If there’s one thing that seems to unite the olds across the political divide, it’s a fervent belief that Kids These Days™ spend too much time on their phones. It’s one of the reasons everyone agrees strict anti-phone policies in schools are a good thing, but in a seemingly endless era of school shootings, taking a child’s phone away at school is simply morally wrong.
Point blank, we never know when some domestic abuser with easy access to firearms is going to turn a school into a killing field. If that happens, I want my child to be able to reach me, and their math grade is going to look infinitesimally less important by comparison.
The idea that something monstrous would occur and I would be unable to reach my kid keeps me up at night. That includes everything from a natural disaster to the very real possibility school resource officers will haul the kid off to a mental health facility, but it’s the shootings that loom largest in my anxieties. It’s why I take a picture of my child every day when they leave for school. I might have to identify their body later.
We can all agree that kids should not be on their phones watching anime or whatever in class, but there are many ways to deal with that beyond confiscation. Tell them to put it away, send them to the principal’s office, give them detention, fine them, or at the very worst have them come put the phone up on the teacher’s desk until the end of class. Wherever it goes, it should be back in the child’s hand either when the bell rings or if something worse happens.
Every time there’s a school shooting (51 last year in America, more than double the number in 2018 according to Education Week), there are breathless stories in the media of children texting their parents, telling them they love them and that they are scared. It’s a heartbreaking part of this painful, do-nothing cycle we have all apparently agreed to live under rather than make guns slightly harder to get.
How much worse would that all be if a child wasn’t able to contact their parents because some teacher couldn’t stand seeing them check their Discord server in class regardless of how high their grades are?
Let the kids have their phones. If their use is disrupting class, find a solution that doesn’t cut off all possible communication with their parents. All that does is add to the endless worry, and for what? To shore up an antiquated idea that cell phones are somehow the worst thing to happen to education? Cell phones make communication easier for teachers, reduce waste, open up new education applications and, yes, contribute to a sense of safety.
Phones aren’t just the place where memes and Dua Lipa songs leak out into the classroom. They are lifelines and sometimes even stop shootings before they begin. If this is the world we’re going to live in, then the very least we can do is make sure that our kids can say goodbye if the worst comes blasting in.