The 12 months isn’t over yet, and already in 2023, teachers were being punched within the face, pepper sprayed and even beaten unconscious for attempting to confiscate students’ phones and devices.
Experts say this surge in violent outbursts is because of two reasons: teenagers who are actually hooked on their smartphones, coupled with ineffective school policies on phone use.
“[Youth phone addiction] very much reflects all of the diagnostic features of real addiction,” said psychologist Nicholas Kardaras, creator of “Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking our Kids.” “Your dopamine gets boosted, and then you definitely get used to that reward and go after it over and yet again.”
He said when someone tries to take the device, it should come as no surprise that the response is “not only melting, but nuclear melting.”
And at the same time as increasingly schools across the country switch to restrictive devices — in response to National Center for Education Statistics77% of colleges prohibit cell phone use for non-academic purposes – teachers are too often left to their very own devices to implement the bans.
Although mobile phones were banned in Recent York City public schools by former Mayor Bloomberg, the policy was reversed by DeBlasio in 2015. Now could be to individual schools and sometimes to individual teachersto set your policy.
![A student of a pepper spraying high school teacher in Antioch, Tennessee](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012380097.jpg?w=1024)
![An Antioch, Tennessee high school student confronts the teacher who took her phone](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012380089.jpg?w=1024)
Without clear official instructions, teachers can find themselves in a difficult position: forced to make a choice from being a ‘cool’ teacher with lax politics or a ‘bad guy’ who refuses to phone in school.
“This ought to be a school-wide policy to maintain children from attacking what they consider to be a ‘bad cop’ teacher,” Dr Nicholas Kardaras told The Post. “Otherwise, all of the resentment and venom shall be directed at that one poor teacher who’s attempting to do the best thing.”
It’s a sense Patrick Danz knows well. The 39-year-old has been an English teacher at Allen Park High School in Allen Park, Michigan, since 2008.
For the primary few years of operation, the varsity required teachers to confiscate phones on the spot in the event that they were spotted in school. Students would then should pick up the device with their parents at the top of the day from the administration office.
![Patrick Danz](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012369325-edited.jpg)
Danz said this short-term policy was very effective: “I believe it was good since it was top-down. For many children, once taken, it was definitely a deterrent.
But soon the varsity modified its policy, having teachers implement their very own phone policies. Danz said the issue was inconsistency between classes, with some teachers being more lenient than others.
In consequence, he said, student performance plummeted.
“[The lack of a phone policy is] a giant pity. The rankings are generally very poor. I actually have a couple of classes now where you are lucky if people turn in assignments in any respect because they’re so distracted.”
In his classroom, Danz keeps a display by the door with numbered pockets where students put their devices. Still, he has to look at out for kids using phones – a task he called “demoralizing”.
![Patrick Danz's classroom door with slots for mobile phones](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012369329-1.jpg?w=768)
“I didn’t learn police calls,” he told The Post. “I feel like I am unable to compete with TikTok. I could ride a unicycle and juggle flaming pins and that would not be exciting enough to compete with what they’ve on their device.”
Experts agree that teachers mustn’t be put in this case.
“It’s just not fair to students, teachers, parents, and administrators,” said Dr. Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University. “Nobody can compete with the entertainment value and addictive nature of digital drugs.”
If teachers are put within the role of “bad cop” without school support, Lembke said they may find themselves on the verge of an explosive rage as they confiscate the phones of scholars who are actually hooked on their devices.
![Shot in the head of Dr. Anna Lembke](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012413498-1-edited.jpg)
“When you get [phone] which you employ for emotional management and self-soothing, and to create an identity detached from you, you’ll feel as in the event you are falling into the abyss,” she told The Post. “It is very common for kids who’ve their devices taken away to have matches of rage.”
Lembke and Kardaras agree that it’s because the brain experiences technology addiction just like every other type of addiction.
It’s such a typical problem that Dr. Kardaras began a treatment program in Austin, Texas called Omega Recovery to assist young adults digitally detox from what he calls “digital heroin.”
![Shiny Kids book cover.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012417285.jpg?w=673)
A lot of Kardaras’ young patients are referred to his clinic after physically meeting their parents or teachers who attempt to take their devices away from them.
While outbursts of violence in school are still rare, Kardaras believes they have gotten more frequent. The answer, she says, is to maintain phones out of the classroom – whether which means leaving them at home or checking them on the door.
It’s a technique George Lammay, superintendent of the Washington School District in southwestern Pennsylvania, is trying out.
Until this school 12 months, telephone rules were left to teachers. But this 12 months, the district decided to completely ban phone calls on school days.
![dr Mikołaj Kardaras](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012417286-edited-1.jpg)
It’s within the plan Yondr pouches, fabric pouches with a magnetic lock that works similarly to a retail security tag. At the start of the day, all students in grades 7-12 put down their phones and only get a magnet to unlock them when it is time to go home.
“It’s lunchtime actually, kids to speak back to himself,” Lammay said. “They’re talking again.”
And while the tutorial figures for the plan’s pilot 12 months are yet to come back, he’s “confident” that improvements have been made.
“Our teachers have clearly confirmed that the extent of student engagement is significantly better,” said Lammay.
![Children on phones in the hallway](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012380862.jpg?w=1024)
Research has long confirmed that cellphone bans improve school performance.
London School of Economics study from 2015 found that they resulted in adding the equivalent of an hour of teaching each week. Test scores increased by 6%, with the biggest increases amongst at-risk and low-achieving students.
Newer studies have confirmed these findings. As social psychologist and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt he points out in his Substack“The research is evident: smartphones impair attention, learning, relationships and belonging.”
Haidt, whose next book is The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness in 2024, points to a wealth of research showing that the overwhelming majority of scholars check their phones regularly, are easily distracted during such — and consequently suffer losses in learning.
![A student punches his teacher in Houston, Texas](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012380373.jpg?w=629)
However the introduction of telephone bans won’t go without opposition.
One common concern raised by parents is that their children won’t have the ability to contact them within the event of a college shooting. Kardaras says this will likely be a reason to go for a policy of leaving phones at classroom doors slightly than a complete ban.
Students at Torrington High School in Connecticut organized a loud protest early last 12 months after their district tried to implement a phone case policy as Lammay District did. The hearth alarm went off, the police were called, and the varsity needed to cancel classes.
Lawmakers have tried to step in and support schools — with mixed results.
While Maine, Arizona and Utah all did not pass cell phone policy, other initiatives have been more successful. In 2019, California became the primary state to present state support to varsities to ban cell phones.
![The student trampling the teacher](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012380500.jpg?w=1024)
Meanwhile, the bill signed by Governor Ron DeSantis just last month, it would prevent students in Florida from using their phones during “instructional time” unless “clearly instructed by a teacher for educational purposes only,” starting in the approaching school 12 months.
The brand new law requires teachers to “designate an area for wireless communication devices during instructional time,” as Danz does with a phone case.
And while states, school districts and teachers grapple with what to do with phones, Kardaras said parents even have a job to play.
“School cannot replace good parenting with regards to using digital technologies. It starts at home, he said. Kardaras is the daddy of 16-year-old twins, to whom he didn’t give smartphones until they were 15.
His message to concerned parents: “Delay, delay, delay as much as possible. When you give a phone to a 9-year-old, he isn’t developmentally prepared to handle such powerful technology.”