More than a quarter century ago, John Healey – then a Toronto high school principal – told The Globe and Mail he was concerned about a new technology spreading through teen ranks: cellphones.
“I just can’t think of any conceivable reason why a student should need to use a cellphone or pager while at school,” said Mr. Healey in September, 1998. The threat seemed clear enough. The use of cellphones was banned at his school and several others.
Twenty-six years later, Mr. Healey, now head of the elementary program at Bond Academy in Toronto, says the problem of mobile phones in schools has become greater than educators could have imagined.
Technology and the law
This is part of a series on the intersection of technology and law.
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There haven’t been any effective attempts to curb the problem until recently, another example of the lag between fast evolving technology and the response to its potential harms. In recent months, Canadian governments and school boards have taken steps to sharply limit the presence of cellphones in classrooms, a move aimed at fostering learning. A UNESCO study in 2023 found it takes students 20 minutes to refocus after being distracted by a smartphone.
Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta have all announced or implemented new cellphone restrictions, aiming to sew cohesion from the patchwork of solutions created by school boards nationwide. These measures, while positive, come late in the day and will hinge on effective enforcement in the classroom.
In Ontario, a 2019 attempt at such restrictions failed, largely because the policy had little bite. It left too much discretion in the hands of individual schools and sometimes tied the hands of teachers. In order for the new rules to be successful, they must be clear in giving enforcement authority to teachers to remove cellphones when necessary, and should clearly lay out a specific implementation framework instead of letting that responsibility fall to already-overstretched teachers.
For that to work, parents must be brought on board too. Teachers report that the greatest pushback against enforcement of cellphone bans often comes from parents unwilling to sacrifice immediate access to their kids. But that sets an expectation that kids will be constantly available on their phones.
In May, The Globe reported that when asked by a teacher to sign an agreement that she could take their children’s phones if they were out, all parents signed. The benefits to class participation were immediate. That is the sort of expectation parents should have by default.
Outside the classroom, managing the impact of students’ cellphone use is more difficult. One key way to do so is by understanding and limiting harms through social media, which makes up the bulk of the time young people spend on their phones.
Ottawa has put forward proposals in the Online Harms Act to make social media companies responsible for taking down harmful content expeditiously, including content where students are being bullied. As this space has previously argued, those measures are a modest but sensible first step.
A major impediment to any broader measures is a lack of data on the effects social media on young people. The companies behind Facebook, Instagram, Snap and TikTok largely say they are implementing safety measures, but with little transparency, it’s difficult to know how effective those are.
United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has recommended that social media be required to share health data with public officials, to allow for independent study and effective, evidence-based regulation. In an advisory last year, Dr. Murthy said more information is needed to understand – among other things – how social media use affects dopamine pathways related to addiction, contributes to social interaction and isolation, and harms users through content and design features.
Canada should consider adopting such a transparency requirement, too. That would make it clear as to what the nature of the problem is and how to proceed.
Smartphones and social media are powerful technologies that have the potential to both add greatly to young people’s lives – and to disrupt or even destroy them. Action to shield children has taken too long. It’s time for that timidity to end.
Our mobile world: More from The Globe and Mail
For families and Gen Z friend groups, location-sharing apps are an increasingly popular way to stay up to date on each other’s lives. On The Globe’s Lately podcast, researcher Katina Michael argues that this technology can often compromise the trust and connection users expect from it.