Pro: Cell Phone Bans Are Needed In this Day and Age
The idea of banning phones from school outright will roll the eyes of many a teenager, but this topic has become quite hot in county board meetings as phones consume more and more of the average student’s time and day. Many solutions that have been proposed have been rather out of touch with the times, but through all the discussions and deliberation, Fulton County has arrived upon a solution that meets both the students and the school faculty in the middle.
First, it’s important to establish what the problems with cell phones actually are in schools today. Put simply, cell phones have honed the art of distracting to an absolute tee over the past fifteen years. Apps like Instagram and Tiktok beckon to consume your time, all day every day. This includes during class, where students will fall back to watching videos on their phone at even the slightest hint of boredom with their current assignment. And if it were just one student per class, perhaps that wouldn’t be such an issue, but in a class of twenty five students and one overworked teacher, there’s really only so much that teacher can do to be aware of every single student that’s playing on their phone. The other problem, ironically, is how useful these phones can be. People in opposition to phones being banned will bring up things such as being able to get in contact with parents in case of emergency, to access information blocked on school issued devices, and other useful applications that other devices cannot get done.
So, how should a good phone policy even handle an issue like this? Banning phones entirely would cut off important lines of communication for students and be an intense hassle to even enforce. (There’s not much you can do in the face of a thousand teenagers who are entirely resolute on pushing every boundary set on their phone usage.) But not restricting them at all would just leave us in the same position we’ve been in for years: having students not paying attention in class at all. What is there to do? Compromise.
This is the crux of supporting the Fulton County phone policy. Instead of leaning toward either of the extremes, the policy seeks to ride a line that better fits both teachers and students alike. Instead of banning phones outright, phones are simply not allowed during instructional time, with that time being set and enforced by the teacher themselves. This policy gives the teachers the power to confiscate phones from misbehaving students, and even to get administration involved if a student refuses to stop using their phone entirely. On the other hand, students are entirely free to use their phones during their breaks and when outside of instructional time. This allows them to make use of their phones to communicate with parents and even allows them to make use of phones at times when the school issued devices fail (with teacher permission.)—which is quite often.
Some may argue that these rules are too strict and all encompassing, leaving out teacher and student agency in the mix of decisions related to phones. I would disagree with that claim, though, and I would even argue that the policy would allow more agency to students and teachers if implemented properly. On one end of the spectrum, yes, there are situations where students should be on their phones and teachers want to allow them to do as such. But without a district policy in place, what are teachers to do when they find themselves in the significantly more prevalent predicament in which a student is consistently using their phone when they are distinctly not supposed to?. In other situations where the policy is drawn looser or less clearly, a teacher may find themselves unable to confiscate a phone from a troublesome student at all. With a tighter policy in place, though, the teacher has the administration on their side in a situation like this, thus allowing the school to properly discipline the student and actually reduce their cell phone usage.
If the new county cell phone policy is implemented with any actual force, it would ride the line necessitated by both the needs of the school and the students quite well. It would be turbulent, certainly, but it would be a worthwhile effort to increase student focus, learning, and understanding.
-Carson Mayeske
Con: Cell Phone Bans Are Unnecessary and Unenforceable
Ever since the addition of new cell phone policies in multiple school districts, there has been a considerable amount of discourse about whether schools should be allowed to create rules disallowing students to use their phones. Safety concerns and logical practicalities have been brought up many times on both sides of the discussion, and it’s a worthy debate to have. However, with a closer look, phone policies are unneeded and on the whole, unnecessary.
To start off, the current policy is not different enough from what teachers were already doing in their classrooms to warrant becoming systemwide policies. Before the policies were officially implemented, most teachers had their own personal rules on phone usage. The rules would vary from class to class but would primarily have the same rule of not using phones during instructional time. In my opinion, these rules were reasonable and worked for all parties involved. Teachers were able to make their own rules which fit their individual classrooms, and students could adapt their phone usage to whichever class they were in. This balance has been set off by the current cellphone policies, which throws off whatever curated rules teachers had for their own class. One size is not going to fit all, and the phone policies often have adverse effects on teachers that previously had their own specifically made rules for their classes.
Secondly, phones do have some practical usage besides just being distractions. Taking away phones opens up legitimate safety concerns. For example, say a natural disaster hit Fulton County, including this school. A student who may want to tell their parents they’re alright but would not be able to due to the phone policy. A student with mental health issues may call their parent to pick them up, but wouldn’t be able to without going through hoops due to the policy. A parent may have important news to tell a student, such as a death in the family, that they want to communicate to their child. These are legitimate concerns that both students and parents have, and aren’t properly accounted for with a restrictive cellphone policy.
Secondly, the notion that the county’s mandate that all students should have a school-issued tablet is questionable. Our computers are not the best, especially as a search engine. Having to research information on an assignment is difficult with them, with all the WiFi lagging and blocked sites. A phone is much better to do research with a majority of the time, and with so many class projects based on technology, the policy becomes self-defeating. Moreover, students can chat, play games, and do almost all of the things on their tablets that they were doing on their cell phones anyway. Anyone who has ever looked around a classroom knows when a student is using it by their posture as they try to both hide and view the cellphone. Can a teacher patrol a classroom full of students using their tablets and discern who is off task with any more ease, especially when closing a tab is just a click away?
Rules and restrictions can be a good thing, but there is such thing as going too far. People are calling for a full on phone ban in high schools, which is both unneeded and logistically unenforceable. It’s unfair to restrict a teenager’s use of their phone during non-instructional times like breakfast and lunch, where there’s very little to no negative effect on learning. (Some are even calling for an outright ban on social media for anyone under 18, which is a different issue, but also entirely overstepping). The internet is essential to everyday life, and in this day and age, not allowing teenagers to be on it is doing nothing but shielding them from everyday life and underpreparing them for the real world.
Overall, phone policies are mostly unnecessary. I think they have more potential to cause harm rather than any good. While I can understand the perspective of someone in support of them, there are simply too many variables to take into account. We are all better off without county enforced cellphone restrictions than with them.
-Jordyn Newsome
