by Katie Ng ’25

In the 2022-23 school year, MCPS created guidelines supporting putting personal mobile devices, including phones, away during instructional time. At the high school level, personal mobile devices were permitted before and after school, during lunch, and principals had the discretion to determine if devices could be permitted during class and in between classes. However, these guidelines were not strongly enforced at Sherwood.

This school year, Sherwood is cracking down on phone usage with its new policy and more teachers are regulating phone usage. But although the new phone policy is generally unpopular among students, it has the potential to be beneficial by promoting productivity in class, student connection, and mental health.

First, the school limiting phone usage could help students focus on their academics. If students must put away their phones, it would force them to do their classwork. And when students complete assignments in school, they feel relieved to have one or two fewer subjects of homework to worry about after school. Therefore, staying off of phones during the school day to get work done gives students a greater chance to relax and get sleep after school. In addition, the school’s new phone policy will teach students how to not multitask. This is important because “a growing body of research has found that it’s far less efficient to try to do two (or more!) things at once than to focus on just one task at a time. Multitasking can interfere with working memory, cause students to do worse in school, and could possibly even create potentially long-term memory problems,” according to a Stanford University article. Learning to turn the phone off and put it away promotes better work habits and success.

It may also bring students together. Teachers have noticed that at the end of class, when they are
finished teaching instruction, students sit quietly on their phones until the bell rings rather than talk to each other. The new phone policy may encourage teachers to push their students to start conversations with their classmates and get to know them and their interests. Classroom discussions could improve and become more meaningful as well. The students who would not otherwise participate might start tuning in more and possibly talk.

Lastly, some students’ mental health could benefit from having to put phones away for class instruction. It is no surprise that there are many negative interactions on social media platforms including cyberbullying, trolling, and nasty comments. “Social media can affect adolescents’ self-view and interpersonal relationships through social comparison,” the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) reported. This emphasizes how scrolling on social media can leave teens feeling poorly about themselves and the need to take a break. Teens do not always need to know what other people are doing. They need to be aware of who they are following and how they are spending their time.

These phone habits the school wants to address arose and have stuck with students since the coronavirus pandemic, when students were stuck in their own homes and isolated from each other. We need to return to a sense of normalcy in which classrooms are places for learning. Overall, the new phone policy may be imperfect, but it may help students become the best versions of themselves and improve the learning environment at this school.