The Internet suggests these aren’t the questions we usually ask. 

 

I did two searches on “smartphones in school,” one using Duck-Duck-Go and one using Google. In a quick survey of the top eight results the two most common arguments for smartphones in school were (1) they can be used to do classroom work, and (2) dealing with phones responsibly is an important life skill. The most common arguments against smartphones were a blend of arguments about inappropriate content, cheating, mental health, and distractedness.

 

Of the eight sources, four sources were in favor of allowing smartphones in school (two without reservation), three sources ended with some version of “there’s no easy answer,” and one simply neglected any kind of summary judgment, merely presenting a few pros and a few cons. 

 

None of the top eight search results ultimately argued against smartphones in the classroom, and only tangentially raised questions like those listed above.

 

Further, the sources failed to identify two fundamental ideas. The first we can take from the twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger: the tendency of technology is not merely to introduce us to new content (i.e., textbooks, learning tools, bullying, pornography, etc.), but to shape the way we are in the world. If our technology is fast, flashy, and without boundaries, our tendency is to mimic these “ideals” in the real world, and we fail to cope with, understand, or respect boundaries we don’t even know we’re transgressing. 

 

In Marshall McLuhan’s words: “The medium is the message.”

 

The second idea is perhaps one possible implication of several contemporary writers, including Nicholas Carr, Lukianoff and Haidt, and Jean M. Twenge: attention-grabbing devices that connect us to social media and offer a full buffet of other fun distractions are addictive, and young minds should form other strong neural pathways before being introduced to them. In other words, smartphones and tablets should be introduced age-appropriately, similar to the way most societies have chosen to manage alcohol, tobacco, and other potentially addictive and harmful substances. (What age is appropriate will no doubt be divisive—under no illusions that us “Luddites” are in the majority, I would suggest that pinning the appropriate age to the same restrictions we impose on alcohol, tobacco, or driving might be a way to start the conversation. This could be done by the family, not the state.)

 

The scholarship on this point seems fairly conclusive: from rates of anxiety and depression, to growing delays in the time it takes to really reach adulthood, to fundamental changes in the wiring of our neural circuits—look into any of these and near the core you’ll find some mix of factors including youth, smartphones, and social media. 

 

This is the reason I can’t stop thinking about that faculty meeting, and all the important issues we didn’t raise. About all the educators who argued that it was merely a problem of self-regulation and good management. About the apparent consensus that our students can somehow harness their smart-tools to their own ends, as if they’re somehow different than Gollum, Loki, or the Cold War powers.

 

This is a problem I still scratch my head over, and I invite your feedback: If the preponderance of the scholarship seems to point in one direction, why is it that popular media sources, institutions, teachers, and even parents so often point in the other?