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Having spent some time teaching in the modern classroom, I can say without a doubt, that phones and other such gadgets are destructive to learning.

I’m sorry, but no child – yes, even a matric student – has the self-discipline enough to use their phone exclusively for learning purposes during the entirety of the school day. They will whip it out at some point or another, some as brazenly as right in front of their teacher as they’re imparting a lesson, and step out of the present moment to Google, Chat-GPT, or Instagram something or another.

Rampant phone use not only halts the learning process, it distracts students from what is important, causes undue stress and anxiety, and causes a barrage of mental health issues to boot – there are tons of studies to prove all this.

But parents might argue that the kids need their devices at school to communicate after-school logistics, and to keep them safe and in touch. The students themselves might execute a tantrum-adjacent speech about how they can’t go a day without their phones and teachers can’t take their property away.

Fine. There is a solution, and quite a few US schools have already implemented it.

Introducing the Yondr pouch: a small fabric bag sealed with a lock that requires a powerful magnet to open, an arrangement similar to that of antitheft tags that retailers affix to clothing.

New “Yondr” pouches being piloted at Walton Middle School @k12albemarle. Locks phones in the pouch until reopened at the end of the day. More to come on @29NewsWVIR at 10/11pm. pic.twitter.com/E5YWwz40bN

— Maggie Glass (@maggieglass08) September 4, 2024

At the start of the school day, students slip their phones into the pouch. They can then keep it in their own backpack or locker but will be unable to cycle through social media or other apps when they’re meant to be studying. At the end of the day, they open the pouch by swiping it at one of several magnetic devices positioned near school exits.

Schools around the US are prioritizing in-person interactions by limiting personal device use. This year, some middle school and 9th grade students are required to secure their non-educational devices in Yondr pouches—locking bags that can only be opened at the end of the day pic.twitter.com/A65IGPROEZ

— Commuter (@commuterny) September 4, 2024

Millions of American children who head back to school this fall will find their phones are now gadgets non grata. Chancellor of New York City public schools David Banks is considering a ban on classroom phone access that would affect 1.1 million students, while his counterparts in Los Angeles approved a similar crackdown, affecting more than 400,000 students and starting in January 2025, per Scientific American.

More than a dozen states have now enacted school phone restrictions in the US, and the UK issued new guidelines for schools on phone bans this past February.

According to Yondr, the California-based company that makes the pouches, millions of students across thousands of schools in 27 countries have already used them. Other schools might use similar containers, such as the Phone Away Box, from different makers.

Yondr reports that 83% of the schools using its pouches have reported improved student engagement. The company boasts similar if smaller, improvements in behaviour and academic performance, while anecdotally, some schools claim they’ve also seen a downtick in bullying since using Yondr because students aren’t sniping at one another on social media as much.

Louis-Philippe Beland, an associate professor of economics at Carleton University in Ontario and co-author of one of the first papers on the academic impact of smartphone access says “We found that banning mobile phones in schools increases student performance, especially for low-achieving students.”

Further research has supported those initial findings, Beland believes. “If you put all this evidence together, I think there’s a strong case that mobile phones cause distraction,” he says. “If you do something about it, you can increase academic performance.”

Anything that limits access to phones is a positive. Hell, I am a fully-fledged adult and I want a Yonder pouch to limit my phone use during the day. The attention wars are real and they’re in full throttle – we all could do with a little more defence.

[source:scientificamerican]