Buxton Prep and Boarding School in Massachusetts has adopted a novel experiment: completely banning smart phones on campus (staff and students) and replacing them with very simple Light Phones. Light Phones are a model of “dumb” phone that can make normal calls, but everything else has very limited functionality. They use simple black and white screens, can only send texts very slowly, and can’t load any modern applications. This allows parents to still contact their children, but in ways that don’t cause distraction.

The interesting part: almost everyone agrees (staff and students) that the school is much better. There’s fewer interruptions during class and more meaningful interactions across the board.

The school cannot comment on academic performance changes because they use a narrative evaluation system, but Peter Beck, the head of the school, says the move has been transformative to school social life:

“People are engaging in the lounges. They are lingering after class to chat,” said Beck, who estimates that he’s now having more conversations than ever at the school. “All these face-to-face interactions, the frequency has gone through the roof.”

Ian Trombulak who tried a similar thing in another school says it’s not easy. It starts with what could almost be described as the 5 stages of grief. When his students learned that cellphones wouldn’t be allowed on a field trip, the news was ‘apocalyptic’

“They were so upset. They didn’t know how to handle themselves. I was really nervous,” said Trombulak, reliving the drama. But part way through the trip, the kids largely forgot about their phones. “At the end of the first day, sitting around the campfire, they said, ‘We didn’t think about our phones all day,’”  “That was really cool.”

As for Buxton school students, a similar experience was recounted by high school senior when they found out they would be losing their smart phones:

“When it was announced I practically had a breakdown,” said then senior Max Weeks. And while he’s still not a fan of what he says was a “unilateral” decision to switch to the Light Phone, he said, overall, the experience “hasn’t been as bad as I expected”.

It’s not just anecdotal either – there’s data behind it.

Contrary to those that hype technology in the classroom, Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University who has researched the impact of cellphones on student performance say “[students] lose anywhere between a half and whole letter grade if they are allowed to consult their phones in class.”

Nicholas Carr (Pulitzer Prize winning technology writer) says that peer reviewed studies show the brain interprets printed and digital text differently. People generally read digital text 20-30% slower and reading hyper-linked text seems to increase the brain’s “cognitive load,” lowering the ability to process, store, and retain information.

Links:

• https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools
• https://tablets-textbooks.procon.org/#:~:text=People%20who%20read%20print%20text,%2D30%25%20slower%20than%20print
• https://edsource.org/updates/do-children-learn-more-from-printed-books-than-screens#:~:text=Researchers%20estimate%20that%20if%20a,the%20same%20amount%20of%20time.