Last summer, as Malachi Britt turned 12, his years of proving his maturity finally paid off. The youngest of four children, he was used to walking by himself to catch the school bus, routinely checking in with his mother after football practice at Lewis Frasier Middle School and completing his homework.
His responsibility earned him his first cell phone, a bittersweet gift because just after receiving the gift Liberty County public schools announced the first ban of cell phones by students during school hours as the district sought to increase attention and test scores. Rather than showing off his device, Malachi joined the rest of the school’s students in locking their phones in secure pouches before the morning bell.
Earlier this spring, Governor Brian Kemp signed a law that scales the Liberty pilot project to ban personal devices for elementary and middle school students across the state. Yet interviews with 5 school officials, students, and parents in Hinesville suggests that the tactic has had minimal success meeting the educational goals in its first year.
Across the Liberty school system, clever kids learned to hack the magnetized bags that the district bought for $140,000 to securely store individual phones. Even worse, frustrated parents worried about being cut off from their children became a potent force in helping violate the ban. By the end of the first semester, the conflict between what parents believed best for children and what educators saw as best for the classroom meant enforcement of the ban was largely nonexistent, according to Odette-Marie Alexis, Bradwell Institute’s parent, family, and community engagement specialist.
With school starting in a matter of days, it’s unclear how Liberty County schools are going to adapt and tighten the restrictions that they still support, even as controversy about the policy divides parents and teachers alike.
To ban, or not to ban?
Georgia is one of the latest in a growing list of states that have passed laws prohibiting cell phone use in schools. Over half of public school educators nationwide say that cell phones have had negative effects on students’ mental health. Policymakers, meanwhile, believe the restrictions will remove distractions during instruction time and increase academic performance.
A’Brea Simmons, a 14-year-old student at Bradwell Institute, said that she sees the negative influence of social media beamed straight to her friends’ devices. Hurtful things, she said, can and do go viral.
“The negative thing about social media right now is that if you do anything embarrassing, you get posted on social media real quickly, and you don’t wanna do anything at that point. It forces people to become a different person,” she said. “Bullying can go a long way, and it can make people change over time when they start to get older.”
Rhonda Simmons, A’Brea’s mother, is a student information specialist at Snelson-Golden Middle School. She said that while Snelson includes social media clauses in the student handbook, it doesn’t necessarily curb the toxicity between students that is fueled by the internet.
“The sense that they can say and do things and won’t have to be accountable for them is real, and children don’t know how to manage that,” Rhonda Simmons said. “Adults don’t know how to manage that half the time, so expecting someone who is not fully mentally developed to manage that is just wild to me.”
Students becoming more engrossed in their devices has been an ongoing problem, according to Odette-Marie Alexis. She felt a phone ban was inevitable after more limited attempts to curb phone use failed.
“Coming out of Covid and prior to the ban, I don’t know, I think kids were given an inch and were trying to see how much they could take. It went from having only one earbud in your ear, and they abused that because they still had two earbuds in, so we went to no earbuds in your ear, then they were walking around with their phones,” she said. “Then we said ‘Okay, you can only use your phone in the E-Zone’, which would have been the cafeteria. But kids figured ‘Well, if I can use it in the E-Zone, then I’m going to use it in other places in the school,’ and then they were on their phones during classes.”
Liberty’s superintendent decided a tougher approach was needed. The school board approved a payment for 5,500 magnetic pouches created by the company Yondr to physically secure phones and keep them out of students’ reach.
The devices, which are about $30, have grown in popularity from schools to concert halls as administrators look to secure distraction-free spaces. Celebrities like Dave Chappelle and Donald Glover have offered their seals of approval.
Two months before school started, the school board hosted a Zoom meeting to answer questions about the new policy, but did not publicly request parent opinions beforehand.
Students, they were told, would be responsible for bringing their pouches to school each morning with phones locked inside. Kids could carry the pouch with them, but their devices would remain inside until the end of the day. Removing the device from the pouch required a magnetic unlocking device positioned at the exits of the school.
Issues in enforcement
At first, the rollout of the cell phone ban went smoothly.
Alexis said that in the first weeks of last fall, she noticed positive changes in student behavior. Although many were unhappy with the ban, students paid more attention during classes and were engaging with more regularity.
“During lunch, they were actually holding more conversations with each other. ..You could feel the shift in the school when that happened, and for the good.”
Odette-Marie Alexis
“During lunch, they were actually holding more conversations with each other,” she said. “You could feel the shift in the school when that happened, and for the good.”
But within a few months, students started resisting the ban. Alexis said students found different ways of beating the magnetic lock on the pouch, a problem reported in school districts in several states that use Yondr equipment.
Another trick: Students brought two devices to school. One was a “dummy” that they would lock in the pouch, which left their real cell phone free for them to use.
A’Brea said she often saw and heard about other students finding ways to bypass the ban without getting caught. “One of my friends said that a kid slammed their Yondr pouch on the desk, trying to break it just to get their phone,” she said.
Malachi said teachers enforced the ban unevenly. While some teachers in his school were adamant about phones remaining in pouches, others allowed students to open the pouches during class once their work was completed, or didn’t enforce the ban at all.
