How the Phone Ban Saved High School

"When New York State banned phones in public schools from bell to bell this past September, the goal - according to the ban's champion, Governor Hochul - was undistracted learning. But within weeks of the Great Phone Lockup, teachers began to notice an incidental (and arguably even more compelling) benefit: The teens were talking to one another as if they were in a Brat Pack movie."

"Sure, there's been grumbling and some burner phones and scrolling in the bathroom. At one high school, an entrepreneurial senior even bought a pouch-unlocking magnet on Amazon and tried to charge classmates a dollar per jailbreak. But generally, with phones off-limits, the atmosphere feels different. There's a pleasant buzz in the lunchroom, chatter in the hallways, and an alphabet of new analog hobbies popping up just about everywhere."

"What stuff are they doing? At many schools, teachers have made cards, board games, and sports equipment available during free time, and the kids have deigned to use them. Kevin Casado, a coach and teacher at Math, Engineering, and Science Academy Charter High School in Bushwick, hands out volleyballs every lunch period. He says a lot more kids are playing this year than were last year. "It's no net, open space, forming their own circles of ten or 12 kids, hitting it up to each other, an equal number of girls and boys," he adds. Aidan Amin, a ninth-grader at Hunter College High School, is in a friend group that congregates in the school foyer to stack OK Play tiles and compete at Sorry! and other tabletop games during lunch. "I'd say it's made us closer. Honestly, half the people I'm playing board games with I didn't know at all before this," Aidan says."

A statewide bell-to-bell phone ban coincided with a surge in in-person student interaction and communal activity. Lunchrooms and hallways warmed with conversation, board games, dominoes, and spontaneous sports play. Teachers and coaches supplied cards, tabletop games, and sports equipment during free time, and students formed mixed-gender groups and new friendships around those activities. Some students used burner phones, scrolled in bathrooms, or tried jailbreak workarounds, but overall participation in analog hobbies and school spirit increased, and many students reported feeling closer to peers they had not known before.

Read at Intelligencer