Switching Off: How To Help Your Teen Survive Phone Withdrawals At School

With many countries looking to "ban phones" in schools, how can parents support their teens through this change?

Post Preface: While this post is prompted by NZ’s recent election, it’s relevant to any parent whose teen appears to be surgically attached to their phone.

New Zealand is likely to follow a host of other jurisdictions, including the UK, Spain, Belgium, Ontario, France, Italy, Finland and the Netherlands, and ban phones in schools.

The details of any policy are not yet known, with the government only officially forming a coalition 11 days ago, but I’d say Kiwi teens and parents — and many families the world over — need to mentally prepare for some kind of big change when it comes to taking phones to school.

Whether you’re for or against the policy, I want to get away from the political noise around the issue, and bring it back to what matters, our kids.

How can we support them through the change of having no or limited access to their phone at school?

The Benefits

Assuming some kind of change is inevitable, I think we may as well view any ban or limitation on the use of smartphones in schools as a positive thing.

One of the most common themes in questions I am asked by parents is, how do I help my teen focus?!

And let’s be real, the phone is public enemy number 1 when it comes to distracting teens from what they should be focusing on in class.

The anecdotes from my teacher friends are, not to sound alarmist but… alarming.

Kids not putting their phones away even when asked multiple times, using their phone (and device) to access ChatGPT to write something they should be writing themselves, and unbelievably, all of the pushback from (some) parents when phones are confiscated.

And the smartphone is not like the distractions of our own youth — a smartphone is a casino pokie machine in your teen’s hand — every aspect of the social media apps on it are designed to steal away attention and focus for as long as possible.

But don’t take my second hand anecdotes’ word for it. In October this year the United Nations, yes THE UN, confirmed what we essentially already know — that unrestricted smartphone use in the classroom sucks for everyone.

Get ready to be shocked in absolutely no way shape or form — one of the Key Findings of the 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report by UNESCO (the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is that (from page 3):

[E]education technology… can have detrimental impact if inappropriate or excessive”, and that “[m]ere proximity to a mobile device was found to distract students and to have a negative impact on learning.

Front cover of the UN’s Global Education Monitoring Report 2023, which you can read in summary or full here.

In summarising an enormous volume of research conducted across numerous countries and thousands of students, one of the Report’s warnings is that used in excess, smartphones (and computers) in education negate the benefits they could otherwise bring, particularly when used without the guidance of a teacher [pages 83-84].

Wow. What a *shocking* plot twist…

Some of the Key Findings of the Report — note the last one in particular.

I’m not having a go at the Report. It’s incredibly important to understand what the research and facts actually tell us about how technology is impacting our kids and their learning, but also, we all knew this, right??

Everyone, including educators and students themselves have been telling us: phones are a massive problem.

The Report also discusses [on page 5] how the digital environment “increases exposure to key risks:

cybersecurity and violation of privacy through data misuse; the mental and physical health implications of issues including lengthy screen time and cyberbullying; and harmful content, with the potential long-term impact on addictive behaviour, violence and sexual exploitation.

Jeez. Sobering reading.

The Report actually provides a fascinating and detailed snapshot of the state of education across the globe and the impact technology is having, as much as it is possible to measure that impact, and it’s more nuanced than just saying phones are bad.

The Report articulates elegantly that technology does have a place in learning, but for me the Report’s key takeaway is that right now, there is probably an excessive use of phones and devices in the classroom and we haven’t yet figured out what the right balance of digital and analogue learning is.

The Reports findings have led UNESCO to call for smartphones to only be used in school when they clearly support learning.

So basically, except when a device is being used under proper supervision and for a specific and evidence-based pedagogical purpose, phones in the classroom suck.

I don’t think this is a surprise to anyone paying attention.

Your teen playing games on their phone or snapchatting their friend 3 seats away — shockingly — is not going to help their academic achievement.

I’m not saying that the issue is completely black and white — I absolutely appreciate some teachers’ concerns about the difficulty that will ensue when they try to actually enforce any ban rules, and I get that technology does have a place in the classroom, but it needs to be used in a much more structured, intentional way than it currently is.

How You Can Help Your Teen

My thoughts on this are less evidence-based on more, well, thoughts.

But IMHO — I think that teens are actually a lot more resilient and capable of adaptation than we give them credit for, especially when they are provided with the support they need.

So to that end, I think we need to approach the change to phone rules with empathy.

I know it will be hard and feel weird not having access to your phone all the time at school — but I think after a wee while we will all get used to it.

I really do think we will all get used to it.

There will be uproar and many more news articles written about it, but after a few months we will adjust and move on. Humans are actually really good at adapting to change.

And it doesn’t hurt to remember that smartphones have only been part of our lives for the last 10-15 out of 40,000 years.

As part of helping YOUR teen prepare for the change to rules around phone use at school, here are my practical suggestions:

1. Get on the same page as a family

2. Together, come up with a plan for how your teen will manage the new rules

3. For instance, you can discuss strategies for how you might communicate differently during school hours knowing you can’t contact each other during class time

4. You can provide comfort that all of their friends will be in the same boat so they’re not ‘missing out’

5. Even if you’re not thinking it, you can frame it as a positive thing that will make your teen’s life easier — for instance, concentrating more in class at the time of the lesson means future them won’t have as much work to do trying to catch up!

6. And finally, your family can use this as an opportunity to reinstate some important boundaries surrounding phone use in the house. Parents too. We’re all guilty of using our phones too much.

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So. Tricky times for teens. Phones, social media, it’s all a bit of a nightmare and through no fault of their own, teens are basically society’s gineau pigs for the experiment that is the Internet.

But let’s be the adults in the room and keep a cool head about us. Banning phones in schools won’t be the last obstacle teens have to overcome when it comes to technology and their learning, so it’s up to us to help them through it as best we can.

But enough from me. What are your thoughts on phones in schools? Is your teen for or against? What’s happening in your country? Let’s talk it out in the comments.

See you there,

Clare x

P.S. Here is a link to the online version of the UNESCO 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report if you’d like to take a look yourself.