Screens and Social Media

 Update:

From the Seattle Times' David Horsey

 end of update

The issue of children and use of screens - as well as social media - took center stage this week.

Locally, it came in the form of an announcement from Hamilton International Middle School and Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, saying that students will have to lock their phones in pouches when the school day begins. 

From the Seattle Times:

In Seattle, Hamilton International’s PTSA led the push for that school’s new policy.

Cellphone use, along with students wandering the hallways and misbehavior in the bathroom, was one of the issues on which the group briefed Eric Marshall when he started as the school’s principal in August.

In Seattle, schools get to decide how cellphones and other personal devices will be used in the buildings. That policy will remain in place, Bev Redmond, the district’s spokesperson and chief of staff said Tuesday. Hamilton International and Robert Eagle Staff are among the first to move forward with a ban.

Each student will be assigned a pouch by California-based Yondr. The students will put their phones and smartwatches in the pouches at the beginning of the school day, store the locked pouches in their backpacks or lockers, and retrieve them at the end of the day. A special device will be available in classrooms, hallways, or other designated areas to unlock the pouches. 

The district is not paying for the pouches; each school has raised funds for this effort. 

Zac Stowell, Robert Eagle Staff’s principal, said teachers lose five to 15 minutes of instructional time in each class every week because of disruptions caused by students using their cellphones. 

“It’s just to give the students an opportunity to fully focus on their classroom studies and make meaningful connections with their peers,” Stowell said in a video over the weekend announcing the policy.

I will state that I have seen other articles where teachers are happy the phones are gone but that students still communicate or play video games via their laptop. 

As well, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, gave support to a ban on cell phones for students that Los Angeles Unified School District' school board recently passed. They have not yet determine what form that would take for the phones. As well, their ban extends to social media at school.  Other states - Indiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Kansas - have passed some form of legislation to restrict phone use at schools. 

I saw this sad comment from one teacher after being unable to control phone usage in their classroom:

Tired of being the phone police, he has come to a reluctant conclusion: “Students who are on their phones are at least quiet. They are not a behavior issue.”

And I sadly note that many people like to say that "we didn't have cell phones when we were kids" which is true. We also didn't have mass shootings at schools. But again, every teacher will have a pouch key in their classroom if that event arises.

For a school cellphone ban to work, educators and experts say the school administration must be the one to enforce it and not leave that task to teachers

Also, the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced that "he would urge Congress to require a warning that social media use can harm teenagers’ mental health."  

From the New York Times:

(At the end of the article is a plethora of resources for parents.)

Warning labels — like those that appear on tobacco and alcohol products — are one of the most powerful tools available to the nation’s top health official, but Dr. Murthy cannot unilaterally require them; the action requires approval by Congress.

The proposal builds on several years of escalating warnings from the surgeon general. In a May 2023 advisory, he recommended that parents immediately set limits on phone use, and urged Congress to swiftly develop health and safety standards for technology platforms.

He also called on tech companies to make changes: to share internal data on the health impact of their products; to allow independent safety audits; and restrict features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which he says “prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use.”

“I don’t think we can solely rely on the hope that the platforms can fix this problem on their own,” he said. “They’ve had 20 years.”

But tech is not happy:

The push for a warning label sets up a battle between the Biden administration and the tech industry, which has sued several states for laws on social media.

Technology companies are likely to argue that the science on the harmful effects of social media is not settled. They will also invoke free speech law, arguing that the government cannot force companies to carry a product warning, which is sometimes described as “compelled speech.”

 TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the surgeon general’s proposal. Spokespeople for YouTube and X declined to comment.

What does the research say?

There is fierce debate among researchers about whether social media is behind the crisis in child and adolescent mental health. In his new book, “The Anxious Generation,” the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points to the rise of smartphones in the late aughts as an inflection point that led to a sharp increase in suicidal behavior and reports of despair.

Other experts say that, while the rise of social media has coincided with declines in well-being, there is no evidence that one caused the other, and point instead to factors like economic hardship, social isolation, racism, school shootings and the opioid crisis.

For many years, researchers have tried to determine whether the amount of time a child spent on social media contributed to poor mental health, and “the results have been really mixed, with probably the consensus being that no, it’s not related,” said Dr. Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.

What seems to matter more, he said, is what they are doing when they are online — content about self-harm, for example, has been shown to increase self-harming behavior.

 

U.S. teens are spending an average of 4.8 hours per day on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, according to a Gallup survey of more than 1,500 adolescents released last fall.

In an interview last month, Dr. Murthy said he had repeatedly heard from young people who “can’t get off the platforms,” often finding that hours had passed despite their intention to just check their feeds.

Dr. Murthy has ready responses to his academic critics. He says children growing up now “don’t have the luxury of waiting years until we know the full extent of social media’s impact.” When challenged for evidence of social media’s harmful effects, he argues instead that “we do not have enough evidence to conclude that social media is sufficiently safe.”