The movement to keep smartphones out of schools is gaining momentum.
Just last week, the nation's second-largest public school system, the Los Angeles Unified School District, voted to ban smartphones starting in January, citing adverse health risks of social media for children. And the Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, published and opinion article in The New York Times calling for warning labels on social media systems, saying that “the mental health crisis among young people is an emergency.”
But some veteran teachers say that while such measures are a step in the right direction, educators must take a more active role to counter some negative effects of students' excessive use of social media. Essentially, they must redesign tasks and the way they instruct to help teach mental focus, modeling how to read, write, and research away from the constant interruptions of social media and app notifications.
That's the view of Lee Underwood, a 12th-grade AP English literature and composition teacher at Millikan High School in Long Beach, California, who was his public school system's 2022 teacher of the year.
He has been teaching since 2006, so he remembers a time before the invention of the iPhone, instagram or TikTok. And he says he is concerned about the change in behavior among his students, which has intensified in recent years.
“There is a lethargy that didn't exist before,” he says. “The students' responses were faster and sharper. There was more willingness to participate in our conversations and we had dynamic conversations.”
He tried to maintain his teaching style, which he believes had worked, but the students' responses were different. “The last three years, four years since COVID, the jokes that I tell in my classroom haven't landed,” she says. “And they're the same jokes.”
Underwood has been avidly reading popular books and articles about the impact of smartphones on today's youth. For example, she read Jonathan Haidt's much-discussed book, “The Anxious Generation,” which has helped fuel many recent efforts by schools to do more to counter the consequences of smartphones and social media.
However, some have refuted Haidt's arguments by pointing out that while young people face increasing mental health challenges, there are technology/2024/06/17/social-media-mental-health-research-surgeon-general/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>little scientific evidence that social networks are causing these problems. And just last month on this podcast, Ellen Galinsky, author of a book about what brain science reveals about how best to teach teenagers, argued that banning social media could be counterproductive and that kids need to learn to regulate their own smartphone use to prepare them for the world beyond school.
“The evidence shows very, very clearly that the 'just say no' approach in adolescence, when there is a need for autonomy, does not work,” he said. “In smoking studies, smoking increased.”
However, Underwood maintains that she has felt firsthand the impact of social media on her concentration. And she is currently changing what she does in the classroom to incorporate techniques and strategies that helped her counteract the negative impacts of smartphones that she experienced.
And he has a strong reaction to Galinsky's argument.
“We don't allow children to smoke at school,” he points out. “Maybe some parts of the 'just say no' campaigns in general didn't work, but no one allows smoking in schools.”
Their hope is that the school day can be set aside as a time when students know they can distance themselves from the downsides of smartphone and social media use.
“That's six hours of a school day that you can show a student, get them into a kind of homeostasis, where they can see what it would be like without having that constant distraction,” he argues.
Listen to the full conversation, as well as examples of how he redesigned his lessons, in this week's episode. Listen Apple Podcasts, Cloudy, Spotifyor wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page.
