Do Not Disturb: Schools Become No-Phone Zones

Teachers rejoice, kids freak out, parents straddle the fence.

As kids across the country head back to classrooms after the delicious mind-melt that is summer break, the hottest back-to-school accessory is… the absence of one. Districts from Seattle to South Florida are banning cell phones on campus, and in their absence two vintage classics are making a comeback: eye contact and boredom. Guidance counselors are dusting off words like “conversation,” teachers are remembering what students’ irises look like, and cafeteria social life has been dragged—kicking and screaming—back into 1997.

Without their portable popularity meters, kids are actually being forced to talk to one another again. Yes, the days of table-banging debates over whether ranch really belongs on pizza and which teacher most likely escaped from the loony bin are officially back. Group projects no longer happen in twelve separate Google Docs while everyone secretly scrolls Snapchat; now children get to enjoy the ancient ritual of arguing in person while one kid does everything. It’s almost too wholesome.

Frank meant need to be banned.

Cheating, meanwhile, has taken a nosedive. If you can’t sneak-photo the answer key or have ChatGPT whisper algebra formulas through your smartwatch, you’re left with a shocking alternative: learning. Teachers report that “studying” is experiencing a modest revival on par with vinyl, Polaroids, and the mullet. (Results may vary. Side effects include knowing things. Pride sold separately.)

Here’s where it gets sticky. Phones have also doubled as the world’s smallest investigative journalism kit. They’ve caught the fights, the woke indoctrination, the ideological sermons disguised as lesson plans, the “we don’t do grades anymore, we do vibes” experiments. Students have used them to record not just the bad apples, but the whole orchard’s sometimes putrid irrigation system.

So when schools ban phones “to enhance learning,” some parents can’t help but wonder: is this about attention spans, or about attention—as in, please stop paying it to what’s happening in the halls? After years of viral videos exposing everything from classroom chaos to PowerPoints that belong in a sociology dissertation, the clampdown feels a lot like “No phones… it’s for your our safety.”

Naturally, this has led to the most American solution since microwavable mac-and-cheese: cameras in classrooms. If police get body cams and porches get Ring cams, why can’t we outfit Period 3 with EduCams™?

Picture it: a cheerful little dome in the corner, capturing Homeroom LIVE! with a 30-second delay for profanity and spontaneous TikTok choreography. Parents get an app. The PTA gets analytics. “Congratulations, your child participated 12% more than last week, mostly to complain about not having access to their phone.” There’s a scoreboard for “Hands Raised” and a heat map for “Off-Topic Rants.” We put transparency on a swivel mount and call it a day.

And Gary almost certainly meant a “wide variety.” Sigh. Does nobody bother reading their tweets before posting them anymore?

Cameras sound perfect—right up until the point where you remember classrooms contain actual children. Now you’ve turned 7th grade into a public stage, with every stumble, squabble, and side-eye permanently cloud-stored. Kids stop asking real questions because nobody wants their “I thought New Mexico was a country” moment uploaded to the family group chat (or saved for court discovery). Meanwhile, teachers start playing to the lens, parents become unpaid hall monitors, clips get cherry-picked and shared without context, and the district gets to explain why a third-party vendor just leaked PE footage to the internet. That’s not “transparency”; that’s surveillance theater with minors as the cast.

I’m not saying I have the answers. Right now we’ve got a culture trying to solve a transparency problem with a blackout curtain, and fix a distraction issue with a taser. The honor system has been tried… and has proven itself no match for pocket Wi-Fi. Phones aren’t satanic portals necessarily, but they are a handy scapegoat for lackluster teaching. Cameras aren’t a panacea; they’re a can of worms with a lens. But won’t digital prisons just build much better criminals?

If I were a teacher, I’d absolutely have an “I see it, I take it until the end of class” phone policy. And if I were a parent sending my school-age kids to a phone-free campus, I’d be the one stuffing a burner model in their backpacks “in case of emergency.” Sorry (not sorry), but I would.

All I know is the ban is happening across the country, nobody knows how it’s going to work out, and it sort of looks like once again, the lab rats are our kids.

***BEFORE YOU TELL ME WHY YOU VOTED THE WAY YOU DID, I have an important question/request for the hive: A very dear-to-me subscriber has been diagnosed with stage 4 kidney failure. (Her: “I don’t subscribe to their ‘reality’ and I know in my heart and soul that this is reversible!”) When I tell you that she is the most positive, upbeat, JOYFUL human on the planet, I am not even exaggerating. (Her, on surviving a near-death ICU experience: “I know that God isn’t quite done with me yet. He’s obviously keeping me around for SOMEthing! Maybe it’s to continue to care for hospice foster kitties and strays?” MY HEART.) What do my amazing followers know about improving kidney health/function naturally? If you don’t have any tips or resources, kindly put “Jenna’s Sweetest Subscriber” on your prayer list. TIA.

Maybe a kid in your life (who can no longer have a phone at school) could use some reading material?