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- [00:09]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. In September, the largest school system in the country, New York City public schools, launched a Bell to Bell phone ban. It was in line with the new state legislation from Governor Kathy Hochul to combat distractions in the classroom. While welcomed by teachers, school officials and many parents, some students had mixed feelings. Some felt it would be too hard to reach their parents in an emergency. Others felt it hindered their ability to take notes or to do research. They had grown up having access to phones and tablets. But in the months the ban has been in effect, there has been evidence that it's working. Students are more focused, engaged, and lunch is loud again. WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould wrote about the new lunch for Gothamist last month, and she's been following the ban and its effects from the beginning. She joins us right now. Hi, Jessica.
- [01:07]
B
Hi there.
- [01:07]
A
Listeners, including teachers, parents, kids, how is the phone ban working for you? Do you like it? Do you not like it? Have you seen any change with your fellow students? How has lunch changed for you? Give us a call at 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. We want to hear from teachers, we want to hear from parents, and we want to hear from students. How has the phone band been working for you? All right, let's roll all the way back to the beginning. How did the phone ban come to be?
- [01:40]
B
Well, as you know, there's been a groundswell about distraction from phones and the toxic effects of social media for children. That book, the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt has been passed around by parents all over the country, all over the world. And so Governor Hochul started talking about this over a year and a half ago that she wanted to put some sort of ban on phones. And it was passed as part of her budget last year and it launched in the fall. All across the state, it's a bell to bell ban. So from the beginning of the day to the end of the school day. But how school districts and how schools are handling it differs.
- [02:25]
A
So where does New York state fall within the other 50 states? Are we one of the few that.
- [02:31]
B
Has bans at this point? There are over 30 states that have some kind of ban. But the bell to bell ban, you know, I think there's like 20 states or something like that around that that have something similar to Bell to Bell. Others have left it up to districts to kind of figure out how they want to do it. Some just say it's not allowed in instructional time but you can still have it at lunch or in the hallways. So it's differing across the country, but more and more places are adopting some kind of phone ban.
- [03:03]
A
Who supports the ban and then who opposed it?
- [03:06]
B
Well, a majority of parents supported the ban, but not all parents. There were a lot of parents who were concerned about, as you mentioned, reaching their kids in an emergency. There were parents of students with disabilities who rely on phones as their assistive technology, whether it's, you know, voice to text technology, dyslexic students, students who need timers to stay on task, all sorts of things. There was a concern at one point about migrant families and the unpredictability of their lives right now and how having a phone to connect you with your parent, given that unpredictability is important. And the New York Civil Liberties Union was against the phone ban because they were concerned about over policing of students more disciplined. But educators have largely supported this and many, many parents and kids. It's been a mixed bag.
- [04:06]
C
We want to hear from you kids, parents and teachers.
- [04:10]
A
How has the phone ban been working for you? Do you like it? Maybe you don't like it?
- [04:15]
C
Give us a call. 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692.
- [04:23]
A
So is it just phones that are.
- [04:24]
C
Included in the ban?
- [04:25]
B
No smartwatches and tablets, anything to the Internet? But the focus has really been on phones.
- [04:33]
C
And there are exceptions, you said.
- [04:35]
B
That's right. So there are exceptions for certain students with disabilities who need the phone. There are exceptions for students who are caregivers, for other family members who might need it. And there are exceptions if a school or class is using the phone for a particular academic activity for a certain period of time, you can use it for that.
- [04:57]
C
Yeah. I knew a kid that was able to keep his phone during school hours because he was diabetic.
- [05:02]
B
That was important for him, right? Yeah. Insulin monitors, that was another one that came up a lot.
- [05:07]
C
You spoke to kids and administration at Benjamin Cardoza High School in Queens for your story.
- [05:13]
B
What were some of the things that.
- [05:14]
C
You were hearing that were positive about it?
- [05:15]
B
Yeah, this was a fun story to hear it.
- [05:17]
C
I bet it was fun.
