District leaders and community partners in Spokane, though, didn’t simply want to tear devices out of kids’ hands. They also wanted to engage young people “in real life,” or “Engage IRL” as the district’s campaign is called. To that end, school officials came up with a plan to get every student involved in some after-school activity, club or sport every day.
“We can’t just do the cellphone ban in isolation,” said Superintendent Adam Swinyard. “This is about learning healthy habits.”
Spokane Public Schools welcomed students back to class last fall with new rules: Elementary and middle schoolers must keep smartphones, watches and other internet-connected devices in a backpack, pouch or out of sight. The policy loosens at high schools, with phones allowed during meals and between classes.
Through its Engage IRL campaign, the district has expanded extracurricular programs at each of its 58 schools. It also allows teachers to plan up to two field trips a month, with the city offering free rides on public transit. A local nonprofit is kicking in $3 million over three years to pay for “engagement navigators” who track participation data at each campus, finding new activities or making them easier for students to join.
District officials shared what they see as early signs that their two-part approach could be working: As of March, nearly 18,000 students had participated in an after-school club, sport or activity — a gain of 19 percent from all of last school year. And chronic absenteeism fell about 13 percent among students who engaged in an IRL activity, a district spokesman said.
At the same time, researchers have started to collect data on the impact of smartphone restrictions elsewhere, with recent indications that bans in class — at least on their own — won’t be enough to reverse the apparent harms from the technology.
John Ketcham, a legal policy fellow with the Manhattan Institute, helped write the conservative think tank’s model legislation for states considering how to restrict smartphone use in schools. He said any ban has to be just one part of the effort to reconnect disengaged youth with the community around them.
“Once we get kids off the habitual use of smartphones, that will open new worlds for them, new ways of socializing and making friends,” Ketcham said. “Exploring those avenues after school can certainly help in giving kids healthy alternatives.”
Before Covid, in 2015, the average teenager spent about 6.5 hours each day on screens for entertainment, including gaming and social media, according to the nonprofit Common Sense Media. By 2021, teens had added two hours to their daily use — and the 8.5-hour tally doesn’t include time spent on screens at school or for homework.
Common Sense Media last year also found that kids get hooked on tech early: Two in 5 children get their first tablet by age 2, and nearly a quarter have a personal cellphone before the fourth grade.
At Longfellow Elementary School in Spokane, a survey last year found that about half of the third to fifth graders had their own phone, according to Principal Adam Oakley.
“When we talk to parents about why, 100 percent of the time it’s safety,” said Oakley.
Parents feel safer when they know how to reach their kids during an emergency. They also can send medication reminders, rearrange a carpool or ask about after-school activities — all of which Oakley considers distractions in the classroom. Teachers don’t appreciate the distractions either. A third of all teachers — including nearly 75 percent of high school teachers — called smartphones a “major problem” in their classrooms, according to a Pew survey last year.
So far, at least nine states have banned student devices during the school day, the Associated Press reports. Republican-controlled Florida passed the nation’s first such law, setting a statewide prohibition, while the Democrat-dominated legislature in California will require all school districts to set their own policies by next summer.
The movement is global. Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands and individual provinces in Canada have joined a growing list of countries with sweeping restrictions on smartphones in schools. International research has trickled out on the results from some earlier bans, showing that in Norwegian schools banning smartphones reduced bullying and improved grades for girls, particularly for children from low-income backgrounds. A Denmark study found that students exercised more and burned more energy during recess without their phones.
A large study in England, however, determined no link between a student’s mental health, sleep or even problematic use of social media and their school’s cellphone policy. The study’s lead author, Victoria Goodyear from the University of Birmingham, told the BBC that the findings suggest that bans may not succeed on their own.
“We need to do more than just ban phones in schools,” she said.
In Spokane, a district of about 29,000 students, overall attendance has declined every year since the start of the pandemic. That trend alarmed Ben Small, a former superintendent who now leads LaunchNW, the education arm of a local philanthropy. He worried even more about youth mental health: In 2010, just 54 children across Spokane County attempted or died by suicide; by 2022, total suicides and attempts among children rose to 587.
