This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Over the first two weeks of the school year, Concord High School English teacher Heather Ouellette-Cygan spotted just four students’ phones.
John Stark Regional High School music teacher Dan Williams reported a single sighting.
And besides the first day of school, when two students reflexively pulled out their devices at the mere mention of the word “phone,” Merrimack Valley High School social studies teacher Robert Montgomery didn’t lay eyes on a single device.
As recently as last June, phones were as central a feature of most New Hampshire high schools as pencils and paper. Now, teachers and students said in interviews, a new statewide phone ban has largely eradicated them.
That the law would spur such an immediate and complete behavioral change was hardly a given.
The three teachers, who participated in a panel discussion about the new law hosted by the Concord Monitor in July, worried then that enforcement would lead to constant battles between students and staff as they weathered widespread noncompliance.
In interviews last week, all expressed utter surprise at the extent to which those issues have failed to materialize.
“The students have been so good at just following the rule that I’m actually quite taken aback by it,” Montgomery said.
Students, too, said that they and their classmates have largely stayed off their devices.
“I think everyone’s just kind of following along right now, and no one’s trying to break the rules or anything,” Concord High School senior Stefan West said.
“I’ve seen people pull out their phone occasionally, and I know people probably go to the bathroom to use it, but I don’t really see people getting warnings from teachers a lot.”
Behind the ban’s success
Students and teachers said three factors have contributed to the rollout’s surprising success.
First, because the ban is a statewide law rather than a school policy, students across New Hampshire are in the same boat.
It’s not like they’re hearing from their friends down in Londonderry that there’s a different policy there; it’s across the board,” Montgomery said. “Maybe it is just a big cultural shift. Maybe having it be a law is somehow a new threshold that’s different.”
Second, school staff — who overwhelmingly supported the ban — have presented a united front.
Many schools already had classroom-specific phone policies, but students and teachers said significant variation existed among teachers’ approaches, which made enforcement tricky.
Third, there is growing recognition among young people that phone use is a significant problem.
“There is sort of a culture in our generation of trying to stray away from phones, even if people are bad at it,” West said. “People are like, ‘I should be outside more or be off my phone more.’ So, I think people don’t necessarily see it as a whole bad thing.”
Filling the void
By one estimate in medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, the average teenager spends about one-quarter of the school day on their phone.
How are New Hampshire high schoolers filling that newfound free time? With conversations, card games and increased Chromebook usage, teachers and students said.
At Concord High, Uno has replaced Clash Royale and Brawl Stars as the game of choice during lunch. At Merrimack Valley, the volume in the cafeteria has risen a couple decibels. At John Stark, a group of freshman and sophomore boys who used to congregate in the atrium every morning to play mobile games have instead started talking to each other.
In the classroom, too, teachers said they’ve noticed a marked change.
“They’re talking to each other, students are asking to go and get card games from the library; they’re reading books,” Ouellette-Cygan said. “So, they’re almost instantly figuring out other ways to use the time.”
Contrary to the advice of some experts, most high schools opted for the least restrictive approach to banning phones: allowing students to keep their devices in their pockets or backpacks rather than in a secure pouch or lockbox.
Research suggests that even having access to a device affects attention.
Still, Montgomery said he believes his students are less distracted.
“It seems like I have more of their mental bandwidth on the class than what maybe I have had in previous years,” he said.
No revolt from students
Teachers speculated about the prospect of organized resistance to the phone ban, but besides some grumbling, there’s been no revolt. The response from students has been almost subdued so far.
“I know that people are mad about it, and I know I’ve heard people joke about like, ‘What if we all just took out our phones, what would they do?'” Concord High senior Austin Vanacore said. “But, I don’t think anyone’s even tried to challenge it that much actually.”
Both West and Vanacore said they broadly understand the rationale behind the law, but they don’t see the need to ban phones during lunch and free periods.
The ban has had some funny — and some not-so-funny – consequences, they said.
Vanacore spent much of a recent lunch period on an ultimately fruitless search for a friend.
“It turns out he was in the senior lounge,” Vanacore said. West said several of his friends left another lunch 10 minutes early because, without their phones, they had no idea what time it was. (West, a runner on the cross country team, wears a GPS watch and didn’t have that problem.)
While those issues are relatively trivial, the two students said the phone ban can be a particular challenge for those with few friends or who struggle with anxiety.
In those scenarios, West said, phones filled a social gap.
“That’s not necessarily positive, because you want people to be interacting and that’s a healthy thing,” he added. “But I think in some classes, you don’t always want to talk to people if you’ve been talking to them for seven hours.”
Vanacore said he understood the other side of the equation.
“I don’t think you should just force people to make friends if they don’t want to,” he said.
On the first day of school, several Concord students predicted the phone ban would fizzle out before it ever got off the ground. A few weeks into school, Vanacore and West said they believe it is now here to stay.
Still, they think tweaks could come in future years, and they are hopeful that the ban on phones during lunch will ultimately be lifted.
“Policies go from strict to lenient over time,” West said. “This is kind of like the strict part, and then eventually, it will probably go down to just an in-class ban.”
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.
