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Get Smartphones Out of K-12 Schools, Say Child Advocates and Educators
"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?" said the leader of a letter to the U.S. education secretary.
Oct 25, 2023
Dozens of parents, child advocates, and researchers this week called on U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to issue an official advisory "urging U.S. K-12 schools to adopt phone-free policies" to "promote student achievement, foster educational excellence, and ensure an equitable experience for all."
"We are a community of individuals and organizations who see an academic, mental health, and teaching crisis in every state of the union that can be improved automatically and effectually with a single strategy: removing students' personal mobile devices from our places of learning (with notable exceptions for those with special educational or medical needs)," states the Monday letter to Cardona.
"If all students are phone-free during the school day, there will be less distraction, less inappropriate content viewed, less cyberbullying, less planned fights," the letter stresses. "There will be more focus on academics, development of social skills, and students engaging with each other—in class and at extracurricular activities."
In 2019-20—the most recent data available—nearly 77% of U.S. public schools prohibited nonacademic use of cellphones or smartphones during school hours, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. However, research suggests much more needs to be done.
As the letter details:
According to the Common Sense Media report, Constant Companion: A Week in the Life of a Young Person's Smartphone Use, released this month, "Phone use during school hours is nearly universal but varies widely, reflecting a patchwork of different school policies." 97% of participants used their phones during school hours for an average of 43 minutes per day. The majority of students' time was spent on social media (32%), gaming (17%), and YouTube (26%). Mobile devices are a deterrent to learning.
Those findings are part of the growing collection of research and reporting that the signatories—including experts in early childhood development, education, psychology, and technology—highlighted to make the case for phone-free U.S. schools.
Researchers and journalists have documented differences in students' note-taking and grades as well as "alarming" misuse of personal devices, "from sexting to air-dropping compromising photos to hundreds of classmates with one click, to purchasing drugs," the letter notes. A theater teacher in Colorado told The Denver Post that her students are "more hesitant to take risks in class because they fear that they will be recorded, the video will be posted online, and then they will be judged."
The journalism referenced in the letter also captures positive responses to well-implemented policies, such as "phone hotels" where kids stash their devices during instruction. Public school district superintendents from Illinois to Maine told Education Week that students have thanked them for ending the distraction of phones in class.
Florida's newly implemented statewide ban "has been extraordinarily positive for [students'] mental health from an anecdotal perspective," one principal told Education Week. "Our kids are way more engaged. The apathy that we had seen from them in the last year to two years has seemed to wane. They seem more like they're waking back up to a social experience."
In addition to an official U.S. Department of Education advisory, the letter signatories urged Cardona to "encourage state boards of education to offer grants, like those offered in Massachusetts," to implement policies on the use of electronic devices.
The letter emphasizes the urgency of the situation, citing U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy's May advisory about the effects of social media on young people, which states that "at a moment when we are experiencing a national youth mental health crisis, now is the time to act swiftly and decisively to protect children and adolescents from risk of harm."
As Common Dreams reported, 41 states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday filed a pair of lawsuits against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to protect children from features they argue are designed to keep users addicted to social media.
Efforts to better protect kids from social media platforms and electronic devices used to access them are far from limited to the United States. The letter points to China, England, and France's education-related phone policies as well as a recent United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report that advocates for a global ban on smartphones in schools.
"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 spearheaded the letter to Cardona, in a statement on Wednesday.
"We know empirically that they are distracting—by design—so it's not a fair fight," she added. "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?"
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Not Backing Down on Backdoors, Apple Takes Privacy Fight to Capitol Hill
Congressional hearing comes one day after Apple wins 'major legal victory' that could impact outcome of California case
Mar 01, 2016
Apple and the FBI will take their high-profile encryption battle to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with both sides calling on Congress to weigh in on the "watershed" privacy case and the significant precedents it could set.
FBI Director James Comey, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and Apple's senior vice president and general counsel, Bruce Sewell, will testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled "The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy."
Sewell is expected to reiterate Apple's argument that building a backdoor to the iPhone linked to the San Bernardino attacks "would not affect just one iPhone."
"The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products," Sewell wrote in prepared testimony (pdf). "Hackers and cyber criminals could use this to wreak havoc on our privacy and personal safety. It would set a dangerous precedent for government intrusion on the privacy and safety of its citizens."
On the other hand, Vance will urge Congress to pass a law requiring companies like Apple to retain user keys for decrypting user data, according to testimony on the committee's website. A November proposal from Vance's office argued that Congress requires any phone manufactured or sold in the U.S. "must be able to be unlocked, or its data accessed, by the operating system designer" pursuant to a court order.
Not doing so, Vance will argue, "cripples even the most basic steps of a criminal investigation."
But in a statement on Tuesday, digital rights group Fight for the Future warned that "what the FBI is asking Apple to do will make us less safe, not more safe."