“At the beginning, everybody was doing it. But then closer to the end of the school year, people were like, ‘I’m not putting my phone in there’. They just stopped putting it in because the teachers stopped caring,” he said.
A’Brea added that school administrators also did little to make sure students were following the policy.
“As far as parent pickup, they weren’t doing it at all. There was only a counselor out there and they weren’t asking about Yondr pouches or nothing,” A’Brea continued. “On the first day, when I got dropped off, I noticed nobody was checking. But I didn’t ask, and I just kept walking to my classroom.”
Parents push back
As challenging as ingenious students finding ways to hack the pouches was parental pushback against the ban.
The top concern for parents is that the ban prevents them from being able to contact their children, especially in the event of an emergency. That fear has grown as school shootings and lockdowns have been a frightening reality.
Yuhlanda Britt, 12-year-old Malachi’s mother, said she and other parents were unhappy with the lack of input the school district offered ahead of the new ban.
Britt, who supports the cell phone ban, said she heard parents express frustration at having to be responsible for keeping track of the pouches and paying fees if it was damaged or lost.
“I do wish that there was maybe some discussion along with the parents. That doesn’t mean I was in disagreement with what they put in, I just felt like there should have been more parent involvement in the process. It just seemed a little secretive,” she said.
Alexis insisted that schools have protocols on how to communicate with parents during a crisis, and that a phone wouldn’t do much to get parents closer to their child in that scenario.
“The protocol is you call the front office if there’s an emergency and then we will get to your child,” she said. “But, a lot of the parents were insisting ‘No, I need my child to pick up when I call right away.’ ”
Yuhlanda Britt doesn’t worry, noting that Malachi’s teachers have her direct line, and she has the phone number for his principal. “So at any given point of the day, if I need to know what’s going on with him, I can shoot any one of his teachers an email or a text or whatever, and I can get an update from one of them. I don’t feel like him not having access to his cell phone cuts me off from his progress throughout the day,” she said.
By the end of the fall semester last year, Alexis said parents frustrated with the demands of the ban were encouraging their children to flout it by buying magnets to break the Yonder locks.
“So slowly but surely it just became ‘Okay, I probably lock my phone this day, I probably won’t lock it the next day,’ ” she said.
Another challenge: a parental viewpoint that schools should not regulate the use of an item that they had bought and paid for.
“I think one of the things that made this difficult was parent buy-in, because there were parents saying ‘Well, I paid that phone bill, who are you to tell me what my child can and can’t do with something that I paid for?’. And in that case, you’re being part of the problem,” she said.
Why it works
Figuring out how to navigate phone usage in the younger generation is a complex demand with multiple key players, but evidence does suggest that an increased reliance on technology at home and in the classrooms can hurt students more than it helps at times.
While kids may have access to more resources with technology, Alexis said that some of those resources, like ChatGPT, can become a crutch for students and affect their ability to write effectively and collaborate with others. She said that while teachers can block students from using certain websites on their Chromebooks, phones are an accessible way to cheat during class.
‘If your child can’t come to school for eight hours and not be attached to a cell phone while they’re supposed to be learning, then you have bigger problems than a cell phone.’
Rhonda Simmons
“We’re finding out that there’s somewhat of a disconnect with using ChatGPT the wrong way. Kids are using it in class, but when they sit in front of a test, because they’re so used to ChatGPT answering for them, now they’re totally lost,” she said. “So we’re like ‘Okay, we have kids passing the class, but failing the EOCs.’ And we’re realizing that that’s where the disconnect is coming in.”
Those academic shortcuts combined with unrestricted phone use can snowball into larger issues with interpersonal communication, Rhonda Simmons said. She said that phone-free schools can push students to build communication skills that help them inside and outside the classroom.
“I think it’s a good benefit because even when we are at home, kids use their social media and everybody’s in their own little corner,” she said. “It forces you to interact with people. People don’t have regular communication skills because we constantly text all day. If you look at writing skills, kids write the way they text, the way they talk, and in a professional setting, that’s not gonna fly.”
“If your child can’t come to school for eight hours and not be attached to a cell phone while they’re supposed to be learning, then you have bigger problems than a cell phone,” she added.
Looking ahead
Britt said that while Malachi has been using his cell phone responsibly, the ban has reiterated lessons that she’s instilled in him about the importance of education and following instructions.
For the ban to work in the upcoming school year, she said that students need to see their parents and teachers taking it seriously.
“You have to be consistent from day one to day 180. You can’t say at the beginning of the school year that it’s so important, and then, come the last week say it’s not important. Because they see that. You have to remain consistent with them.”
Alexis said that for the ban to work better this fall the district and school administrators will have to find new ways to get students, parents, and staff equally invested.
“Overall, I believe there are some positives that can come out of the ban. It’s just a matter of getting the buy-in from the parents and making sure that, 100 percent, staff is adhering to those rules, procedures, and regulations” she said. “Because once kids see that there’s a little crook in how things are done, they’re going to take full advantage of that and see how far they can push things.”