- [05:18]
B
Yeah. I went to lunch, and when I walked in, the administrators were like, if you had walked in here a year ago, you would have been able to hear a pin drop. And now kids are talking to each other, joking with each other. In that school in particular, they had had a drive among, I guess, faculty mostly to bring in board games, and kids were playing Jenga and trouble so you heard all these fun noises of, you know, things crashing and popping and. And kids were reading books. So they were just talking about how it was really. Well, the intent was to help kids focus in school. A lot of the feedback they've gotten is that it's been really helpful socially. Kids are talking to each other more. They're more engaged with each other.
- [06:07]
C
I am speaking to WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould about her article New York School Cell Phone Ban has Made Lunch Loud Again, about the effects of the new Bell to Bell smartphone ban in New York City schools. And we're taking your calls. How is the cell phone ban affecting lunch for you, your kids, your students? Our Phone number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC, you said it was sort of a lovely nostalgic experience. What did the kids say to you on the down low?
- [06:42]
B
Yeah, I mean, the kids definitely had mixed opinions. Some of them were like, this exhibits a lack of trust from grownups that they. They don't think we can monitor ourselves and put our phones away when we need to. And that's not fair. You know, there's not a ban on adults. And, you know, some talked about how it's harder to find their friends in a crowded school if they can't text them and say, where are you? That's true.
- [07:07]
C
Some of the schools have, like, thousands and thousands of kids in them. That's true.
- [07:10]
B
Right, right. And Cardoza was one of those. But as we know, you know, we were able to find our friends in school. You know, there are ways. But there were concerns about reaching each other in emergencies. And then I've heard from some students at various schools that they can't do their homework as easily as they used to when they had their tablet with them or their phone, because a lot of their work is still being assigned in kind of digital ways. And that require typing, though that's happening less and less because of AI, which we can talk about today or another time, because handwriting is coming back to get around AI. But, you know, there was a frustration that some have to go into a courtyard to get like the WI fi outside in order to do their homework in school the way they used to.
- [08:00]
C
I'm curious how each school handles it, because I was walking to work and I walked by a bunch of different schools, and I swear to gosh, I saw a little kid with a pen, and he had a yonder patch, one of those. Those pouches. Yonder pouch. And he was just swinging in on his pen, like, yep, I'm gonna put my phone in this when I get to school. And I thought, like, that's such an interesting image of a kid who's just gotten used to it and is playing with it with his pen swinging around his yonder pouch.
- [08:26]
B
Yeah. When you see schools letting out, you often see kids with their yonder pouches. So yonder pouches are. These magnetic pouches are popular. Some schools have storage lockers for the entire school. Some ask students to keep them in their lockers or in their backpacks. That's kind of a less forceful way of enforcing it, maybe with more loopholes. And there are loopholes. I mean, you mentioned the pen and the yonder. I think, you know, you can go online and find examples of how to bust open beyonder power. I was going to ask that next, which I believe involves, you know, jamming some sort of pen or implement into it and knock and then hitting it against something. So that's, you know, I've heard about that. And burner phones, people submitting an old phone, not their real phone. So, you know, and. Or sneaking in bathrooms like the old smoke break. But now it's like a phone break. But I hear that by and large, this has been working. And it's surprising for me as a reporter to be reporting on something that's largely working and that's been sort of a positive news story in a otherwise tough time.
- [09:40]
A
What have the disciplinary actions have been for kids who have been found using their phones?
- [09:45]
B
Yeah, well, you know, as I mentioned, there was concern about over policing of kids and harsh disciplinary action and concerns that there would then be disparities, you know, racial disparities, or according to other differences in between, who gets, you know, slammed for having their phone and not. And so you cannot suspend a kid by. This is part of the law. You cannot suspend a kid solely because they have phone infractions, because they've broken the rule on phones. But they're often. So schools are kind of having to figure out their own disciplinary plan. What I've noticed is sort of like a. A staircase of enforcement and discipline where, you know, at first, you know, you take the phone for the period or for the day and then like, you do it again and the. They hold the phone and your parent has to come and pick it up, then you have to turn it in every day for a week or for ultimately the school year. But, like, these are some of the ways that they're. It's a real step up situation.
