What Schools Can Do Now to Dramatically Improve Our Kids' Mental Health
Why phone bans sometimes aren't enough, why free play is core, and the Free Range Mom says phones are making parents the anxious generation.
Hello Bar-setters!
I’ve referenced Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s amazing book, The Anxious Generation, many times. Recently, I re-read chapter 11, which focuses on what schools can do right away to help reverse the startling trends we’ve seen among young people today. It is truly essential reading for any educator.
A couple excerpts:
To address the widespread anxiety in this generation, there are two whales—two big things that schools could do using mostly resources they already have. These are phone-free schools and more free play. If they are done together, I believe they would be more effective than all of the other measures schools are now taking, combined, to improve the mental health of their students.
More effective than all the measures schools are now taking—the socio-emotional learning curriculums, the increased number of counseling staff, the faculty wide professional development—all of that combined.
Do Phone Bans Work?
As I detailed a couple weeks ago, many school districts are finally taking measures to limit smartphones in school. But, as Dr. Haidt explains, many of these school smartphone policies are too lax to be effective:
Most public schools in the United States say that they ban phones; 77% said so in a 2020 survey. But that usually just means that the school forbids phone use during class time, so students must hide their phones in their laps or behind a book in order to use them. Even if such a ban were perfectly enforced by hypervigilant teachers patrolling each row of the classroom, it would mean that the moment class ended, most students would pull out thier phones, check their texts and feeds, and ignore the students next to them. When students are allowed to keep their phones in their pockets, phone policing becomes a full-time job, and it is the last thing that teachers need added to their workload. Many of them eventually give up and tolerate open use…
…A phone “ban” limited to class time is nearly useless. This is why schools should go phone-free for the entirety of the school day.
Haidt is right. Unless schools have superb leadership, this is exactly what happens. To really promote mental health and better focus, we need to ban phones for the duration of the school day.
Bring Free Play Back to Schools
Haidt also mentions free play and recess as an essential part of the equation. Years ago, I wrote a proposal that led an elementary school to move from one to three recesses per day and to switch out a tech-based elective for a character and personal responsibility based elective. You can look at the following article for a look at some of the research I cited in writing this proposal:
How Phones Erode Public Trust and Make Parents Anxious
Also, related to smartphones, Lenore Skenazy, the founder of Free Range Kids, recently wrote an amazing article titled: How Phones are Making Parents the Anxious Generation. I highly recommend!
An excerpt:
Trust is a muscle. It has to be exercised to get strong. My mom, who quit her job to stay home with me and my sister, somehow chilled for six hours a day, and then for several more after I ate my snack of cookies and milk (cow’s, whole!), and often went back out to play. In that way, she, like most of the other parents back then, learned to believe in me, our neighbors, and even her own parenting. All were good enough to keep me safe. Her trust muscle grew, because it got daily exercise, thanks to the social norms of the time.
Phones stop that from happening. Instead of getting accustomed to being out of touch for a while, now we are always able to be in touch. That’s one reason some parents are worried about school phone bans. A friend showed me the letter from her first grader’s school begging parents not to text their kids throughout the day (usually via watches), even if they were going to be a little late to pick up. Even if they felt like sending a heart emoji.
For the school, the problem is that this is distracting. For the child, the problem is that it keeps pulling off the Band-Aid of self-sufficiency—the ability to be out in the world on their own, handling life. (Lack of that independence is a huge part of what is making kids anxious….
Thank you for reading and sharing!
Shane