The Problem With a Full-Scale Device Ban (and what schools could do instead)

You walk into school without your cellphone. As soon as you enter, you see more people talking to each other while waiting for class to start, rather than scrolling through reels. Walking into a classroom, you notice that more people are paying attention. To top it all off, the hallways are less crowded between classes since people don’t have the option to walk and text simultaneously anymore. Who could object to Stuyvesant looking like this?

As it turns out, a lot of people could. Governor Hochul’s decision to ban smartphone use in New York State schools and the NYC Department of Education’s  subsequent ban on “personal internet-enabled electronic devices” for the upcoming school year have elicited many mixed reactions. Although the goals of a device ban—reduced distractions and more social engagement—are very noble, it’s debatable whether a large-scale ban on devices is really practical in a school like Stuyvesant. 

It would be difficult for members of a student body in a school as large as Stuyvesant to communicate without devices. Many clubs and activities rely heavily on Epsilon, Stuyvesant’s extracurricular website, to update their members on meetings and location changes, often during the school day. Without access to devices to spread information, students would have to learn about meeting updates and events through the school grapevine, which would ultimately take a lot longer.

Stuyvesant’s extracurricular culture would be damaged in other ways by a device ban. Without devices, students would not only be unable to communicate with each other, but they also wouldn’t be able to communicate with the administration and organizations outside the school. Many of our extracurriculars are linked to larger organizations outside of Stuyvesant, and being unable to communicate with these organizations before a meeting would seriously harm many of these clubs. There are also many reasons Stuyvesant students need to communicate with each other during the school day—for example, to work on a group project in class—and a device ban would complicate all of these interactions.

Though the DOE’s policy does allow device use when permitted by teachers for academic purposes, it’s unclear as to how this would actually be implemented. The current policy, in which students store their devices in pouches, would cause major disruptions if students had to take them out to use during class in situations when teachers deem it necessary. Although using school devices is definitely a way to work around part of this problem, students would still run into issues in situations when they need to use a multistep authenticator to log into a device or website (a process that usually relies on the student responding to a notification on their phone or getting a code from a mobile authenticator app), or when they need to take a photo or scan something to upload an assignment.

It’s also important to note that actually enforcing the DOE’s policy would be difficult to accomplish. Stuyvesant’s current policy, which requires phones to be stored in a velcro pouch, and alternative methods, such as requiring phones to be stored in lockers, are hard to enforce because there’s no efficient way to check that over 3,000 students have actually put their phones in their lockers or pouches. Even more reliable methods, such as using locked pouches like Yondr pouches, are still not fully effective. Students could store fake phones in them while keeping their real ones to use throughout the day, manipulating the school system. 

Does all of this mean we have to abandon hopes of a less phone-dependent Stuyvesant? Not necessarily. Instead of adopting a full-scale phone ban, as the DOE’s policy currently outlines, several alternatives might work better for Stuyvesant. 

One alternative Stuyvesant could try is designating certain areas as phone- or device-free and other areas as allowing device use. This would allow for many of the benefits of a phone-free school environment, while still making it possible for people to receive updates on meetings and communicate with one another. For example, banning phone use in classrooms and common social spaces where we don’t want phones to be used—such as the sophomore bar or the cafeteria—would ensure that classes are phone-free and that people aren’t on their phones as often during their free periods.

Such a system would also make it easier to enforce the device ban and would encourage fewer people to break it. A more limited device ban could be enforced similarly to the existing ban on headphone use inside the school, with students facing consequences such as having their devices taken if they violate the ban. There would be fewer violations of the ban to begin with, since if people know there are certain places where they can use their devices, rather than none at all, they are less likely to use their devices in areas of the school where they cannot.

The DOE’s proposed device ban is not practical to implement at Stuyvesant as is, but changes can be made to make it more realistic for Stuyvesant. Rather than trying to enforce a complete ban on device use in all schools, the DOE could modify its policy to allow schools—especially high schools—to decide on individual policies that limit device use. At Stuyvesant, a modified phone ban policy would ensure that activities and classes could run normally while also keeping people off their phones for most of the day, producing a more balanced solution.