By Sam GaunttCapital Information Service
SAN MATEO, Calif. – On a cool Friday morning in April, the halls of California’s San Mateo Excessive Faculty had been full of scholars chatting, working to class or looking for their mates.
However one widespread sight in excessive colleges throughout the nation was and all the time is absent from the halls of San Mateo: cellphones.
“If you have a look at the gang, youngsters will not be buried of their telephone,” mentioned Yvonne Shiu, the college’s principal. “They’ve grown to worth being within the second.”
College students on the public highschool about 20 minutes south of San Francisco have been prohibited since 2019 from utilizing their cellphones whereas at school — from bell to bell. Faculties nationwide, together with some in Maryland, at the moment are more and more imposing such bans, however San Mateo was one of many earliest and largest colleges within the nation to implement an entire ban on cellphones throughout faculty hours.
Firstly of every day, every of the 1,600 college students lock their telephone in a magnetically sealed pouch, created by the San Francisco-based firm Yondr, that gained’t be opened till the college day ends.
The choice to introduce Yondr pouches was the college’s try to deal with the more and more pervasive results of cellphone and social media overuse on its pupil physique: cyberbullying, lack of sleep, shallowness points and infinite distractions in school.
Lecturers and directors shortly embraced this system, saying it restored their grasp on college students’ consideration in school. Some even mentioned if the college had been to finish this system, they’d go away.
As colleges across the nation implement related cellphone bans, San Mateo gives a six-year observe document of how a cellphone ban can drive younger individuals to focus and, in lots of circumstances, really feel higher.
“If colleges might help alleviate a few of these expectations and pressures about look and efficiency and embarrassment, and take away a few of these components that plenty of youngsters actually wrestle with and are confronted with, that could be a profit to them and to the college group and the college tradition,” mentioned Casey Teague, a longtime world historical past trainer on the faculty.
A sluggish begin
The choice to implement the Yondr program at San Mateo started with remark and a trial run.
One in every of its college members, Alicia Gorgani, noticed an identical cellphone ban at San Lorenzo Excessive Faculty, a smaller faculty within the space, and introduced the concept to San Mateo’s lecturers and directors.
Adam Gelb, San Mateo’s assistant principal on the time, mentioned seeing the cellphone ban in motion at San Lorenzo “blew [his] thoughts.”
“College students had been engaged with each other,” he mentioned. “They had been interacting. They had been enjoying card video games. They had been enjoying out on the yard. They had been goofing round. They had been in circles, speaking to one another.”
Gelb helped carry this system to San Mateo, which examined Yondr pouches in just a few school rooms in spring 2019.
Teague, who’s labored on the faculty for greater than 20 years, was a type of first instructors to pilot this system. He mentioned he determined to check out the Yondr pouches in his class after noticing college students’ smartphones had been continuously bombarding them with notifications.
“By 2018, each child had a telephone. That wasn’t something new,” Teague mentioned. “However the distracting nature of the telephone was changing into increasingly apparent.”
Well being schooling trainer Brittany Dybdahl mentioned main as much as the ban, the college was seeing a rise in cyberbullying and drama stemming from on-line actions.
Embarrassing moments or conflicts amongst college students had the danger of getting captured on video and being immortalized on-line.
“It principally created far more alternatives for college students to be emotionally impacted all through the college day,” Dybdahl mentioned. “And that might, after all, have an effect on their teachers and studying.”
After the pilot program, and lots of discussions with college students and their mother and father, San Mateo carried out this system schoolwide starting within the 2019-20 tutorial yr.
Some lecturers had been apprehensive concerning the cellphone ban, considering it will create extra work for first-period lecturers to verify that every pupil had their telephones sealed away.
However these checks shortly turned a part of the day by day routine, mentioned physics trainer Patrick Thrasher.
And after seeing the influence this system had on their college students, most school members acquired on board, Thrasher mentioned.
“There was such a reasonably clear, drastic distinction within the classroom,” he mentioned. “It was simply night time and day.”
San Mateo’s cellphone ban was not even a yr previous when the COVID-19 pandemic moved all studying on-line for a yr beginning in March 2020. However the faculty determined to proceed the cellphone ban when college students returned to the classroom in 2021.
“They do spend sufficient time already on screens that, you recognize, seven hours a day right here at college [without screen time] will not be going to kill them,” Shiu mentioned.
The coed response
Enforcement of the ban hasn’t been completely with out points.
San Mateo college members mentioned some college students — albeit a small share — are decided to bypass the Yondr pouches and preserve their telephones on them. Some put calculators, laborious drives or different phone-shaped objects of their Yondr pouches. Others put previous, unused “burner telephones” of their pouches whereas maintaining their private telephone on them.
However many San Mateo college students, like junior Lulu Bertolina, embraced this system. She mentioned the Yondr program was one of many causes she enrolled at San Mateo.
“Having our telephones [in Yondr pouches] made it simpler to make mates, as a result of I can’t go off on my telephone and never make dialog with individuals,” she mentioned. “It nearly compelled it — in a extremely great way.”
For San Mateo senior Siddharth Gogi, the absence of telephones made the college really feel extra welcoming. He mentioned college students aren’t glued to their telephones enjoying video video games at lunch or distracted on social media in school.
