No Phones At School. How Do I Help My Kid Cope?

The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.

The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.

Reena Ninan
So how was your summer?

Lisa Damour
It was good. It was busy and productive. We took a family trip to Dublin, of all weird things. There’s a direct flight from Cleveland to Dublin, so the four of us were like, well, let’s go to Dublin, and we had a great time. How about you?

Reena Ninan
I feel like every year, the summer just goes by so fast, and everything I had on my to do list, I got nothing done. And I hate that feeling when the school year starts, that there’s so much left to do that you haven’t finished. Any advice on that?

Lisa Damour
Well, okay, so actually, here’s something I have often found: Once the school year starts, I feel like I have better control of my time. You know that once the routine set in, I actually feel like my to do list is a little bit more easy to wrangle? I think it’s often in the summer, when there’s so much unpredictability. And also, I think a little bit of a sense, I don’t know if you feel this of like I shouldn’t really be working quite so hard, and so then you don’t work quite so hard. What do you think?

Reena Ninan
Oh, yeah, no, definitely. I think everyone needs a break in the summer and trying to figure that balance is so important. But you’re right. There’s something you have always told us about the importance of warmth and structure and why that’s important in a household. So I love that.

Reena Ninan
You know, one thing we’re seeing in schools across the country are which I love, actually, they’re pulling cell phones from schools, and they’re seeing significant progress in grades being better, social norms at schools… So I wanted to read you this letter because a parent is asking for help on this:

Reena Ninan
Dear Dr. Lisa and Reena, my daughter’s high school is implementing a new cell phone policy for the school year. Phones will be required to be locked away in lockable pouches at 8am and will not be given back to students until 3pm at the end of the school day. I’m generally on board with this policy, as I know the impact phones can have on mental health, but I’m having a hard time talking about it with my daughter. She is furious. She agrees that phone bans during class should be strictly enforced, but she thinks teens should also have the autonomy to learn how to balance their times with phones during breaks, lunch, etc. She claims that not having a phone between classes and during breaks and lunch will actually increase her anxiety and prevent her from being able to decompress and de-stress during tough school days. Even though she’s pretty social, she feels that not allowing phones is forcing her to be social when she needs a break from her peers. She also says it’ll be detrimental to her mental health to not be able to check in with her mom, family during the day for little hello or just to vent about her day. That’s been tough. I’ve seen the research on some of this, but I’m still having difficulty coming up with ways to talk with my teen about it all. Ways to empathize with her, while also explaining that school is truly putting this policy in place with their students’ best interests at heart. So what exactly should I say to her?

Reena Ninan
What are your thoughts on phone bans in schools? Because she raises some interesting points about anxiety and how kids are just used to this.

Lisa Damour
You know, it’s true, and I have to say, listening to that letter, I’m like, God, I love teenagers, right? I mean, this kid is like, “And there’s this issue, and there’s this issue, and I’m anxious, and this is going to make things they think are going to be better, and it’s going to actually make them worse,” right? And what I can tell you is I think this is a conversation going down in a lot of houses. I think a lot of families, a lot of kids, are dealing with these new regulations. A lot of states are putting these bans in place. And I think the schools do whatever rollout they can, but often it ends up in the kitchen, and it ends up with the kid having a lot of grumpy feelings, and the parents have to be the ones who make the case for this or deal with the kid’s upset feelings. So I’m so grateful for this letter, and I know this family is not alone.

Lisa Damour
All right, I’ll play my cards face up: I think not having phones during the school day is absolutely the right call. And where I’ve come to on this is, the benefits far outweigh the costs, right? It’s not costless to get rid of phones during the school day. You know, in Ohio, we’ve been doing this for a year. We’ve had our ban in place for a while, and my own kids have it. My middle schooler had it all last year, and there’s so many upsides, there’s so many upsides. So is it a perfect solution with no downsides? No. Do the upsides, and we can get into them, outweigh the downsides? I think, yeah, I think that’s what we’re seeing. What do you think? Where are things with you guys in your school?

Reena Ninan
Here in Darien, Connecticut, the middle school implemented this last year, and it was fantastic. They will just be beginning this in the high school this year.

