Pretty much every school is equipped with a firewall that blocks pornography, social media, and now in some cases GPT. But the thing about that is that by my estimate about 95% of students’ phones use cellular data which nullifies any school board’s attempt to block content.

I’m a teacher and have a no phone policy in my classroom, but during work periods they have a way of appearing. So stand behind them, take a rubber band and shoot it at the screen. They tend to find it pretty funny and surprising, and I reckon the surprise breaks the dopamine flow. Almost always they’ll stow the phone back in their bag without protest.

Even then, though, unhealthy phone use among teenagers is a huge problem. I know that an outright school ban might not be the correct solution, and that encouraging digital literacy is necessary (by the way this is something many teachers have already been doing for decades) but seeing first hand the effect that a dopamine addiction has on an adolescent brain is extremely distressing. It’s kind of like trying to encourage a person — nay, a teenager — to have a healthy relationship with cocaine. It’s impossible. And even outside of school, so many of my students are up during all hours of the night on TikTok, or YouTube Shorts, then showing up to school exhausted. Throw in the effect of social media, and it’s a recipe for disaster. IMO it’s one of the major contributing factors of teen mental health and ultimately suicide.

It would be infinitely more doable to simply ban students from having phones out in class than to somehow prevent them from using their own cellular data connection.