Get Smartphones Out of Seattle Public Schools
Please Sign The Petition
The Ask
Seattle Public Schools is banning smartphones in two middle schools next year, part of a nationwide trend toward restricting smartphones in schools.
Some SPS parents have decided the district should do so in all its schools. Here is a petition asking for just that.
Please consider signing it—I did!
Their request:
We urge SPS to provide schools the necessary support to ensure a safe and healthy learning environment for all kids by having the following measures in place when they return this fall:
Institute clear measures to restrict cell phone usage during school time.
Leverage and formalize the various successful pilot efforts already underway by teachers in SPS classrooms to tackle this problem. One notable example is the “Phone Hotel” experiment from Garfield High School, where students "check in" their phones before class starts.
Incomplete Evidence, but solid reasoning
As it once was with smoking, the proof of harm is not incontrovertible and largely correlative. Like others, I find Jonathan Haidt’s analysis to be a bit slippery and his rhetoric to be over the top for someone who is is supposed to be a sober-minded researcher.
But the evidence is at the very least mounting that smartphone use in general, and social media in particular, significantly harms students. Even the Surgeon General is chiming in.
And the overall logical case is strong. Given the provocative data supporting the damage wrought by these devices, the mental health crisis our kids face, the fact that post-pandemic so many students are behind their learning targets, and the fact that the devices are unnecessary anyway during the school day, it is time to try getting these distractions out of schools for at least a few years while we get a grip on the problem and better understand their impacts.
We can do this without moral panic.
A school ban will be unlikely to significantly reduce the number of students who have access to such devices. Some kids use these as a lifeline for accessing important information or finding community when they live in families that do not accept, say, their LGBTQ identity. Even if smartphones on net isolate kids, for some kids, they provide vital social connectivity.
But a school ban is limited and does not cut them off from those resource; it merely manages some of the downside risks by reducing total access and cutting out distractions during learning hours.
In any case, there is no need for endlessly interesting apps to constantly compete with student learning and social relationships in schools. And there is no need leave all the work to the teachers who have to face the classroom management challenge this produces.
Interestingly, Seattle Public Schools is suing several social media companies for compromising student health already.
If they really believe that, they should not allow phones in school.
Please sign and share the petition