Schools Ban Phones — Students Start Reading Again

Lets look at phone bans. They are back in schools and I for one am happy about it. School districts are discovering a surprising upside to cell phone. More reading. According to the New York Times, in Jefferson County, Kentucky, book checkouts have soared since the state enacted restrictions. At one high school, students borrowed more than 1200 books in just 17 days. That's nearly half of the total for the entire prior year. That's astronomical growth in actual reading. Another school saw 40% of students check out books double the previous year. That's 100% increase. The timing is striking given national data showing 12th grade reading scores have fallen to historic lows. Roughly a third of high school seniors now lack basic reading skills, leaving many functionally illiterate. Experts note the Decline began around 2013, coinciding with the rise of smartphones in teenagers lives. 34 states and the District of Columbia now limit phones in schools. While not a cure all, early evidence suggests removing the constant distraction of screens may help restore attention spans and revive reading habits. What's the real message here? When schools ban their students from having cell phones, it's a twofer. You actually get the attention of the students back so they can learn, but you stop frying their brain. And what happens is now they have time to actually read books. You know, build cognitive skill, build their ability to focus their attention on something meaningful. It is a win, win. Let's go a little bit deeper here. I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Haidt who wrote the Anxious Generation, the NYU psychologist. And he's a brilliant, he's perhaps one of the arguably top three public intellectuals alive today. I put him up there with Paul Krugman and really just a handful of other, other people. The work he's done on this and how he has shaped schools. Sadly where I live in Florida, they do not have bans on schools. They say, you know, you're not supposed to have them out in class, but you can bring them to school and as long as you're discreet, you're not going to get punished. That's what happens in the schools where I am in South Florida now. I do have a 12 year old daughter and this is something I think about a lot. We do not give her access to the Internet. We do let her have a phone for making calls, text to friends and family. And as far as I know, unless she's hacked it again, that's about it. What I have noticed, even in my own family, if we say okay, hey, you've done your homework, it's after school, relax. The first inclination not only my daughter, but of everyone is pick up that phone. And this is not a phone. Obviously my phone is in use for my TikTok live stream and just start looking and some connection with friends is good. Okay, I'm not knocking all text. We need some of that. We need to be able to call, text, email. But the problem is you get in this loop and it's a quick text, a quick email. Let's go to WhatsApp. Let's check in. What happened on Facebook? Did this last post get a like? And you're churning and churning and churning and you're not following consistent thought anywhere. Now, if you're a full fledged adult, fine, you get to do what you want. But when you're talking about young, impressionable minds, teenagers, those younger than teenagers, school is supposed to be about how to really think. You know, there's all this fretting these days about AI is going to make every job irrelevant. You, you won't be a good lawyer and be able to make money. You won't be a radiologist and make money. Well, forget going to law school or medical school if you can't even read, if you can't pass a reading test, how are you going to go to medical school or law school? You're not. How are you going to get into college? You're not. So that's, that's the real problem here. The second I take my phone right out of my daughter's hand and I start reading a book, which I do every day, I tell her, read a book. She loves reading, she likes it. But left to her own devices, phone is more alluring. And that's the real problem with it. And that's why I commend these states that are just telling kids, don't even bring the phone to school. No, you don't need it. This idea that you're, oh, I want my, I want to be able to reach my child at any moment. Well, you look, in the last 200,000 years of human beings, parents and children, nobody else was allowed to have instant contact with their child. Why do you think you're so special that you need to have instant contact with your child? And that needs to be why they have, they take a cell phone to school. That's absolute, absolute nonsense. Okay, let's look at some more facts here of what's going on. The teenager rate of always on doubled from 2014 to today, went from 24% to 46% of teenagers essentially say they are always online. 34 states, including D.C. have cell phone Bans in schools. Experts. Many child education experts think that the declines we're seeing in reading school, it's not just Covid. Yeah, Covid didn't help for people who were kicked out of their schools and didn't have Internet at home. Let's not kid ourselves. Covid was some. Those were some lost years. But it's not just Covid. It was in fact, the spending. Hour after hour after hour. Reject these kids on cell phones. Richmond, Virginia gave 20 extra instruction days. They also found literacy scores improving. Roland Fryer of Harvard says success requires time, expectations, tutoring, teacher feedback that has to happen with a student actually paying attention to what the teacher says, not staring at a phone. The other beauty of banning cell phones is there's always so many suggestions on education reform that take a lot of money. Let's reduce class sizes to no more than one teacher per 10 students. Okay, maybe great in a perfect world, but it cost a lot of money. Simply telling students and parents, you are not allowed to ring a cell phone on this school. If you do, we're going to take it and give it back to you 30 days later maybe costs nothing. It literally costs nothing. So that's the other reason why I think this is such a, such an important policy to look at, is that there are very few reforms that can dramatically increase education, quality of education for your child, for mine, that will make society more productive. And it literally costs nothing. It's just making a decision. How does this really apply to you in your own life if you don't have kids? I think it's time for all. We all need to reflect on how do we spend less time with our phone. No offense to my friends watching on my phone right now on TikTok, and you may be watching this on your phone on Facebook. I appreciate that. But if you want to be really successful, you got to read books. Sorry. Warren Buffett spends most of his time reading, if not books, he's reading serious in depth reports, analyses of companies and things like Barron's and the Wall Street Journal. Elon Musk gives so much credit to his own success by simply reading more books than anyone else. If you like Anthony Robbins, you know, he didn't go to college, get a Ph.D. any of that, but he read a thousand books on personal development before he was 18. That takes sustained focus. It doesn't take high IQ. I'm not knocking his IQ. It takes sustained ability to focus. And that's what, unfortunately, the cell phone is the best thing in the world ever at destroying it's destroying our ability to focus can take it back. So that's really my message to you. If you want to be more successful, focus on ways where you are in 100% control. The second you're holding a phone, you can tell yourself you're in control. A notification pops up, tweet comes in, a like button shows up. Something more interesting is here. All these apps with pretty colors, pretty design, saying, click on me. Click. And we as human beings are simply not designed to be able to deal with that much stimulation and that much temptation.