Richardson: Turns out, students are OK without cellphones

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Everyone knows that kids are hopelessly addicted to their cellphones, right? Well, maybe not.

Last spring, the Ontario Ministry of Education announced that students in kindergarten to Grade 6 would be required to keep phones out of sight, and that students in Grades 7 to 12 would not be permitted phones during class time unless required for educational or medical reasons.

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The move arose over concerns about distraction. As the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reports, “incoming notifications or the mere proximity of a mobile device can be a distraction, leading to students losing their attention from the task at hand.”

To find out how badly the cellphone ban was going, I talked to Don Hickey, principal of Carleton Place High School (CPHS). His response surprised me.

“Every student I’ve talked to so far, they’ve been supporting it,” he told me. “They agree that they’ve been distracted for years. They haven’t been putting their best foot forward because of their phone and they understand it could be addictive.”

What changes does he see?

“Teachers are building positive student-teacher relationships. They’re more connected to the kids without the technology being a barrier. Kids are actually talking to kids. They’re getting out of the building. They’re going for walks.”

Do students agree with this positive assessment?

“One hundred per cent,” Grade 12 CPHS student Mike Mirizzi told me. “There’s more people talking than being on their phones.” Washroom culture has also changed. “Even during class hours, there used be 10, 15 kids just hanging out in the bathroom on their phones. Since the phone ban, there’s not really many students in the bathrooms anymore.”

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Classmate Stella Gardiner finds that students talk about more meaningful topics without cellphones around. “We speak less about pop culture moments. We don’t show each other videos, or text. I can take time to learn about them, or help with work.” She checks her phone during break or spare periods and focuses on learning in class.

But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that kids do just fine without their devices. There have always been a few tech-free eddies within society’s swirling digital currents. One example is Red Pine Camp, a 100-year-old family camp on Golden Lake near Algonquin Park, where 50 or so 16- and 17-year-old “junior staff” are barred from having cellphones every summer.

I asked the camp’s executive director, Janet Cottreau, what happens when kids go cold-turkey on tech.

“When the staff first arrive at camp they don’t know what to do with themselves,” she said. “About two weeks in, you’ll hear them talking about how much they enjoy it. They’ll start talking about the freedom they feel and the relief from not having to check something.”

Accustomed to going through their days with a cellphone at hand, the kids need training on how to make small talk and look someone in the eye. After the summer, Cottreau says, they are “more inclined to connect with people and more comfortable having conversations.”

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Can kids survive without cellphones? Turns out they can. Turns out they actually thrive. Given that the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) reports that 35 per cent of Ontario’s secondary students spend five hours or more daily on electronic devices in their free time, it’s important for the institutions that help shape our young people to teach them that time without texts, news and Tik Tok is not only possible, but desirable. There’s a price to be paid for constant connectivity in terms of attention, stress and the loss of face-to-face human contact. Without the pings of minute-by-minute notifications, we can all be a little more human.

John M. Richardson teaches at the uOttawa Faculty of Education.

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