Starting this fall, students in Ontario classrooms must get creative if they want to use their cellphones.
Another school year has begun, and Ontario’s school cellphone ban has taken effect. To crack down on cellphone-driven distraction, those in kindergarten to Grade six can’t use phones at all during the day, and those in Grades seven to twelve aren’t permitted to use them during class time.
While eliminating the presence of these devices seems like a logical response to curbing issues stemming from cellphone usage, the reality of phones in our society is hardly this black-and-white.
The Ministry of Education must consider the many other factors that fuel students’ phone usage. Otherwise, hastily removing them without confronting the residual problems won’t fix anything.
This isn’t Ontario’s first attempt at combatting phones in the classroom. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB), among many school boards, have blocked social media sites like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok from their networks. Students logged onto school wi-fi couldn’t access their beloved sites, but it wasn’t long before they discovered a way back on by using their own data plans.
It’s easy to put the onus on students to give up their phones, and on teachers to enforce the ban. However, these conditions could not be further from the real world. For one, addiction-driven distraction is not contained to the classroom, and it certainly doesn’t get better when teenagers become adults. Witnessing our parents hooked on Instagram Reels or Level 147 of Candy Crush is a testament to that.
Even in university lecture halls, where cellphones aren’t typically banned, students on their phones face being put on blast by the professor. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to naturally deter us from scrolling because missing important material and falling behind is consequence enough.
Yet, teenagers aren’t the only ones to blame for being addicted. Unlike before, parents these days are giving phones to their children at increasingly younger ages. Whether for safety purposes, temporary relief, or from social pressures, parents play a role in introducing addictive and invasive technologies into their kids’ lives, without fully grasping the repercussions themselves.
To prepare students for the real world, they must be educated on real-world consequences of distraction. Harsher regulations must be put into place, with proper education on internet literacy and privacy to explain them.
Yes, students should be encouraged to engage with one another without phones as a mediator. But they must learn to put their phones away because they understand the benefits of being present, not simply because they’re forced to.
Banning personal devices altogether makes us forget all the positive purposes they serve when used in moderation. Leveraging technology in the classroom as a tool for learning—rather than treating it strictly as a distraction—could offer a more balanced approach. Educators can integrate phones into lessons for interactive learning, fostering an environment where students learn the difference between productive and non-productive screen time.
Ultimately, endorphin-inducing videos are only getting more addicting, and social media developers will find new ways to keep s hooked on their apps. Even time away from phones will not cut down on the habits born from them. In the battle against distraction, it feels like authority figures are against students when they should be on the same side.
Cellphones are only one portion of the distraction problem, and banning them isn’t the solution.
—Journal Editorial Board
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