‘Silent mode’ comes off

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There is noise nowadays in the MVRHS cafeteria, noise that some teachers and administrators argue is good noise. Instead of the sound of silence, with noses buried in Snapchat and Instagram, students are being forced to interact with one another. 

The high school is even considering creating a “quiet zone” during lunch period, where students who are overstimulated can eat in peace. 

It’s all part of a new, unprecedented policy at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School curbing nearly all access to smartphones within the school’s walls, in an effort to address distraction and online-fueled anxiety. 

The Vineyard high school is on the cutting edge of an issue that schools and states across the country are starting to grapple with.

So far, teachers at the Vineyard high school are seeing the upswing. “People are looking at each other and smiling,” said Rachel Shubert, an English teacher at MVRHS for the past eight years. “I think it’s creating the space for a new way to exist. That’s really the difference I’ve noticed in terms of the feel of this school year compared to other years. People are more present.” 

Daniel Soares, a language teacher from Brazil, agreed, and remarked that classes have become more rowdy — in a good way — with students talking to each other more during class. 

Other teachers said they have already gotten to know dozens more students than they would have in the past, as students are looking up instead of down. 

The MVRHS School Committee approved the new policy just before the school year. The school already required students to stow away their phones during class instruction, but new this year, students can’t use their phones in the hallways, bathrooms, or the cafeteria at lunch. At the beginning of the day, students seal their phones in pouches that have a magnetic strip that must be tapped to a base station at the end of the day in order to open it. In other words, they are locked in the pouch for the day. MVRHS received a federally funded grant to purchase the pouches, which are made by Yondr — a company that got its start providing the pouches to live concerts and comedy shows.

The new idea is part of a national trend, as educators are grappling with how to address distraction and the potential negative psychological effects of smartphone and social media use on teens. 

For students at the high school, their reaction is mixed. Students who spoke to The Times generally were accepting of the prohibition on smartphone use throughout the day, saying they felt the Yondr pouches have helped eliminate the anxious need to check their phones for notifications. The fact that nobody can use a personal device also perpetuates a feeling among students that they shouldn’t have one out, because their peers don’t. 

And they believe that access to phones during the school day caused other issues, like enabling bullying on the anonymous app Yik Yak. They also feel that using phones in school led to the spread of misinformation. In 2022, for example, as a manhunt was underway following an armed robbery at Rockland Trust in Vineyard Haven, students say unsubstantiated rumors spread around campus about the suspects allegedly approaching the school campus. 

With the new policy in place, Sophie Winters, a senior at MVRHS, said in the first week there had been some early hiccups, with students going to the wrong classes because they didn’t have their phones to more easily check their schedules. Other students have reported difficulty finding their friends at lunchtime without access to their phones — the school limits where students can eat lunch to several designated areas. 

There have already been multiple times when students have had to ask to unlock their phones, according to Winters, as they use their phones to, among other things, produce content for club social media accounts and to take progress pictures of their work in shop classes. 

Other students reported that the Yondr pouches can easily be opened, despite administrator intentions. Sam Flanders, a sophomore, told the Times that the pouches can allegedly be opened by banging the metal clasp against a hard surface, like a table (the metal clasp does not appear to be strong). 

Teachers reported that in prior years, students would be rushing to get out of class as quickly as possible so they could check their phones, quickly finishing in-class work and waiting for the teacher to release them. Students felt the need to reply to their friends’ messages as quickly as possible. Now, with the phones out of sight, the pang is gone, and they’re spending more time on focused work, as well as talking to other students and their instructors. 

Shubert, the English teacher, said she has seen firsthand the impact cellphones and other technology can have on students’ focus; she believes that a policy that gets at the root of that during the hours when students are in school is powerful. Additionally, corralling students to put their phones away in prior years was a major distraction for her, and took away from class time. She’s hopeful that the new implementation will create an environment where students “can really be present for instruction, present for each other, and less anxious.” 

The “Away for the Day” measure, as it’s being called, is not one unique to Martha’s Vineyard schools. States, lawmakers and social-media companies are attempting to make changes. In California, for instance, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a bill giving school districts statewide two years to restrict or prohibit cell phone use during school hours. Other states, including Louisiana and Indiana, have also begun the 2024–25 school year with new restrictions on phone use. 

Back in June, Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, suggested social media apps incorporate cigarette-like labels warning of the potential harm of excessive social media use on youth and adolescents. And in July, the Senate passed the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act to impose new requirements for children and teenagers on social media. Instagram recently said it would launch “Teen Accounts” with new restrictions on adolescent use of the app, including making accounts private by default, and silencing notifications for teens between 10 pm and 7 am.