Lisa Damour
Well, and that’s so interesting, because we already have between our two states, or at least two schools, are two very different ways of doing this right, doing a phone ban. So the way my kids school did it was with the pouches that are being described in this letter, where you put the phone in the pouch in the morning and you do not touch your phone, in theory, until the end of the day, when your pouch is unlocked again. Now some kids, I won’t name any names… I might even be related to some of these kids, my own self… don’t lock the pouch, but keep the phone in the pouch all day. So in the spirit of the law, they’re still following it in terms of like they’re not actually engaging with their phone. But some kids, who I may actually be genetically connected to, didn’t feel like having to wait to have their pouch unlocked at the end of the day. And so there’s all of these ways that kids are navigating it, but it’s an interesting question.

Lisa Damour
I think you’re finding, and I’m not surprised that even though your kid could interact with the phone during the day, the focus during the classroom was better. I will tell you, with this sort of bell-to-bell ban, which is what’s happening in a lot of states… When I went to back to school days last fall, when they had just put the bell-to-bell ban in for the first time, I was at the back to school evening, and I was sitting in the classroom, and finally we got to where there were no other questions. And I was like, “So this phone situation, I’m hearing nothing. Is it a nothing burger?” And the teacher was like, “It’s a total nothing burger. It is a total nothing burger. The kids have adapted quickly. It’s no big deal, and it’s made life a lot better.” So there’s ways this plays out. And I think part of what where families sit right now is: kids who haven’t lived it, haven’t lived it. And I think once kids start to live it, my experience, and hearing from lots of people is it’s actually pretty workable, if not actually preferred by the kids.

Reena Ninan
So you’re hearing that the kids aren’t really mad about this, because it sounds like, I’m curious in the high school where, you know, for three years, some of these kids have been able to have their phones in the class and all class, and all of a sudden to pull it away, you’re hearing they adapt pretty quickly? And it’s not a huge point of contention?

Lisa Damour
It’s not a huge point of contention. The thing that kids really care about is if it’s universal. That what bugs kids is if there are some kids who still are using their phones. That’s what actually chafes teenagers. And so this is a complicated one, and schools have to figure this out. But if you really want kids to be more agreeable to this, the more universal it can be, the better

Reena Ninan
So that’s the key: policy that everybody has to comply with, so then everybody falls into line. Tell me about this idea that this girl writes in the letter of being forced to socialize with her peers when she wants to take a break. By the way, in middle school, I would have loved to have a break from some of those people too.

Lisa Damour
I know right. Like, you can totally see the kids point of, “Are you kidding? If I could just have five minutes with my cat videos, as opposed to dealing with all these people who happen to be my classmates, it will help me get through the day.” That is a completely understandable position. The good news, and not every kid’s gonna love hearing this, is you can say, “That’s fine, then grab a book or go take a walk around the perimeter of the recess with a friend, or on your own. Just say, ‘I need a little time out.’” That phones don’t have to be the only way that kids get some relief.

Lisa Damour
When I think about it as a psychologist, part of what I really like about kids not having phones during the school day is that it helps them build coping muscles. If you’re always going to your phone to cope, which we all do, right? Not just kids, we all do. So if you’re like, ‘That kid is really annoying me, I’m gonna get lost on my phone for a few minutes.” Okay, well, that’s one form of coping. But we actually want kids to have more than that. And so a whole school day, and much less coping with like, a whole day of seventh grade, right? If you’re doing that without your phone all day, your coping muscles are going to get nice and strong like we want them. And so even the stuff that bugs kids, I’m okay with the fact that they’re going to have to come up with new coping, because one of our worries is that there’s not enough diversity in how kids cope.

Reena Ninan
Oh, that is so good, and something I’d never thought of. So the coping skills. If I if I were to tell them, “Go read a book or walk around the perimeter,” they would laugh me out. They just would not follow. “No way, not gonna happen.” But what are other ways that people cope, I guess before the era of cell phones, that we might be able to tell our kids, “This is another way to build resilience?”

Lisa Damour
So what did we do? I can’t even remember.

Reena Ninan
I can’t even remember.

Lisa Damour
I can’t remember, and, and so maybe part of it is building tolerance. Maybe, because we had no other option, we built the muscle of tolerating annoying people better without turning to our phone to get a break. And it’s not even annoying people, it’s just lots of people.

Reena Ninan
Totally. I had never thought of this, you called it “bell-to-bell ban.” Is it better to allow kids to have that in between classes, to check their phone? Do you think that’s better than the bell-to-bell ban? Do you have a position on this?

