Three schools set to silence student cellphones

The class of 2025 has most likely never known a time without cellphones, especially after the iPhone debuted 17 years ago, launching the modern smartphone era that now virtually every current K-12 student has been born into.

While the technology and accessibility to information has evolved, making cellphones a vital part of everyone’s lives, they have also become among the largest distractions in classrooms across the nation. As teachers battle for their students' attention, some administrators and policymakers are catching up to the problem. Three states recently passed laws banning or restricting cell phone use in schools. Florida was the first to do so in 2023.

Starting September 9, students at three schools in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) — Susitna Valley JR/SR High School, Palmer Junior Middle School and Palmer High School — will be required to secure their phones the moment they step into school until they leave.

“Cellphones distract children. All the research says that if there’s a cellphone distraction during class…it takes 20 minutes to refocus, and that’s time lost learning,” said Palmer High School Principal David Booth.

Students are issued a Yondr pouch, and once they step inside the school, they will be required to secure the phone in the pouch with the magnetic lock that can only be unlocked with the Yondr unlocking base. Students will keep their phones on their person throughout the day.

As of the 2021-2022 school year, more 75% of K-12 public schools prohibit cell phone use in schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Most of those policies stop short of total cellphone bans in schools. Among the policies recently implemented at the state level, some “strongly encourage” limitations on cellphone use, while others limit bans to instructional time only. Some leave it up to districts to decide, with some schools allowing students to use their phones during lunch and in between classrooms, while others ban any use in school buildings.

“Our children use their cellphones in class, even though they’re not supposed to. Kids are going to break rules. This is hopefully going to make it harder to break that rule,” Booth said.

For Booth, it is also about maintaining the students’ mental well-being.

“There’s an unbelievable wealth of evidence out there that (shows) the amount of hours that a child spends on their phone, most of the time using social media, it’s a direct correlation between the hours they’re using their phone and anxiety and depression.”

There have been a number of studies that point to declining adolescent mental health tied to the constant use of their phones and social media. In a report on EducationWeek.org, a 2023 systemic review of 50 research articles published in the ‘BMC Psychology’ found that screen time was associated with problems in teens’ mental well-being, and that social media was linked to an increased risk of depression.

In 2023, while hosting a roundtable on youth mental health with Senator Dan Sullivan in Anchorage, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said social media can distort kids’ values and self-worth.

“For too many young people, particularly on social media, the information that they’re getting, is an overload, frankly, of information that drives them to compare themselves constantly to other kids,” Murthy said. “And to chase what I think of as the false gods of success and happiness, which are fame, power, and money.”

Murthy has also issued a public health advisory warning parents about the potential harm social media may play on young people.

For those worried about their students not having access to their cellphones in times of an emergency, such as an active shooter or natural disaster, Booth points to limited resources in Palmer and the Mat Su Borough, with only a handful of 911 dispatchers and police officers available on most shifts.

“They (dispatchers) need phone calls from adults that have been trained and are in charge of the situation and have the proper information to relay that to them,” he said, adding that his staff conducts drills and practice multiple scenarios throughout the school year and are thoroughly trained to ensure protection of the students.

“The last thing that I want is to have an adult in charge, that is giving directions, that’s going to be protecting our children and instructing them on exactly what to do, to have a child on their phone and text their mother and not listening to the people we’ve entrusted to keep our children safe.”

Booth says that he has watched videos of the most recent school shooting, on September 5 in Georgia, and one thing he noticed in particular was that nearly half of the responding police officers were holding parents back while they were trying to secure the situation.

“Kids text their parents and then parents show up, and that’s one of the things we’ve spoken to the Palmer Police Department about-three officers on duty here to make sure that if there’s a threat in our school, that they’re able to control it. If we have parents show up, it makes it more dangerous.”

“Our law enforcement believes our schools are safer when children don’t have phones.”

Booth says that he has been speaking with parents, especially as they raise concerns he might not have thought about, and collaborating to find solutions. One such concern has been in the event the school needs to be evacuated, students will be able to unlock their Yondr bags upon arriving at the evacuation point and contact families as needed, and that they have already conducted one drill, evacuating to the assigned meeting point, and will be conducting a second one when the bags are issued.

“If it takes too long, we will get more unlocking bases, and if need be, I will put them in designated teacher and admin backpacks, and Yondr said they would fully support sending more as we need them at no cost.”

For those who want to get around giving up their cellphones and using a smartwatch, they will also go in the Yondr pouches. And Booth says that if a student destroys the pouch, they will be required to pay for a new one, at $25.00.

“In school, all we can control is the time that our 7 ½ hours of kids are going to be here, and we’re going to make sure those are healthy 7 ½ hours.”