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| Marvin Zuker |
PPM is not so much about progressive discipline, it is about the Ontario Ministry of Education not moving into the present and introducing a PPM dealing with restorative justice and restorative justice practices and credible messengers. It is about victim mediation and family conferencing. It is about changing long-term thinking, behaviours, attitudes, our outlook on life and, yes, with whom we associate. It would be useful if Ontario Regulation 472/07 under the Education Act, entitled Behaviour, Discipline and Safety of Pupils, was appropriately updated.
Students, yes, students, have Charter rights. That does not mean, of course, Mr. Premier, that students can do what they want off school property. Unquestionably the ban being introduced in Ontario schools relating to cellphone use is a major beginning step in the right direction. Cellphones are clearly a “material and substantial interference” with the educational purpose of our schools. (See New Jersey v. T.L.O., 1985 469 U.S. 3252 and R. v. M.R.M., [1998] 3 S.C.R. 393.
We know students routinely send Snapchat messages in class, listen to music and shop online. These are examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning.
Students used to have an understanding that you aren’t supposed to be on your phone in class. Those days are gone. A very simple procedure and would-be policy is to put your phones in “a cellphone cubby” with numbered slots. The only solution that will work is to physically remove the phone from the student.
Cellphone use is out of control. One solution, buy a 36-slot caddy for storing student phones. Students will still hide phones in their laps or under books as they play video games and check social media.
A study in 2023 from Common Sense Media found that 97 per cent of kids use their phones during school hours and that kids say school cellphone policies vary, often from one classroom to another, and aren’t always enforced. The Phone-Free Schools Movement, an advocacy group formed last year by concerned mothers, says policies that allow students to keep phones in their backpacks, as many schools do, are ineffective.
Mr. Minister, if the book bag is on the floor next to the student, it’s buzzing and distracting, and they have the temptation to want to check it. The simple answer? Phones should be turned off and locked away all day.
Suicide offers the most concrete measure of emotional distress, and rates among American teenagers ages 15 to 19 have indeed risen over the past decade or so — to about 11.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2021 from about 7.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2009. But the American suicide epidemic is not confined to teenagers.
“Smartphones and social media are destroying children’s mental health,” the Financial Times declared last spring. In an essay, the New Yorker accepted as given that generation Z was in the midst of a “mental health emergency” and that “social media is bad for young people.”
A study published in 2024 tested the argument, “How would student outcomes and mental health be affected if schools banned smartphones?”
The research found that the impacts were positive, including decreased bullying and improved academic performance among girls. The study examined more than 400 middle schools in Norway that had implemented phone bans and relied on three primary data sources: a nationwide pupil survey; survey data on middle schools’ smartphone policies; and a compilation of Norwegian administrative datasets, including health and family registers.
Almost one in four countries has introduced laws or policies banning smartphones in schools, according to UNESCO.
Educators and experts have long pushed school smartphone bans because of cyberbullying among students, e.g., adolescents sending harmful texts to one another, sextortion, etc.
Mr. Premier, a no-no.
A pretty low-cost intervention such as banning cellphones from schools might be an effective policy tool to reduce bullying and improve adolescents’ mental health. And I would agree, all ages and all grades.
A 2024 study by Sara Abrahamsson, a postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, found that the ban helped reduce girls’ need to see a psychological specialist for mental health issues by almost 60 per cent, and it helped improve their GPAs. It found that gains in academic performance were greater among girls who attended middle schools that had stricter smartphone bans, such as the ones that prohibited students from bringing their phones to schools or schools where students must hand their phones in before classes start. In contrast, more lenient policies like the one proposed by Mr. Lecce, including those that only mandated students keep their phones on silent, had less of an effect and could even work against educators.
Abrahamsson concludes,
These results by type of policy, suggest that at schools with a strict policy, students experienced a larger increase in their educational performance, when it comes to GPA and test scores. This is in line with several behavioural experiments showing that having the phone nearby but in a silent mood, is still distracting and could potentially even increase phone usage, especially among persons with phone addiction having increased FoMO (Fear-of-Missing-Out).
[B]anning smartphones from the classroom is an inexpensive tool with sizeable effects on student’s mental health and educational outcomes.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in the 2023 New Advisory Social Media and Youth Mental Health: “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis — one that we must urgently address.”
Being able to do what you want once you leave the school is wrong?
Different children are affected by social media in different ways, including based on cultural, historical and socioeconomic factors. Among the benefits, adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58 per cent), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67 per cent), like they have a place to show their creative side (71 per cent) and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80 per cent).
This is the fifth instalment of a series. Part one: Cellphones in Ontario schools, the voice of the child: Both on silent. Part two: Cellphones in Ontario schools, the voice of the child, part two. Part three: Cellphones in Ontario schools, the voice of the child, part three. Part four:
Cellphones in Ontario schools: Revenge porn and curriculum.
Marvin Zuker was a judge of the Ontario Court of Justice, where he presided over the small claims, family and criminal courts from 1978 until his retirement in 2016. He is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, where he has been teaching education law for 42 years. Zuker is the author and co-author of many books and publications, including The Law is Not for Women and The Law Is (Not) for Kids.
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