One driving question behind any school policy should be, “Does this policy best support student learning?” Let’s apply this question to Polson High School’s current phone policy.

Essentially, PHS allows student phone use during student free time with very limited regulation. For example, students cannot use phones in locker rooms or any other place where “the privacy rights of others may be violated” (PHS Handbook). However, during class time, “students may not use cell phones or other electronic signalling devices…unless such use is under the direction of certified staff for educational purposes” (PHS Handbook). If students use their phones in an unauthorized way, staff can confiscate the phone, with consequences increasing for each offense. In practice, phone use looks a little different in every teacher’s classroom. Some teachers require students to place their phones in a designated location at the start of class; others require students to place phones in their backpacks; still others might allow students access to their phones at some times and not others.

By allowing students relatively unregulated access to their devices, we are doing more harm than good when it comes to students’ learning opportunities at school and their abilities to connect with their peers and adults. 

Overwhelming data suggests that continual access to phones prohibits student learning, particularly through a phenomenon that Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, calls attention fragmentation. Whenever a person gets a notification on their device, it disrupts their train of thought, making it harder and harder to stay focused. Other researchers have documented this phenomenon, including journalist Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. Any person who has a phone can likely attest to experiencing attention fragmentation.  

So how does this affect teenagers trying to learn? According to Haidt, “This never-ending stream of interruptions...takes a toll on adolescents’ ability to think and may leave permanent marks in their rapidly developing brains” (Haidt 128). This toll is well documented: in “Brain Drain: the Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity,” researchers report that student performance on “tasks that tested their fluid intelligence and working memory capacity” was “best when phones were left in another room and worst when phones were visible” (Haidt 128). Furthermore, there’s not really any strong data to show positive correlations between student phone use and learning habits. That’s not to say phones have no positive uses–just that the way students and even adults use them do not have an overall positive effect on learning.

At PHS, 75% of staff reported that student phone use has a seriously negative effect on students’ ability to focus. Think about the way that focus and learning are connected. To learn something new–whether that’s skills like multiplication, facts about an academic subject, or processes like how to improve your free throw averages–one must be able to focus intently and practice consistently without interruption. For this reason, coaches generally do not allow students to have any access to their phones during practice; they don’t want their athletes distracted. Connor Mulvaney, a PHS science teacher, notes, “Many students have apps like Snapchat or Instagram or Tiktok that are trying to pull their attention to the cell phone…And the amount of phone buzzes that may happen for a given student in class can be a lot, and so it’s constantly pulling their attention to something other than their learning.” These apps, designed for addiction, actively prevent students from focusing on their learning because they are built to pull our attention back to our screens as often as possible. It’s hard for teachers to compete with the irresistible dopamine hits that students get from checking their notifications. Simply placing more distance between students and their phones can lead to more focus and consequently more learning.

Now, what about other goals of education at PHS? Polson High continually has had the goal of improving relationships between teachers and students for many reasons, including because of the ways that positive relationships can benefit student engagement and academic performance. Unfortunately, student phone use negatively impacts student relationships with each other and with the adults around them. Lisa Grainey, an RN and project manager at Providence and mom of three, sees phones as lacking benefits for student relationships. She explained, “Phones allow for more relationship management, but less connection in the relationship.  You can keep up with more relationships, but on a shallower level—pictures of their highlight reel, but not what their true feelings and struggles are.” At PHS, Mulvaney observes, “If students are constantly being pulled to their devices by notifications or very engaging social media sites, then it decreases the amount of times that they may interact with each other…We’re practicing those social skills of talking to people, which are pretty tricky and need to be built over time.” Learning how to interact with people we don’t know is a critical life skill that student phone use cripples. For example, Grainey noted that the rise of smartphone use has led to patients who “can’t talk to people or think it is weird to call someone and speak to them or set up an appointment. I have had patients that can’t leave a message for a service to call them back.” 

Furthermore, 96% of PHS staff agree that continual access to phones negatively impacts student relationships with their peers, and 60% report that phones affect their relationships with students in significantly negative ways. Over half of PHS staff confiscate phones from students more than once per day, and a third report confiscating phones once a day. Some students meet requests to follow school policy with compliance: they put their phones away or hand them over upon teacher request. However, other students adamantly refuse, sometimes even throwing things across classrooms, disrupting learning for the entire class. No teacher enjoys taking away a student’s phone because of the ways doing so can lead to further confrontation and overall harm to their relationship with students.

Given the harm phone use causes to student learning and relationships, many people feel like it’s time for a change. Nationally, Sabine Polak and Mileva Repasky, two parents of teens who struggled with mental health issues prompted by smartphone use, founded the Phone Free Schools Movement. At the state level, in August of 2024, Governor Gianforte called on “Montana superintendents and school board trustees to adopt policies to limit learning distractions in the classroom and improve student academic performance by establishing ‘cell phone-free’ schools,” according to a press release from his office. At PHS, Only 12% of staff said that the current policy is working well, while 21% expressed interest in a more consistent policy than leaving phone use in the classroom up to teacher discretion, 27% wanted a total phone ban during class, and 40% desired a total phone ban throughout the day. As a parent and community member, Grainey would like to see a change in school policy, noting, “The risks and disruptions outweigh any benefit argument because the messages students are getting during school are not urgent or educational, but they are taking away from learning and interaction with other students and teachers.”