Abcarian: Phone bans a great first step

Negative reaction ranged from “My child needs her phone at all times to control her anxiety” to, basically, “Over my dead body.” One parent said she didn’t care what the district implemented, she and her child were not going to go along with it.

Sadly and predictably, a lot of the parents fretted about school shootings and the need for kids to be able to let their parents know they’re safe. But let’s be honest, phones don’t make people safe.

The good news is that L.A. Unified is not alone. Many private schools already ban phones, and a handful of states have adopted no-phone policies.

In August, the California Legislature passed a bill requiring school districts to develop policies limiting the use of smartphones by July 2026.

“Quite frankly, school boards in general need to be pushed into this,” said Democratic state Sen. Ben Allen, a co-author of the bill. “There’s always reasons to drag your feet, but the data shows that phones lead to learning loss, lower scores, increased depression, physical fights, less focus, less ability to learn. We need to shift the culture to a place where this is not acceptable.”

And let me add, this is a problem that extends beyond the classroom door.

Whenever they aren’t in class, kids are on their phones at school, ignoring each other in favor of texting, Snapping and whatever else distracts them from face-to-face interaction.

So, how to get kids off their phones?

Some schools collect phones in the morning using phone lockers, while others supply magnetic pouches that stay in kids’ possession but can be unlocked only at school exits or by teachers and administrators. A pouch for every student would cost the district about $6 million, a drop in its $15 billion annual budget. “The return on this investment will be huge.”

Yondr, a pioneer in the phone pouch field, first created them to free live performers from the distracting and constant use of cellphones in the audience. Many artists have adopted the practice of shutting down cellphones, including Alicia Keys, Guns N’ Roses, the Lumineers, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.

Then teachers began reaching out to the company, its director Sarah Leader told me. Now the pouches are being used in thousands of schools in all 50 states and in 27 countries. The company estimates that they will be used by more than 2 million students by the end of this year, double the number at the end of 2023.

“We are not taking something away,” Leader said. “We are giving kids access to a phone-free education.” Yondr works with schools to train staff, and to make sure kids and their parents understand how and why a phone-free day can improve the school experience.

Turns out, there are all kinds of unexpected benefits to getting kids off their phones. Schools that use the pouches are seeing more meals eaten in their cafeterias, Leader said, “because kids feel better about eating when they are not being recorded.” Some schools, she added, report that more books are being checked out of the library.

Banning cellphones in schools won’t solve all the problems wrought by a technology that has gotten way out of hand.

But wouldn’t you agree that it’s a great first step?