Gabriel Freeman

A phone is on the home screen of Google Classroom.

As of April 2025, an estimated 5.81 billion people in the world use a smartphone, which is roughly 71% of the world’s population. It hasn’t even been 40 years since the first smartphone came out, and now, one in every five people worldwide are addicted to their phones. That’s cause for concern. If something is able to take over so many people’s lives within such a short span of time, how can students and parents expect schools to bear the burden of limiting this attention-hungry device?

The reality is that banning phones isn’t a simple fix to this complex issue. While a ban does help students, it’s also a coverup to the underlying societal problem, which is that phones have become a dangerous addiction for too many people of all ages, worldwide. We need more than a ban; we need guidance for students who have an addiction and a way of supporting kids who need help.

As of last year, middle schoolers in the Westford Public School system are required to put all of their electronic devices in a Yondr pouch, a locking pouch to store phones during the school day. This was an initiative to restrict phone usage and to help students stay more focused, and it worked to a degree.

“Teachers have seen much less distraction and [less students] leaving class,” Stony Brook School principal Allison Hammer said. “Taking that distraction away helps all of our students to be more focused on their learning.”

In May, Massachusetts Senate President Karen E. Spilka asked the Senate to “explore ways to make our schools cell phone free”. On July 24, the Massachusetts Senate Committee on Ways and Means voted favorably to create Massachusetts bill S.2561, taking various elements from other bills to target the same issue: phones in schools. A week later, the Senate passed S.2561 in a dominant 38-2 vote, and gave it a name: An Act To Promote Student Learning And Mental Health.

This bill, if passed, would take effect at the start of the 2026-2027 school year in all Massachusetts public schools, but it’s currently stalled in the Massachusetts House of Representatives with no scheduled hearings or votes.

While banning phones in schools does help with student attention, grades, and a myriad of other things, it also causes problems. Therefore it creates a dilemma: Should schools ban phones, and does doing so hurt more than it helps? The students seem to have an answer.

“Most, if not all of the students at Blanchard do not like the [Yondr] pouches, and think that they’re unnecessary and irritating to use,” freshman Akshaya Parthibhan said. “I think that [Yondr pouches] did not significantly improve the phone situation for students at Blanchard.”

Yondr pouches weren’t the right initiative to start off with. Hoping that kids will change just because they can’t have their phones in their pockets during the school day is a Hail Mary attempt at changing how a generation of kids are wired.

Westford wasn’t the only district experimenting with Yondr. As of 2024, there are at least 2.5 million students using Yondr across the United States. Various schools that have implemented the Yondr pouches have seen positive outcomes from it. La Vega High School in Texas required students to use Yondr pouches at the start of the 2023-2024 school year. Since then, the school has seen student disengagement drop from 20% to 8% and disciplinary offenses drop by 50% in only one year. That’s huge, and shows that Yondr can work well. In the case of academic performance it’s amazing, and that’s where Yondr surpasses my expectations. I would love to see this school further emphasize how important managing phone use is instead of just banning them and hoping for the best. While it does set a good precedent and restricts students in the moment, once those same students step out into the real world they will need to know how to manage their own phone usage independently.

These pouches can also have some consequential downsides to students whose phones are nestled away in a locked pouch.

“I think that it’s not a good idea for safety and student focus,” Parthibhan said. “The idea of not being able to contact people outside of the school on my own during an emergency because I’m not allowed to have my phone is dangerous and [uncomfortable].”

While in nearly every school handbook phones aren’t supposed to be used as a form of contact during an emergency, they can help tremendously in a time of high stress. Kids not being able to text their mothers or fathers they love them or be able to call someone for potentially the last time is horrible, and every kid should have peace of mind knowing they can have their phone during an emergency.

Students aren’t the only ones with this fear. In a WBUR interview, Jamaica Plain High School parent Casey Brown recalled an incident last year when his daughter’s school went on lockdown.

“The safety aspect [of having access to phones] is non-negotiable. I was texting with my kid, making sure she was okay, reminding her to follow the teacher’s instructions,” Brown said.  “If she didn’t have that phone, I would’ve lost my mind. That connection matters, especially in [a] crisis. We can’t just cut it off.”

While banning phones will help students, the approach that schools should be taking is teaching kids when and how to use their phones appropriately. When students graduate high school and get a job, they are expected to not be on their phone and to be responsible enough to know when to use their phone and when not to. The school’s job should be to teach students to manage their usage and not ignore it like they’re doing with a full phone ban.

