Advocates, Technologists to U.S. Secretary of Education: Cell Phones Are a K-12 Crisis

A strong, loud call-to-action landed on the desk of U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona this week urging issuance of a national Advisory regarding student cell phone use in U.S. K-12 schools.

The letter, signed by over 60 parents and experts in the fields of psychology, early childhood development, education, and technology, comes on the heels of Britain’s plan to ban cell phones at school, and the release of the 2023 UN Global Education Monitoring Report 2023: Technology in Education, which makes a worldwide recommendation to remove smart phones from the classroom to improve learning and decrease cyberbullying.

Signers include: author and social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt; Founding Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Sherry Turkle; Child Psychiatrist and author, Dr. Victoria Dunkley; Wild Child author Dr. Richard Freed; Screenagers director and pediatrician, Delaney Ruston; iGen author and professor, Jean Twenge; and the prime unifying scientist of Microsoft, Jaron Lanier.

“Phones are polluting our schools. They sabotage the teaching and learning processes,” said Lisa Cline of the Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay for Kids, who spear-headed the effort. “We know empirically that they are distracting — by design — so it’s not a fair fight. How can we expect kids to learn and teachers to teach when there are concerts, movies, parties, cyberbullies, shopping malls, and drug dealers in their pockets.”

Over 20+ studies are cited in the letter, including research proving that the mere presence of a smartphone — even by a neighboring student — decreases test performance by an average of 6%. Co-founders of the Phone-Free Schools Movement find this especially disturbing. “Research is clear that phones disrupt students’ growth, both academically and socially. A phone-free school day is a must in order for our children to thrive in school and in life. As parents, educators, leaders, and members of the community we need to understand one thing: Our kids will not get back this important developmental stage of their lives! We must change the culture in our schools to allow kids the freedom to focus and engage so they become healthy, thriving, young adults.”

Signers encourage Secretary Cardona to model Surgeon General Vivek Murthy who spoke out last spring in a report on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, calling for “the American people’s attention to an urgent public health issue.”

Julie Scelfo, a former New York Times journalist and founder of MAMA (Mothers Against Media Addiction), was among the prominent signers. She’s outspoken on the institutional dismissal of tech’s impact on kids, calling out the American Psychological Association in the SFChronicle for failing to “caution the public against allowing adolescents to use social media.” She draws a similar parallel to the Department of Education’s blind eye to tech’s effects on kids.

Cline quantifies the crisis. “A teacher at a Maryland school said he loses 45 minutes a week to policing cell phones,” she said. “That’s an entire class period a week, or the equivalent of skipping all of your classes for seven weeks each school a year.”

Phase Two of the effort includes a petition campaign led by the Phone-Free Schools Movement.