At a high school in Orlando, Fla. | Zack Wittman for The New York Times
By Natasha Singer | The New York Times
As the new school year begins, school districts across the United States are cracking down on cellphones in classrooms. Teachers are tired of constantly pressing students to stop watching TikTok and messaging friends during class. In many schools, students have also used phones to threaten or bully their classmates.
As a result, as I note in a story today, at least eight states, including Indiana and Pennsylvania, have adopted measures this year to limit cellphones in schools.
But the phone crackdowns illustrate a larger issue. Technology rules and safeguards in schools often lag far behind student use and abuse of digital tools.
And it’s not just phones — school-issued laptops, tablets and classroom apps can also become sources of distraction and bullying. In today’s newsletter, I’ll highlight some of the tech challenges schools are facing.
Student cellphone bans
Schools have been trying to limit student phone use for decades. Maryland banned students from bringing pagers and “cellular telephones” to school in the late 1980s as illegal drug sales boomed. In the 1990s, as mobile phones gained traction, some schools barred the devices to stop the chirping from disrupting class.
Since the 2000s, though, it’s also gone the other way. As school shootings became more common, many districts began allowing mobile phones as a safety measure. And, after the rise of iPhones, some schools that had barred cellphones reversed the bans in part because some lower-income students who did not own laptops used them for schoolwork.
Now, phone bans are trending again, partly in response to public concerns over youth mental health and social media use. This year, Indiana, Louisiana and South Carolina passed laws that bar student cellphone use either during class or the entire school day. Some governors have been bullish, promising “cellphone-free” learning and decreased classroom screen time.
The bans are hardly school tech panaceas. But they can have positive effects. Some schools have reported increased student engagement and fewer incidents of phone-related fights and bullying. But there are mixed reports on whether the bans actually improve students’ academic outcomes.
A.I. abuse
The problem facing schools, though, is that technology often moves faster than policy. As districts were still wrestling with cellphones, a new threat arose: artificial intelligence. In early 2023, some prominent districts rushed to block A.I.-powered chatbots on school-issued student laptops and school Wi-Fi. Administrators feared that chatbots like ChatGPT, which can generate human-sounding book reports and other texts, could enable mass cheating.
So many schools were caught off guard last fall when male students began using other A.I. tools for a darker purpose: to create fake sexually explicit images of their female classmates. In one New Jersey high school, administrators announced over the school intercom the names of girls who had been subjected to the faked images. In a Seattle-area high school, boys shared A.I.-generated nude images of ninth-grade girls in the lunchroom. But the school did not report the incident to the authorities until a police detective, who heard about it from the girls’ parents, informed administrators they were required to do so.
A.I. cheating fears have since abated, as districts start to train both educators and students how to use chatbots as tools for teaching and learning. But so far, few schools have developed specific policies or rules around A.I. image abuse.
In Orlando, Fla. | Zack Wittman for The New York Times
Distracting classroom tech
Remote learning during the pandemic made school-issued laptops, along with school messaging and learning apps, far more common. But even apps intended to help students research topics, write essays and collaborate with peers can lead to distractions and enable bullying.
Teachers say students regularly use school-issued devices like iPads to surreptitiously take photos of their classmates, and then use the images to spread mean memes through school communication tools like Microsoft Teams. (Microsoft said schools could use controls in Teams to monitor or block student chats.) Students are also often able to bypass school internet filters and spend class time playing games or watching YouTube videos.
In many schools, students spend much of the day glued to these laptops or tablets, meaning phone bans may not ultimately reduce overall classroom screen time.
To remedy the school tech problem, critics say, lawmakers must push social media platforms, A.I. start-ups and other technology developers to install the digital equivalent of speed limits, seatbelts and airbags. Districts, they say, must also do a better job of educating teachers and students on tech harms and responsible technology use.
Essentially, some say, we should follow the model of another program that has for many decades taught young people how to handle powerful machines without harming themselves or others: It’s called drivers’ ed.
Tell your story: I’d love to hear from educators, students and parents about your experiences with school tech. If you’re interested, you can share them with me here.
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