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Back To School But Not To Screens: States Ramp Up Cellphone Bans
Work has been easier for public high school teacher Brian Kerekes since last August, when he first experienced the impacts of a newly enacted Florida law to restrict students’ cellphone use during class. The longtime statistics instructor, who started a new school year on Monday, now spends less time circling the classroom policing students and more time educating them on how to gather and interpret data.
Before Florida passed the ban in May 2023 — becoming the first of at least eight U.S. states to prohibit or restrict cellphone use in schools — phones proved a constant disruption in Kerekes’ classroom at Tohopekaliga High School in the central Florida city of Kissimmee.
“Students were either using them to talk to someone in a different class or talk to someone on the other side of the room or just to zone out, get on TikTok or whatever,” Kerekes, who's been a teacher for 17 years, said in an interview.
Fellow teachers nationwide face the same challenge, which explains why more states and districts are moving to limit or outright ban cellphones in the classroom, and even during the school day altogether.
The rules will look different from state to state and district to district, but all stem from the same concerns.
Seventy-two percent of high school teachers cite cellphones as a major distraction in the classroom, according to a fall 2023 Pew Research Center study. Educators also worry that constant access to social media can adversely impact kids’ mental health.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy went so far as to issue a health advisory last year, warning that enough evidence exists to show social media can be unsafe for children and teens. “We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis,” he said, “and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis, one that we must urgently address.”
While social media can connect kids, make them feel less alone and offer an entertaining and creative outlet, it also exposes them to harmful content, Murthy pointed out in the advisory released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And, as educators such as Kerekes note, some students use their phones to bully fellow students online during the school day, and in the most extreme cases, to set up fights and film them.
The hope is that cellphone bans will reduce such incidents. Kerekes said he’s hearing they have.
Fonte: KATZ, Leslie. Back To School But Not To Screens: States Ramp Up Cellphone Bans. Forbes, 13 ago. 2024. Disponível em: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2024/08/13/back-to-school-but-not-to-screens-more-students-face-cellphone-bans/
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