“…the results have been remarkable. Student engagement has improved. Grades are better. Socialization is improving. It’s rare that one change can have such a positive difference.”
The improvements Governor DeWine cites mirror the improvements I’ve identified in my own research on tech addiction. I’ve found that when young people take breaks from their phones — whether through a school phone ban or by attending a phone-free summer camp — their well-being improves in many ways, including the following: they connect more deeply with their peers; they participate more in extracurricular activities; their social environment is less toxic without constant exposure to social media; and their cognitive performance improves.
Given these benefits, Ohio’s phone ban law promises to be truly transformational for students. However, its success isn’t guaranteed. School phone bans fail to improve well-being when they aren’t properly enforced. Through my research, many teachers and students have told me that, while their school had a phone ban policy on the books, it was meaningless because such a large percentage of teachers and administrators had failed to enforce it.
To measure the extent of this problem, I partnered with Innovate MR to conduct a national survey of high school teachers. Of the teachers we surveyed, 66% taught at schools with phone ban policies in place, and they estimated that a staggering 43% of the teachers at their school did not enforce their school’s ban.
This low enforcement rate highlights how easily this law could fail. To yield the greatest benefit from the phone ban, each district’s policy should be written in a way that maximizes enforcement. Therefore, Ohio school boards should incorporate the following three features into their phone ban policies.
First, school boards should ensure their policies include strong enforcement mechanisms. They should specify who is responsible for enforcement — whether it’s individual teachers, administrators, or both. They should also outline how enforcement will be monitored, and how inconsistent enforcement should be addressed.
Second, school boards should ensure their policies establish a channel for gathering post-implementation feedback on the policy from all stakeholders, including teachers, students, and parents. Such feedback can help identify unintended problems, areas for adjustment, and gaps in enforcement that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Third, school boards should be cautious in how they interpret a specific clause in the law — namely, the exception that allows districts to permit cell phone use for any “learning purposes” they deem appropriate. If school boards interpret this exception too broadly, they could effectively neutralize the ban. For example, in the spirit of decentralizing decision-making and empowering teachers, the board might create a policy that allows individual teachers to determine appropriate “learning purposes” for their classroom. Teachers in turn could similarly allow students to decide. This scenario could quickly devolve into widespread phone use across the school. To prevent this, school boards should establish a structured process by which learning exceptions are approved: teachers would submit requests to their school’s administrator for specific instructional uses, and approved exceptions would be narrowly defined, infrequent, and monitored.
If Ohio school boards follow these steps — defining clear enforcement roles, building in feedback systems, and limiting loopholes — they can help ensure that this new law becomes a powerful mechanism for improving student well-being.
Michael Mercier is President of Screen Education, a Cincinnati-based digital wellness research, seminar and consulting firm.