The Ministry of Education on Thursday unveiled guidelines for managing the mobile devices of students below the senior-high school level, which would authorize teachers to take students’ phones for safekeeping during the day. In response, a group of high-school students referring to themselves as a movement “defending students’ rights across Taiwan” has demanded the immediate withdrawal of the ministry’s proposal. The group also insists that at least one-third of those involved in the decisionmaking process should be student representatives, and that a ban on cellphone use should apply only to class time rather than the entire day. Many other opinions have also come to light, and Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said he is earnestly thinking about the matter.
In physiology, the brain’s frontal cortex — the part responsible for cognitive control, delayed gratification, resisting temptation and emotional regulation — does not develop fully until after the age of 20. Perhaps young students do not yet know how to protect themselves. Watching screens can cause distractions and superficial understanding. Cellphone hardware and software designers profit from keeping users’ eyes constantly glued to their screens — notification sounds, social media updates and other features subconsciously encourage people to keep scrolling, making it easy to become addicted and difficult to stop, or even look away. This ultimately causes fatigue, late nights and insomnia. From 2009 to 2019, the rate of adolescent depression in the US nearly doubled, while an estimated 31.9 percent of adolescents had anxiety disorders.
At home, restrictions on cellphone use often cause tension between parents and their children. At school, students secretly use their phones during class — with some even using fake phones during teacher inspections — which inevitably leads to conflict between teachers and students.
The management of mobile phones is an issue that requires collective action. While student cellphone use should be managed during school hours, that effort is wasted if they are allowed to use their phones freely as soon as they get home. A combined effort by teachers and parents to prevent children from bringing their phones to school would ensure that no child needs to worry about being left out, as they would all have companions to spend time with.
Last year, the Lackawanna School District in New York banned students from using mobile phones during the day, a policy known as “no cell from bell to bell.” The district now requires students from grades 6 to 12 to lock their phones in magnetic storage pouches upon arriving at school. The pouches automatically unlock at the end of the school day. At first, many students resisted the policy, using magnets to attempt to open the pouch locks. However, some students shifted from hating the policy to appreciating it — the school also saw that 17 percent more students were passing classes than in the prior year. Students now pay more attention in class, and participation in sports and other activities has also increased.
“We see them [students] paying attention to directions, which has not been a thing for a while,” one teacher said.
The Los Angeles Unified School District since Feb. 18 has also placed a ban on student cellphone use in classrooms. Research shows that this approach not only helps students focus better during class, but also provides more opportunities for social interaction and communication.
I once looked around in the school cafeteria and noticed that nearly all of the students were scrolling on their phones while eating. It is clear that cellphones have now become the sole object of students’ obsession. In contrast, in places such as the UK, France and Japan, restaurants post signs reminding consumers that they must put away their phones, writing messages such as: “We are happy to see people interacting with each other even more than before, and we have infused this warmth into our dishes.”
Students must not become slaves to their cellphones. Encouragingly, some students reached out to their instructors at the end of the semester, treating them to meals to thank them for helping them solve their phone addictions. Such students are unlikely to protest reasonable cellphone management by parents and teachers, and they no longer stare at their phone screens while eating.
Ji-shing is a university professor.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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