"If we allow the government to set a precedent that they can force private companies to punch holes in the technological defenses that keep us safe, it's not a question of if someone to will exploit that to cause harm to the public, it's a question of when," Fight for the Future co-founder Holmes Wilson said. "Congress needs to listen to security experts by unequivocally supporting strong encryption and opposing backdoors."
The hearing will occur at 1 p.m. EST, and can be watched on C-SPAN 3. The House Judiciary Committee hosts its own livestream as well.
The proceedings come one day after Apple "scored a major legal victory" when a judge in New York ruled that the U.S. government could not compel the tech company to unlock an iPhone so investigators could analyze its data as part of a drug case.
In a 50-page ruling, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein found that the All Writs Act--the same law the government is citing in the San Bernadino case--did not justify the government's request. According to Reuters, "Orenstein also found that Apple was largely exempt from complying with such requests by a 1994 law that updated wiretapping laws."
Ars Technica writes that "[t]he ruling, the first of its kind on the topic, has no legal bearing on the outcome of the California case as they are proceeding in different federal judicial districts. Apple hopes, however, that that Riverside judge will be 'persuaded' by the decision, according to a company executive who was granted anonymity on a call with reporters."
Meanwhile, security and law enforcement experts told Politico this week, it's unlikely that investigators will find "much useful new information" even if they are granted access to the iPhone in question.
So why do all the hubbubs happen over one single smartphone?
Politico reports: "Critics say the FBI is picking a fight with Apple over long-standing tensions about the increasing impenetrability of the iPhone's encryption, rather than acting from an immediate, pressing need to extract evidence."
As one ex-Department of Homeland Security official said, echoing arguments made by Apple and its supporters: The FBI is "hoping to set a precedent."
Indeed, said former FBI special agent and whistleblower Colleen Rowley in a recent op-ed, Comey's assertion to the contrary is "disingenuous."
"Does he not know that the government's 'Plan B' secret agenda to create 'workarounds' to defeat encryption recently came to light?" Rowley wrote. "Does he expect us to believe that he was not part of the secret White House meeting last fall where senior national security officials ordered agencies to find ways to counter encryption software and gain access to the most heavily protected user data on the most secure consumer devices, including Apple Inc.'s?"
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'Incredibly Creepy' Billboards to Track Behavior of Passers-By
'People have no idea that they’re being tracked and targeted'
Feb 29, 2016
Billboards nationwide will soon begin spying on passers-by's behavior and selling that data to advertisers.
Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which owns tens of thousands of billboards nationwide, is announcing plans to use people's cell phones to allow its billboards to track the behavior of everyone who walks or drives past the ads.
"People have no idea that they're being tracked and targeted," Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told the New York Times, which broke the news on Sunday. "It is incredibly creepy, and it's the most recent intrusion into our privacy."
The marketing behemoth is partnering with AT&T and other companies that track human behavior to collect data on viewers' activity, which advertisers could then use to create hyper-targeted ads--similar to how websites track visitors through their browsers and sell that data to online marketers.
Privacy advocates say the problem is that most people when out in public, have no idea that their every move is being recorded, analyzed, and sold for marketing purposes. When similar ads that used smartphones to track behavior were installed in phone booths in New York City in 2008, there was a loud public outcry, and the billboards were quickly removed after a Buzzfeed investigation.
Indeed, even Clear Channel Outdoor Americas' spokesman conceded to the New York Times that the company's new service "sounds a bit creepy."
Critics also note that using smartphone data to track the behavior of unsuspecting passers-by poses specific risks to children. Children are more susceptible to advertisements and use mobile phones at increasingly younger ages. A 2012 study found that 56 percent of children ages eight to 12 have cell phones.
Advertisers also increasingly use facial recognition technology to track behavior in public spaces, and many people remain unaware of it. The February 2016 issue of Consumer Reports drew attention to the growing phenomenon and listed a few examples of how the technology is being put to use:
In Germany, the Astra beer brand recently created an automated billboard that noted when women walked past. The billboard approximated the women's age, then played one of several prerecorded ads to match.
Retailers can use facial recognition systems to see how long people of a particular race or gender remain in the shop and adjust displays and the store layout to enhance sales.
Using related technology, some high-end retailers in the U.S. have experimented with "memory mirrors" that perform tricks such as storing images of what shoppers tried on so that they can be revisited or emailed directly to friends for feedback.
Public tracking techniques such as facial recognition are "largely unregulated," the magazine observed.
"People would be outraged if they knew how facial recognition" is being developed and promoted, Alvaro Bedoya, the executive director of Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology, told Consumer Reports. "Not only because they weren't told about it, but because there's nothing they can do about it."
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Throwing Support Behind Apple, National Protests Declare 'Don't Break Our Phones'
Rallies to be held at Apple stores nationwide in support of the company's defense of privacy
Feb 23, 2016
Rallies will take place at Apple stores nationwide at 5:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday to support the company in its staunch defense of privacy rights. The tech giant is currently embroiled in a civil liberties battle with the U.S. government, which has asked it to create a "master key" that would allow it to break into any iPhone.
| #DontBreakOurPhones Tweets |
As Common Dreams previously reported, Apple has refused to create such a key and characterized the request as "a dangerous precedent."