- [10:50]
A
Let's talk to Brian In Maplewood, New Jersey, who has a question actually for you. Brian, you're on the air.
- [10:57]
D
Hi there. Thank you. So I am actually a therapist in the northern New Jersey area. And in my hometown of Randolph, we've been having a nice, gentle online debate about cell phone bell to bell ban, because currently governor Murphy has on his desk an approved ban that just needs signing before he leaves, or if Mikey Sherrill comes in, hopefully she will sign it. And as a counter argument, there's a lot of parents who are very nervous and anxious about giving up their phones. And as a way to be able to understand their side of the coin, I'm very much in favor of the anxious generation information and a big advocate, as I said. But what I wonder is, is there any positive research out there that says, yeah, phones are good at school? Is there anything that you have discovered or found along the way?
- [11:47]
B
That's a good question. Because typically people ask, is there research that phones are bad? And right now there's not that much research on places that have implemented phone bans on the impact on learning. We haven't seen. We haven't had enough time yet to see what's happening with scores. So it is a lot of this kind of touchy feely, subjective information that people are saying the school environment is better, that people are socializing more, that they seem more focused in class. You know, I think that what I would point to, and you know, unfortunately, this is like the more negative side, but of having phones, is that we've seen how test scores have dropped and student, you know, teen mental health issues have gone up since smartphones proliferated. And I haven't heard as much about the other side of the coin, of the positive.
- [12:48]
C
One of the anecdotal pieces of information about these cell phones is that we've learned that kids don't necessarily understand what a clock is.
- [12:57]
B
Yeah, I did a story about that just this week, and it came out of my reporting well, you know, a little bit seeing, you know, my own community of friends and kids struggling with phones. And also, when I was at Cardozo, a teacher said one of the great things is that kids are getting to class more on time more, that they're moving through the hallways more swiftly because they aren't buried in their phones, they aren't bumping into each other in the same way, but they don't know that they're getting to class on time because they can't read the clocks. Now, I did some reporting on this myself, and what I heard from students is that many of them do know how to read analog clocks, but some don't. And it doesn't come as naturally as it does to people in my elder geriatric millennial generation because they haven't had to practice it as much and it's not required. And I talked to somebody who studies like, youth and technology. And there's a lot of technology where we know that the brain doesn't. I don't know, it doesn't light up as much when you're typing as when you're writing by hand. I don't know if it's better to be able to read an analog clock for your brain. Maybe that's something we don't need as much anymore. But it's definitely a little side effect that was unexpected that people have been telling me that they're noticing now.
- [14:25]
C
But your point about writing by hand as a way to get around AI.
- [14:29]
B
Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah. I have another story coming out about AI this week, and it's about how, you know, teachers are trying to kind of catch up with the way kids are using AI. So a lot of teachers are moving almost all of their written assignments to in class assignments. And then within that, many teachers are also having kids write their essays by hand because that way they can't be opening another browser and checking something on AI.
- [15:00]
C
That's amazing. I still. Wow. Any other stories you're looking out for in 2026? We got about a minute left.
- [15:07]
B
Oh, well, I just am really interested in sort of this youth digital transformation. And I thought it was really fun to learn about how some kind of like, old school technologies were coming back, like MP3 players and Polaroid cameras in school now passing notes. And I'm interested to know more about that. And I'm interested to know about how AI is changing the relationship to school, work and each other for kids. So those are some of the things I'm looking at on this topic.
- [15:40]
C
You got a lot to look at in 2026. Happy New Year, by the way.
- [15:43]
B
Thank you. You too.
- [15:44]
C
That was WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould. And that is all of it. Coming up on New Year's Day, we are going to be lives. Our phone is going to be open, open for you. Get ready to call and share your hopes and Dreams for 2026. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.
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B
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C
So good so good.
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A
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