of parents of K-12 students cited emergencies as the primary reason for having a cellphone in class. Fears about bloodshed have forced schools to think through how to balance parents’ and students’ concerns about shootings and having a cellphone that they see as a literal lifeline. In Florida’s Broward County, where 17 students died after the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, parents have continued to oppose a ban launched in September.
One possible solution might get traction: “dumb” phones that allow a person to make calls and send and receive texts, minus sophisticated software features or internet access. In 2022, a small boarding school in rural northwestern Massachusetts allowed students to carry dumb phones during the day after video of an incident circulated in student dorms. Again, school staff observed that student behavior improved.
Perhaps dumber devices can alleviate the academic, social, and mental health crises that have alarmed educators. Yet they are a poor antidote to the safety concerns that worry students, parents, and staff every day of the school year. Deciding whether a smart or a dumb phone is a better defense against a school shooter rather than stiffer controls on weapons spotlights the perversity of contemporary America’s comfort with violence. There’s a collective wringing of hands every time blood gets spilled and children and teachers die, or kids get beaten within an inch of their lives for “fun.” But this lunacy has become the cost of living in America, and we continue on this trajectory somehow strangely comforted by the desperate hope that a phone might save the day.