“We have to do something different,” said Small, who approached the district in 2022 with the idea of hiring the engagement navigators to connect students with after-school activities. “Belonging is critical, and when it’s created only in a virtual world, it’s not real. We must focus on face-to-face relationships again.”
Unlike the Manhattan Institute’s model legislation for smartphone bans, Spokane doesn’t attach its policy to discipline. Each school is essentially left to deal with violations on its own. Matthew Henshaw, principal of Flett Middle School, said he leaves teachers to enforce the new rules, but often talks with repeat violators — and sometimes their parents.
This year, Flett added new after-school activities for running, pre-engineering, beading, cooking, yoga and Salish — a language spoken among Native Americans in eastern Washington state. The only problem? Finding enough adults to lead the clubs.
Spokane Public Schools offers teachers $28 per hour to lead after-school activities. Support staff can earn extra pay as well, but schools can’t recruit enough volunteers from the neighborhood to meet the demand. Nationally, volunteering has fallen — not just in education — since the pandemic.
Andrew Gardner is one of the five engagement navigators hired by LaunchNW. He drives each week between 11 different schools, including Ferris, reviewing participation data to identify students who remain uninvolved. A student’s response on a survey about popular activities may offer Gardner a conversation starter.
“You mentioned wanting to do this at the beginning of the year. You still interested?” Gardner said he might ask an eighth grader passionate about a particular sport. “Let’s get you to the high school. Let’s get you to a game, and let’s get you playing now.”
One common barrier he’s noticed: older students with babysitting responsibilities for younger siblings. Ferris now offers after-school activities specifically for those children so students can participate.
The district and LaunchNW have signed agreements to share attendance data and mental health survey results to measure the impact of the Engage IRL campaign. Principal Oakley, at Longfellow Elementary, offered another metric: Last year, he confiscated two to three devices each week during recess. This year, he didn’t confiscate any until late January.
At first, during recess, without their devices on the blacktop, students didn’t know what to do.
“Students struggled, I think, learning how to play again,” Oakley said. “They still know tag.”
The school increased the number of organized games, like flag football, during recess. Oakley also surveyed teachers for ideas and favorite hobbies, recruiting them later to start new clubs. (He too wished for more volunteers.)
An hour or so after last bell at Longfellow Elementary, a ball of yarn shot past the head of one father joining his daughter at knitting club. Layden, the fourth grader, was tossing the yarn around the classroom as she waited for help with a stitch. She’s also in basketball, football and soccer at the school.
“It just seemed fun to do and I wanted to learn to knit,” she said. “I go after school to calm down. It’s very soothing.”
Jetaime Thomas also has a busy extracurricular schedule.
A senior at Ferris High, she’s yearbook editor, varsity basketball manager, president of the Black Student Union and part of student government and a comedy improv group. Thomas wished she had time to join the angling club and a creative writing group.
“I do a lot, probably too much,” she said. “It keeps me engaged.”
With college applications on her mind, Thomas says the district’s push for extracurriculars timed well with prepping her resume. It now boasts of her role helping to organize a Martin Luther King Jr. Day convention, or “MLK Con,” this year at Ferris High.
But Thomas is worried that a federal crackdown on DEI in education could jeopardize the future of affinity groups like hers.
“I’m nervous about the next couple of years,” she said. “In a predominantly white high school, finding comfort in community, it saves you.”
She also found some value in pairing more clubs and sports with the smartphone ban. Thomas herself felt irritated by the ban at first, and other students protested even the possibility of the school taking away their property. That changed over a few months.
“I’ve been able to focus 100 percent on each of my classes. People seem more into class, more engaged,” she said. All the activities kept her off social media, she added, and her involvement in the activities also made her more ambitious. “They pushed me to keep going too.”
Contact Neal Morton at 212-678-8247, on Signal at nealmorton.99 or morton@hechingerreport.org. This story about no cellphones was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
https://hechingerreport.org/knitting-cheerleading-fishing-this-is-what-a-cellphone-ban-looks-like-in-one-school-district/