Westford Academy’s current rules on phone usage goes as follows: “Students may use personal cell phones, tablets, wearable technology, and laptops in class at teacher discretion.” Students are free to use their phones during passing periods and lunch.

“I’m torn on [my thoughts on this bill],” Westford Academy principal Dan Twomey said. “I feel like there’s a way for us to always continue to work with students and educate students on the appropriate way to [use phones], so I think where we are right now is okay.”

What is happening in schools is not just a classroom issue, it’s a reflection of something much larger. The world’s relationship with smartphones has shifted from convenience to dependency, and current middle and high school students are only the first generation to grow up fully engulfed in the smartphone ecosystem.

Westford Academy business teacher John Rogers personally agrees with the idea that this issue is bigger than the schools and more of a societal problem that can then affect a child’s well-being after high school.

“[Students] are not prepared for the outside world, they’re not prepared skillswise,” Rogers said. “I tell [my students], if they don’t have their phone up [in the phone jail], they’re in trouble. And I don’t give idle threats.”

Students’ inability to control their phone use outside of school can be a serious detriment to their academic performance, especially if it impacts the quality sleep that teens require.

“I’ve seen it at home with my own kids, when my daughter says, ‘I’m getting to bed early today’. I think ‘what a smart idea.’ Then I see a glow from her room and I go, ‘she ain’t sleeping’. She’s texting her friends,” Rogers said. “And once you get up tired the next day? I got no sympathy for you.”

We built phones to connect us, but somewhere along the way, they became the walls between us. Schools can ban them, politicians can debate them, and parents can complain about them, but until society learns to control its own attention, the next generation will keep inheriting the same addiction, just with a newer screen and a better camera.

While phone apps and the general engineering of phones are designed to be addictive, there are relatively easy and straightforward ways to combat that addiction and improve long-term mental and physical health.

1. Turn Off Non-Essential Notifications: Notifications are engineered to pull you back in, even when you’re not thinking about the particular app or your phone. A 2018 survey found that 75% of Americans say digital notifications hurt their focus and lead to procrastination. By turning off non-essential alerts, you create mental space. Over time, that space helps reduce the stress and mental fatigue that’s ingrained into constant interruptions.
2. Keep Your Phone Out of Reach During Key Activities: Leaving your phone in another room while you sleep or during meals reduces the urge to scroll mindlessly. One study of 45,000 young adults found that just one hour of screen time before bed raises the risk for insomnia by 59% and reduces the amount of sleep that you get by 24 minutes per night. Another study tracked nearly 1,800 meals and found that 85% of people used phones during at least one meal per day, which reduced how much people ate and enjoyed the food. Removing the phone from your bedroom, dinner table, and office space boosts sleep quality, improves focus, and lets you actually connect with the people around you, all of which can benefit your mental health.
3. Use App Limits or Screen Time Tools: Most phones come equipped with tools to track and limit screen time, and there is data suggesting they actually work. In one study, students who limited smartphone use to two hours per day over three weeks saw measurable improvements in depression, stress, sleep quality, and general well-being. Another study involving behavioral interventions, including disabling notifications and setting limits, helped participants cut about one hour off their daily screen time and improved the average sleep quality drastically over the course of six weeks. These built-in tools establish boundaries and nudge your brain away from chasing constant dopamine hits.

At the end of the day, all of these studies and varying viewpoints help to highlight solutions to the dangers of devices, but banning phones is only a bandage to a larger societal disease that parents and kids have to face. If you can’t put your phone down at night to go to sleep, or keep checking it everytime you hear a buzz, you have a problem, no matter your age. It’s not your fault, but the fault of billionaire CEO’s of the apps that lie within your phones. If you still don’t believe all of the data, listen to what co-founder of Facebook and META Mark Zuckerberg has to say about the safety of kids in this current technological era.

In a 2024 U.S Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Child Safety, Zuckerberg was asked a question by U.S Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

“The internet’s a dangerous place for children. And your platforms are dangerous places for children. Do you agree?” Ossoff said. “There are families here who have lost their children. There are families across the country whose children have engaged in self-harm, [and] who have experienced low self-esteem.”

Zuckerberg then gave a wrong answer to an easy question.

“I think that there are harms that we need to work to mitigate,” Zuckerberg said.

Instead of admitting the harm his apps have done, he chose to answer in a political tone: a bold choice considering how serious that hearing was. By doing so, he left families distraught and only grew the ever-expanding barrier between people’s trust and technology. And if the man behind some of the most addictive platforms can’t even take responsibility, how can we expect schools to manage the fallout of those very same devices in classrooms?