“Conversations transfer previous floor degree when you could have that point to speak to 1 one other,” mentioned Gogi, San Mateo’s three-time class president who graduated this spring.
He acknowledged, although, that some college students are involved about not having fast entry to their telephones in case of an emergency.
Within the early 2000s, many colleges repealed their cellphone restrictions after the 1999 taking pictures at Columbine Excessive Faculty in Colorado.
However Shiu mentioned it’s higher if college students don’t have entry to their telephones throughout an emergency. The pouches forestall college students and relations from sharing misinformation or flooding 911 with calls overwhelming first responders and the cellphone community.
“In any emergency, we wish college students to be targeted on the grownup giving the knowledge,” Shiu mentioned.
The consultants
To listen to the consultants inform it, there’s an overriding good motive for colleges to ban cellphones. Cellphone use and social media websites can each have a critical influence on younger peoples’ well-being.
In depth cellphone use throughout the day has a “direct correlation with a decline in psychological well being,” mentioned Annette Anderson, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins College Middle for Protected and Wholesome Faculties.
“We additionally know that cellphone use late into the night has a disruptive think about our younger individuals getting sufficient sleep after which paying attention sufficient within the morning,” Anderson mentioned.
Younger individuals are grappling with the truth that the telephone of their hand may very well be doing them hurt. A Pew Analysis Survey launched in April discovered nearly half of U.S. teenagers age 13 to 17 agreed social media websites have a largely destructive influence on youngsters their age.
San Mateo wellness counselor Helen Citrin mentioned a cellphone ban can present college students a much-needed break from their telephones.
For college students who’re extremely anxious or wrestle managing their feelings, Citrin mentioned, not getting access to a cellphone might help because it prevents them from continuously texting their mother and father.
“That pouch gives a boundary,” she mentioned.
One current research echoed this sentiment. Unbiased analysis on faculty cellphone bans is restricted, however a 2024 research carried out by Yondr discovered that college students noticed a 15 p.c improve within the chance they acquired a passing grade after their faculty carried out Yondr pouches. The report additionally discovered a 44 p.c lower in behavioral referrals after implementation.
Knowledge from San Mateo paints a combined image of the college’s efficiency since implementation of the cellphone ban. Math and English check scores declined from 2019 by way of 2024, however each the commencement price and preparedness for school and careers have inched upward. In the meantime, the suspension price elevated.
Gelb provided an evidence for the rise: “Everyone was compelled to speak in individual, so that you had extra individuals speaking, and there’s extra probability for somebody to say the unsuitable factor or be within the unsuitable place.”
However, he added, the premeditated incidents and cyberbullying disappeared from the college day.
A rising pattern
Though San Mateo might need been early to the cellphone ban motion, it’s amongst rising firm now.
State and native governments and college districts throughout the nation at the moment are contemplating — or have already handed — insurance policies on cellphone use at school. Yondr boasts that hundreds of thousands of scholars from all 50 states at the moment are utilizing its pouches.
Whereas there is no such thing as a statewide ban in Maryland, greater than a 3rd of its public colleges prohibit cellphone use, Capital Information Service reported in October. A number of faculty districts, together with Howard and Baltimore counties, have handed a complete ban.
About 30 p.c of U.S. colleges now have a ban on cellphone use all through the college day, in response to the Nationwide Middle for Schooling Statistics.
That share is more likely to rise. Within the nation’s largest state, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed laws final yr requiring all public and constitution colleges in California to create a coverage to scale back or ban cellphone use throughout faculty hours by July 1, 2026, however left every faculty or faculty district to resolve the specifics of their coverage.
And lately, New York joined the greater than two dozen different states instituting an entire ban on cellphones throughout faculty hours.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) mentioned the choice comes as a part of the state’s efforts to guard youth psychological well being.
“Our younger individuals succeed once they’re studying and rising, not clicking and scrolling,” Hochul mentioned in a press release in Could.
A mannequin to comply with?
San Mateo college and employees mentioned the college’s cautious implementation of the Yondr program and the conversations it had with households and educators led to its success.
However a number of San Mateo college members mentioned Yondr alone can’t clear up youth psychological well being points stemming from social media and private gadgets.
The second college students go away faculty grounds, they as soon as once more have entry to their telephones and may browse as a lot as they need. Citrin, the college’s wellness counselor, mentioned lots of the college students she offers with keep up late into the night time doomscrolling, or texting or video chatting with mates.
That being the case, Gelb mentioned colleges must also educate college students methods to develop a wholesome relationship with their telephone and social media.
The pouches additionally carry a monetary influence on colleges.
Every pupil at San Mateo receives a free Yondr pouch in the beginning of the college yr, however every substitute prices $15. In whole, Shiu estimated the college spends about $20,000 a yr on Yondr pouches.
Nevertheless, San Mateo lecturers and directors mentioned this system’s advantages outweigh its prices.
“From a college perspective, it retains youngsters off of their telephone throughout class time,” Citrin mentioned. “As a result of the principle focus right here is schooling, that’s what the aim is, and that’s what the use is benefiting.”
