New Zealand foretells what school phone ban may be like

There’s a line, they know where it is and they just go, OK, now we’re here to do school work. Elizabeth Hurst, originally from Oshawa, is now the assistant curriculum director of English at Tyree College, a public high school in New Zealand. She says New Zealand banned cell phones and classes earlier this school year, applying to the entire school day, even in high schools. And so far, she says she likes what she sees. It’s been such a positive move. In Ontario schools. K through six will see the band in effect during the entire school day, and seven and up the band will apply during class time. While there’s apprehension among some students in Ontario about the ban, her says it’s gone well so far in her school. There’s hasn’t been much blowback from students. It’s been pretty much endorsed and accepted. Has there been an observable change in the atmosphere at school? It’s one less distraction in a classroom environment, the one less preoccupation 1 less thing to fidget with, one less thing to stress about. The other really nice thing has been at break times, wandering around school and seeing students talking to each other. Courts are being used at break time, so a lot more physical activity, people playing touch rugby, practicing cricket. It’s been really lovely to watch a return to that. There’s also been an uptake in playing Uno, so with more smartphone use we see things like an increase in depression and anxiety and loneliness. A general recommendation that some researchers have made is that a a total ban in classrooms is better than kind of a partially enforced ban. Doctor Jay Olson is a post doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He’s in support of limiting phone time in classrooms. We ran this study, the largest study of smartphone addiction across the world. We had over 50,000 respondents and and basically what we found is that it’s it’s it’s the younger people who have who report having the most problematic smartphone use. What some researchers recommend is, is to try to wait as long as possible before getting your kid a smartphone. Do we should we be thinking of smartphone use almost on the the plane of like a vice cigarettes and alcohol where it’s kind of fun sometimes and it kind of is appropriate in some circumstances. But you don’t want to do it all the time. Yes, I I think that when we kind of look back at the spread of smartphones that we’re having now, but I I think that there will be a lot more regulation once we have more studies kind of identifying exactly what what the negative effects of them are. On the whole, the teachers that I, I am friends with professionally and socially, they’ve all pretty much said the same thing as me. The Ontario ban goes into effect in the new school year. For City News, I’m David Zura.