Support for Apple has continued to grow as new reports on Tuesday revealed that the Department of Justice is interested in breaking into multiple iPhones, and not just the one initially cited by the FBI.
The protests have been organized by Fight for the Future, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support freedom of expression on the internet, in cooperation with other civil liberties groups.
Rallies are planned in nearly 50 stores around the country. The largest rallies are planned in San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, D.C., the group tweeted.
"People are rallying at Apple stores because what the FBI is demanding here will make all of us less safe, not more safe," Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, said in a press release. "Their unconstitutional attack on our digital security could put millions of people in danger, so we're giving those people a way to get their voices heard."
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Bolstering Apple Argument, DOJ Wants Data from Dozen Other Phones
Suggesting slipper slope already exists, news reports show outcome of Apple-FBI battle could have wide implications for privacy and encryption
Feb 23, 2016
Contradicting FBI claims that the U.S. government is focused only on a single phone in the landmark privacy case pitting Apple against federal law enforcement, news outlets are reporting Tuesday that the Justice Department is pursuing court orders to force the tech company to help investigators extract data from iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases around the country.
The Wall Street Journal reported the news Tuesday morning, citing "people familiar with the matter." According to the paper:
The other phones are at issue in cases where prosecutors have sought, as in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror case, to use an 18th-century law called the All Writs Act to compel the company to help them bypass the passcode security feature of phones that may hold evidence, these people said.
The specifics of the roughly dozen cases haven't been disclosed publicly, but they don't involve terrorism charges, these people said. The 12 cases remain in a kind of limbo amid the bigger, more confrontational legal duel between the government and the company over an iPhone seized in the terror case in California, these people said.
However, as The Verge points out, "With these cases already ongoing, it would be straightforward to compel Apple's assistance in these additional cases after the legal precedent has been set. It's unclear why the Department of Justice pushed the San Bernardino order forward rather than one of the other thirteen cases detailed here. However, the case's high-profile nature likely played a role in the decision."
Indeed, the ramifications could spread far beyond 12 individual smartphones, The Intercept's Jenna McLaughlin wrote on Monday.
"The FBI wants you to believe that its contentious court battle to force Apple to write new software that would let it hack San Bernardino killer Syed Farook's iPhone is only about this one, specific, particularly heinous case," she said. "But the FBI's defenders and friends in state and local law enforcement are going way off message. They say the ruling will greatly impact how they do business."
The Intercept reported:
In Suffolk County, Massachusetts, district attorney's office spokesperson Jake Wark said prosecutors "can't rule out" bringing their own case of a locked cellphone before a judge, too. "It may be a question of finding the right case," he told the Wall Street Journal.
"It's going to have significant ramifications on us locally," Matt Rokus, deputy chief of Wisconsin's Eau Claire Police Department, told the city's Leader-Telegram newspaper on Monday.
In South Dakota, Minnehaha County State's Attorney Aaron McGowan told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that "the court's ruling could have a significant impact on conducting sensitive criminal investigations."
This aligns with Apple's claim last week that the outcome of this legal tussle could have "implications far beyond the legal case at hand."
Meanwhile, the Justice Department said in a court filing late Monday that Apple has suddenly changed its legal position after years of complying with court orders based on the 1789 All Writs Act.
The filing came in a Brooklyn case involving a methamphetamine dealer. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sought Apple's help to break into a phone owned by the suspect, Jun Feng, saying that despite a guilty plea by Feng, access to the phone data was still needed as part of an ongoing investigation.
Instead of approving the DEA's request to order Apple to help break into Feng's phone, as other judges routinely have done in other cases, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein asked Apple to weigh in--becoming the first to raise doubts about whether the All Writs Act applied to Apple.
"Apple jumped at the opening provided by Judge Orenstein," CNN reports--and as such, "the seeds of the government's fight with Apple were sown in the Brooklyn courtroom."
"The cases are different, but the underlying legal question is very similar," American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Alex Abdo told NPR. "The question in the New York case is whether the government can rely on this ancient statute to conscript Apple into government service."
As NPR explains, there are some key differences between the two cases. In particular, Feng's iPhone used an older operating system, iOS 7, which makes it relatively easy for Apple to bypass the lock. The iPhone in the San Bernardino case runs Apple's newer operating system, iOS 9, and the company says it would have to create software to get into the phone.
That reflects a conscious shift on Apple's part, Abdo argued. "They didn't want to be in the position, they told the court, of having to serve as a government investigative agent," he said. "They wanted to be out of the business of spying on their customers."
Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in an email to staff on Monday: "Some advocates of the government's order want us to roll back data protections to iOS 7, which we released in September 2013. Starting with iOS 8, we began encrypting data so that not even the iPhone can read without the user's passcode, so if it is lost or stolen, our personal data, conversations, financial and health information are far more secure. We all know that turning back the clock on that progress would be terrible."
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