On Thursday, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, made her intention clear that schools across the state, one of the most populous in America, would be banning smartphones from being entered into premises.
According to the Guardian, the governor says that the incoming bill is aimed at child online safety more than anything else. She espouses the dangers of social media on the youngest members of society. We have also seen again and again how dangerous the overuse of social media is on young minds, which can lead to mental illness in many cases, and even suicide in a few.
“I have seen these addictive algorithms pull in young people, literally capture them and make them prisoners in a space where they are cut off from human connection, social interaction and normal classroom activity,” Hochul is quoted as saying.
While it will likely be unpopular among the children themselves, New York’s impending ban on smartphones at schools does not emerge from an alien notion. UNESCO urged countries around the world to ban smartphones at schools in 2023.
Smartphone school bans worldwide
The United Nations education body said that smartphones at schools create distractions, jeopardise pupil privacy and contribute to cyberbullying – another mental health epidemic wreaking havoc among South Africa’s young people.
It said that the only technology that should be allowed at schools, is technology that supports learning.
The government of South Australia banned phones from schools in the state as of 2023, and immediately saw a number of benefits. Including, among others, a large drop in physical altercations – fights involving punches and kicks – between children at schools after the ban.
It is true that smartphones are enormously distracting for young people. A 2022 study found that South Africans between the ages of 18 to 26 check their smartphones upwards of 30 times every single hour.
In the same study, over 80 percent of the young respondents said they consider themselves “addicted” to their smartphones, with the study suggesting that the age group of Generation Z spends at least a quarter of every waking day is spent on a mobile device.
Another international study found that children between the ages of eight and 12 are now spending up to five and half hours looking at screens per day – be it a smartphone, laptop, PC, console or tablet. These numbers are only for social media use, gaming and texting.
With around five hours a day spent at school on average in South Africa for that age group, the overlap speaks for itself.
Is there a reason why smartphones could remain at school?
But there is an argument to keep smartphones at schools in South Africa. During and after the pandemic, smartphones became essential for learners at schools in poor and disadvantaged areas in the Western Cape to study for exams.
These learners were using platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp as their only access to past exam papers and memorandums, so much so that programmer Brandon Wilson spun up a low data-cost platform for the children to use instead, one where teachers and parents could also interact with learners.
It was called EduHub and saw thousands of young people using it to study, but the vast majority of learners remain sharing educational material and study advice with each other on social media. Some teachers in the country even spin up WhatsApp study groups to help their learners succeed during exams.
Some of these groups were also used for cheating some years back, but the fact that they exist and the majority of those in them are using them honestly is an argument against removing phones from schools.
Perhaps the answer lies in even ground, somewhere between a blanket ban and more control during lessons. Smartphones changed the world when they were introduced, so much so that most people alive right now think of them as parts of their being.
There are both dangers and benefits to the technology, and we should consider both when weighing how they should be treated in educational settings.
[Image – Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash]
