Our school started enforcing its cell phone ban. The results have been astounding.

By Gilbert Schuerch

“Screen time check!” I barked at my health class. My students sighed, took out their phones, and opened their screen-tracking applications. “Patricia, how much yesterday?” Patricia said, “12 hours.” I whistled. “Okay, how about you, Larry?” Larry said, “Eight hours. See, I’m way better than Patricia.” “Shut up!” Patricia replied. I patted the air with my hands to indicate they should calm down. “What about you, Manuela?”

“Seventeen hours.” “What?” “Seventeen hours. Yeah, mista, it was a Sunday. I didn’t have much else to do.”

I sighed and went around the room getting a quick read on how much screen time each student had accumulated. The class average neared 11 hours.I said, “Let’s suppose you sleep eight hours a day. That means you’re awake for 16 hours a day. If you’re on your phone for 12 hours, that means you only spend 4 hours not looking at a tiny screen. Is that really how you want to spend your life?”

Most of the kids just shrugged.

Then one kid said, “What else is there to do?”

That’s how I knew we were in trouble.

That exchange happened around two years ago, back when our school had “banned” phones, but kids were still allowed to carry them in their pockets. The policy was effectively useless. The moment a teenager felt a vibration in their pocket, a command from Satan himself wouldn’t stop them from checking their screen.

The year after that, we tried Yondr. Some company called Yondr had created an “unbreakable” pouch that we required students to slip their cell phones into before the first bell. Then we would use a magnet to engage a locking mechanism so they couldn’t access them. The students would carry the pouches around with them, and we would unlock them at the end of the day. This way, students could still “have” their phones, but they couldn’t access them.

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