The phone policy to be put in place in 2025 is anticipated with dread by many on campus. There have been many conspiracies and rumors of what the plan will look like, but it seems as if most of the school is unsure of how the policy will take place. There are some teachers who are relieved to have the phones out of their classrooms, yet there are still many students who are quite tense about the upcoming situation.
I have firsthand experience with a cell phone ban. When I attended New West Charter for a week at the beginning of this year, a phone ban was newly in place there and many students were not at peace with it, and attempted to find ways of bypassing it. After a week however, the situation calmed itself and students eased into the new policy.
As with any new restriction on students, opposition should be expected, but once it dies down, the phone policy may turn out to be very beneficial. Many schools that have implemented this policy have shown heightened academic performance, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the phones were tranquilizing this potential previous to the ban.
The way I see it, even though I am among the group that wants to keep their phones, is that once the discomfort of change wears off, the benefit will be way more noticeable. Without receiving notifications and having urges to check phones in the middle of a class, students will inevitably have more attention to pay to the task at hand and therefore will be getting more work done. As grades go up, students will probably feel good about the phone ban, and see that it has a positive impact.
Additionally, phone usage is a social epidemic and whether we teenagers like to admit it or not, we are on our phones far too much. Not only will the new policy help academically, but I think we students will experience a change that we never would have expected: more authentic social interactions with our friends. Maybe we will even make new friends and acquaintances because we won’t be so sucked into the world our phone holds for us. For example, have you ever been talking to someone and they pull out their phone mid-conversation? Did it make you feel small and unimportant? It’s okay to answer yes to those questions! We have all been there, and we have also all been the person who pulls out the phone. Without these kinds of distractions, I think we will all feel better socially.
Although the phone bans are negatively anticipated by many students at Hami and within the rest of LAUSD, they will bring positive effects left, right, and center, and we may as well be excited for that.
