The phone ban at ERHS

Art by Violet Foushee

California recently passed a bill saying that all school districts must have a phone ban, or at least a policy in place, by July 1st of 2026. LAUSD soon became one of the largest school districts in the U.S. to enforce the phone ban during school hours. According to our school administrators, the policy for the phone ban is in place, but the implementation plan is not. What’s an implementation plan?  This plan will include the specific guidelines for when a student breaks a rule. What will happen if a student is seen with a phone in the hallway? Will it be permitted? Or will the phone be taken away? Are we supposed to leave our phones at home? Or will teachers have pouches for them? The devil is in the details. But for now, most students are wondering…What does the phone ban mean for our school?

For many students at ERHS, it means the end of an era of technological and social freedom. However, for Ms. Olsen, the school librarian, this is not her first rodeo. When I spoke with her, she had already implemented her own phone ban in the school library, saying that, “You can use your cell phone anywhere else, just not the library.” As students began to listen to this rule, Ms. Olsen shared her perspective on their behavior, “they’re laughing a lot more, and they’re talking a lot more to each other, like actually looking at their faces, not looking at their phones.”

Eye contact is something that helps create a social and emotional connection between two people when they're talking. Despite that, many students with access to cell phones have gotten into the bad habit of constantly looking at them, even during conversations. Ms. Olsen believes that the phone ban will solve this.  She explained that, “On the very physiological, subconscious level, it [is the absence of phones that] forces us to interact and look at each other more. And I think that actually does make us feel safer and seen.”

Furthermore, Ms. Olsen has another philosophy on how a student’s behavior and mental health can change by a simply small thing: boredom. Walking around school, during lunch or class time, there are numerous students staring down at their phones. Both middle and high school students combined, choosing, as Ms. Olsen would say, URL over IRL. Her belief is that, without phones right by our side, people can have the pleasure of being bored instead of immediately going to their devices, giving themselves the space to read or craft, or simply just be aware of their surroundings, without having the urge to go on Tiktok or Instagram. 

Despite that, there are some complications due to the phone ban that would affect the library and the students who use it. The rules regarding the phone ban detail the idealistic “truly phone-free school days” and if our school were to implement this, there would be some disadvantages. For instance, Ms. Olsen shared that some of the students that frequent the library often use it to record an “advertisement” for their club, or they use the editing software on their phones. But with the upcoming phone ban and her already in place rule of no phones in the library, no one will be able to do that. However, there are solutions. She commented that, “Although research shows that constant phone use can affect attention and mental health, phones are also powerful tools for creativity, collaboration, and productivity—things we really support at The Perch Library through our values of care, question, create, and connect. We’ve been working with students to figure out how to balance this. One idea we’re exploring is a ‘cell phone pass’ system. Just like with computer check-outs, students could get a pass to use their phone for specific tasks.”

Additionally, for Mr. Oliveros- an art teacher at ERHS, the phone ban generated complications for his classroom. He shared that, “specifically for my subject, the phones have served as a camera for over a decade. So, initially, I was a little bit concerned about how that would look in my classroom.” On the other hand, Mr. Oliveros mentioned the perspectives of other teachers who had students that used their phones as a distraction rather than a tool. Corresponding to Ms. Olsen, Mr. Oliveros brought up the clubs that use their phones to publicize themselves. Saying that,“ I know that we have clubs, including the anti-bullying club, clubs that have Instagram accounts and clubs that have TikTok accounts.” The clubs that use social media at school to promote themselves wouldn’t be able to do so with the phone ban in place. Nevertheless, there are still ways to do this without using your phones at school. Mr. Oliveros said that the social media aspect of this it “doesn't mean that we eliminate those, it just means that we approach those in a way where it's more of an after-school tool or an at home tool, or a tool to reach people, not during school hours…make sure that we still are acknowledging where we are. It's 2024. It's not going to go away.”

Mr. Oliveros, who runs the anti-bullying club, believes that in terms of a student's mental health and overall well-being, the phone ban would be incredibly beneficial. He explained that, “since the advent of social media,” there has “been an uptick in suicidal ideations and in poor self esteem and exclusive bullying and social bullying and cyber bullying. So I think that eliminating that element on campus may help to reduce some of those fears, especially for younger kids, or kids who have experienced a lot of bullying.” 

Considering that students are always interacting at school, Mr. Oliveros shared how he believes the phone ban would improve the social wellness of kids. Stating that, “If anything was learned through the pandemic, it is that human interaction is so valuable, especially for your generation, and relying on technology to kind of replace that face to face ability or face to face skill is a detriment.” 

Though we don’t have the specified implementation plan, we do have a basic idea of what will happen to our school beginning next semester. Whether the phone ban will have a positive or negative effect on the social wellness, mental health, and well-being of students at this school, change will be happening here at ERHS. For many teachers, it means either an additional step in their already implemented phone policies, or a helping hand in changing their classroom environment for the better. All in all, remember that the phone ban is happening next semester, so be prepared for it.