In an advisory published last year, Dr. Murthy concluded that while more research is needed on the exact long-term consequences of smartphone and social media use in teens, that shouldn’t preclude precautionary measures from being taken now.

“Children and adolescents don’t have the luxury of waiting years until we know the full extent of social media’s effects,” he wrote.

But not everyone thinks an outright ban is a good idea, and urge caution making such drastic changes without conclusive evidence of the harms or benefits. “It’s a really hard area to research,” says Peter Etchells, a professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University in the U.K. “It’s almost impossible to do lab-based research, and existing studies rely mostly on self-reported data.” 

Etchells is the author of “Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time (and How to Spend It Better),” a book assessing the scientific research behind fears of extended screen use. 

Among other things, Etchells thinks that bans on accessing a smartphone during the school day will make it harder for students to find support networks where they can talk about harmful activity they encounter online. “These smartphones are ultimately tools for information and entertainment,” and students should be taught how to use them for all their positives, like finding information and expressing their creativity, he said. 

In the Surgeon General’s advisory from last year, Dr. Murthy cited survey research supporting the benefits of social media use on teens. Among other things, 58 percent of teens surveyed reported that social media makes them feel more accepted, and 71 percent said that they felt social media gives them a place to express their creativity. 

“I don’t think bans work in the long run,” Etchells said. “We don’t have evidence that they do work in the long run, but we do have evidence that big blanket bans tend to backfire.” Etchells cited the “Shutdown Law,” passed in South Korea in 2011 to forbid teens 16 and under from playing video games late at night, in order to ensure they were sleeping adequately. Later research found little improvement in sleep for adolescents, and in fact some simply shifted their play time to earlier in the day. The law was repealed in 2021. 

Etchells also pointed to new research from Norway which found that three years after schools there limited access to smartphones, there was no effect on a student’s likelihood of receiving mental health treatment. 

Some students at MVRHS, while not entirely opposed to the new policy, argue a hybrid approach might be more appropriate. Winters believes the high school should focus instead on introducing media literacy into classes, and teaching students how to manage these harms themselves. 

“Teachers won’t be there for the rest of our lives putting our phones in pouches, and it’s important that students learn these good habits young,” rather than expecting them to figure it out once they become adults with unlimited access to devices, she said. 

In agreement with Winters is Bill Salak, chief technology officer at edutech company Brainly. Salak’s company creates learning products including AI and tutor-assisted homework helping software. He argued that the world is moving faster than ever, and understanding how to effectively use new technology will make students more attractive to employers. 

“The cell phone is the new computer, and it’s not like it’s going to be the new computer in the next 10 years; it’s the new computer of five years ago,” he said. “I think we as a society need to lean into digital literacy and incorporate how to responsibly use a cell phone, how to responsibly navigate this crazy world of the internet, and how to defensively react to online bullying.” 

“It’s not a magic fix,” Etchells says about the bans. If parents and teachers are worried about the relationships that adolescents have with tech, removing access doesn’t give them the skills they need: “If you’re going to enact a ban, it needs to come along with thinking hard about how to build digital literacy in those kids, because they’ll have access to a phone eventually.” 

On the issue of social media’s potential psychological harms, Etchells notes that the problems parents are communicating to schools, like online bullying by their peers, are happening at home anyway, not during school hours. Students told The Times they didn’t feel they used their phones a lot during school before the new ban. 

Shubert, the English teacher,, doesn’t buy the argument that restricting phone access during the day will cause students to enter the real world unprepared. On the contrary, she says, going for extended periods without use of a phone will teach students how to focus on work when it matters most in the real world: “To use one’s phone responsibly often means to put it away so that you can focus and be present for your work.” Soares, the literature teacher, agreed with that sentiment. 

Learning how to talk to their peers face-to-face, they argue, is the best skill students can learn at a young age. By the time they become adults, they will be more mature and mentally equipped to deal with the challenges of social media. 

Students will still be using technology throughout the school day — writing Word documents and making slideshow presentations — as they have been issued Chromebooks to use for class work. That was another point of contention for some students who prefer using a personal laptop that can run more capable software programs for video editing and other tasks. They also griped that many websites are blocked on the Chromebooks, including those for personal email accounts they would like to use. 

Ultimately, though, teachers expressed more concern about getting control of their classrooms and seeing students participate in focused work, and less so on the issue of social media and its ills. Schubert is excited that MVRHS is one of the first schools committing to this program, and expects more will follow: “We’re doing a hard thing, and this is the year that schools are rolling this out if they’re doing it, so I feel like we’re at the forefront.”