When it comes to the cell phone crisis in our schools, the emerging consensus among the nonteachers is that our nation’s teachers need to “simply” enforce the use of phone-locking pouches in schools. That’s what they contend will make all our country’s phones-in-schools problems a thing of the past.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but … this is pure magical thinking.
So before SFUSD decides to put all our eggs into the “in pouch we trust” basket — let’s take a look at why teachers see this as a risky waste of money and teacher energies.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad the problem of addictive apps is finally getting the public’s attention. I’m tired of being alarmed at my students staring glassy-eyed and lifeless in the dim glow of social media, or glued to their thumb-hopping mobile-gaming screens. I’m glad the problem of addictive algorithms’ impact on teen development is finally being recognized as a public health crisis. Every adult within 25 yards of a teenager has developed at least an inkling that there’s something seismic going on.
But the problem with the phone-locking pouches approach is that they’re a Wile E. Coyote-style adaptation of a blunt force technology for concertgoers that overlooks everything we know about what works when it comes to modifying student behavior. There is an actual science to classroom management, but this ain’t it.
As teachers, we start from fact that children are biologically programmed to seek out belonging. That is the bottom line for everything that works in the classroom.
All misguided behavior stems from a child’s failure to achieve belongingness through more healthful means, and all negative behaviors fall into one of four maladaptive patterns: attention-seeking, power struggles, escalating power struggles into revenge or dominance displays, or flat-out withdrawal from effort or engagement.
There are effective strategies and techniques for dealing with each of these, but I’ll let you in on a counterintuitive secret — the only interventions that ever work are the nonconfrontational, noncoercive ones that align with natural and logical consequences.
Coercive responses simply harden the child’s commitment to their dysfunctional methods. That goes double for teenagers. This is because the power struggle too often provides exactly the response it is designed to trigger — namely, it activates my undivided attention.
But as every parent knows, if I respond to your power struggle by surrendering to your power, then I have lost.
How does this relate to cell phone pouches?
Every teacher in America is ripping their hair out right now, begging you to understand the reality that the problem of phones in schools involves more than a locking pouch.
The problem with phone-locking pouches from a teacher perspective is that they predictably violate the logic of achieving a desired behavioral result. Pouches turn cell phone access into a power struggle between teachers and students … which drives teenagers to find ways to resist … which turns into gleeful displays of dominance when they succeed in thwarting our best-laid plans … which only reinforces their belief that the adults are fools who are incapable of making teens give up their phones … so there’s no need to pay attention to their warnings … because teenagers are digital natives who know how to defeat the hapless adults … even though the adults are trying to make sure they are not grossly underprepared for the world they are about to inherit … but hey, let’s go do some social media or mobile gaming in the bathroom!
What makes me so sure I am right?
Do a quick search for “how to defeat phone-locking pouches.” You’ll find an entire cottage industry of social media influencers right under the noses of the self-professed cell phone problem experts.
There are two main sources — Reddit and TikTok — and two main approaches to what influencers call “the Yondr problem.” The first is aimed at students who want to create the illusion of compliance while still being able to access their phones: Buy a high-powered, $14 fishing magnet on Amazon. Press it against the pouch’s locking ball and voilà! You can instantly open the back flap and retrieve your phone whenever you like.
The second method is even easier: Simply carry around an extra phone from your family’s stash of dead and nonworking phones and use it as a lockable decoy. Find one that looks sort of like your current phone, clean it off, maybe buy it a new case. Then, during the teacher’s daily pouch-locking theater, simply lock up the decoy phone. That leaves your real phone available whenever you want it.
I’m sorry to rain on the In Pouch We Trust parade, but every teacher in America is ripping their hair out right now begging you to understand this reality.
We need a serious, unbreakable, collective-action solution. For my money, whatever we decide ought to make smartphones as worthless as bricks during school hours, except for basic calls and texting, or whatever we collectively believe the line should be.
If every student in America were locked out of social media, mobile gaming, and TikTok during from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, then they would collectively adjust to the new reality and we could all move on. Teachers would be able to teach and students would be available to learn and socialize.
Why the extreme solution? Because the apps themselves are the drug that our children are addicted to not the physical access to their precious devices. We’re going to need a well-targeted collective-action response that doesn’t turn schools into a giant nationwide game of hide-and-seek and teachers into the phone police.
Yes, that would probably take legislation and the cooperation of the two major phone OS vendors, plus maybe even the Federal Communications Commission. But they can afford it and this is the level of commitment we’re going to need to find together.
If we truly want our students back on the path of learning and developmentally appropriate social engagement at public schools across the country, we’re going to need to make this level of collective commitment to change. There isn’t a quick-fix, off-the-shelf solution we can buy and dump onto teachers.
Lockable phone pouches are nothing more than a speed bump — an expensive, predetermined failure on the road to a comprehensive app-ban in schools.
It’s time for the adults to grow up, stick together, and make it so.