Lisa Damour
I actually do, and it may not be popular. And I will say, I always try to play my cards face up about where my opinions are coming from. My husband’s a high school teacher. And what I have learned from him is that even when kids don’t have access to their phones during class, his experience is, if they know they’re going to get it right after class, that’s what they’re thinking about. It may improve to a degree their focus on what’s happening in the classroom, but if they’re basically looking at their watch waiting until they can get their phone back to do whatever it is they want to do, there’s still a part of them that’s not in the room. I sort of feel like, “Go big or go home” on this. I think there’s really value in saying, “You’re in this building, we’ve got the fullness of your attention for the time you’re here.”

Reena Ninan
And you think that has more value than what this girl says in the letter? “I have anxiety because I can’t reach my parent…” I know we all grew up in an era where you didn’t reach your parent all day and you were just fine. But I do feel like things are moving faster. “I’ve got an orthodontist appointment. Do I really have to go to practice today? Is Melinda going to pick me up from after school?” There’s a lot, right?

Lisa Damour
And we’re used to texting our kids, right? We’re used to being able to reach able to reach them. So one of the things I will say when I’ve seen schools roll this out well, they account for those realities. So they say to families, “Listen, we know that sometimes you need to reach your kid during the school day. Like, ‘I’m not picking you up,’ or ‘you suddenly have a doctor’s appointment,’ or whatever it is.” Schools, when they do this well, tell parents what the systems are for getting that information to their kid. And it’s the same way our families got that information to the kid: they call the front office, somebody brings a note from the front office. There’s some mechanism, like we’ve done this before. The other thing that when schools do this well, I don’t know if this happens in your district, it certainly happens in ours, they have leaned into the fact that so much of so many of us have access to phones all the time to change plans quickly. Like, “Oh, practice is now over here,” or “practice got canceled.” So schools can’t do that. Schools also, then, if they’re going to put in bans like this, need to get really careful about how often and how they change plans and then how they communicate that. So it does put a dent in convenience. There’s no question. And yet, Reena, having watched this unfold over a few years: Do the benefits outweigh the downsides of the loss of convenience? I think they do.

Lisa Damour
I’ll tell you, here’s a benefit that had never occurred to me, because where in my community, it’s mostly English as a first language community. But I have a colleague who is in the Bay Area, and his experience after they put in phone bans was that the kids who spoke English as a Second Language suddenly became much more integrated into the community, because either they were getting lost in their phones during breaks, or they were using their phones for translation and actually not becoming as fluent in English as they could.

Reena Ninan
Oh, that’s interesting.

Lisa Damour
As soon as they banned phones, suddenly kids who had been marginalized became much more central to the community. So when I say the benefits outweigh the consequences or the downsides, there’s benefits that had not even crossed my mind, that we need to also be weighing.

Reena Ninan
So am I hearing you say that you are really in favor of a bell-to-bell ban where students don’t have access because they’re not thinking about it. They’re forced to kind of socialize and go about your day. And let’s face it, eight hours without a cell phone we can all do, no?

Lisa Damour
I think we should. I think we should set that as a standard. Now, this letter also includes this girl’s worries about her anxiety.

Reena Ninan
Yes.

Lisa Damour
And one of the things that schools are doing when they do this well is they are accounting for kids who may have needs that require them to be in touch with adults or clinicians during the day. It can happen, and it does happen, that a kid is really struggling with a psychological disorder has a diagnosis, and as a function of that diagnosis, a clinician is in agreement that that child being able to reach out to the parent or a clinician during the day is essential to their success of the school day. That is workable.

Reena Ninan
That’s more an outlier, right?

Lisa Damour
It should be. And in my world, and of course I’m gonna always hold this to the higher standard, there should be a diagnosis. There should be a letter from the clinician. This should be something that is seen as part of the kid’s therapy or treatment right now, and hopefully something that they are working on or stepping down over time with psychotherapy. And schools do and need to make accommodations for that. As long as the kids who don’t have access to their phone understand that there is a whole system and parameters that have been put in place to let other kids access their phones when they need to, it can still work. It’s also true, for example, that kids who have diabetes may need access to their phones through the day. Their parents may need to be able to monitor them and contact them through the day. So there are exceptions that should be made, but that shouldn’t undermine a general policy that gives kids a break from how powerful these machines are, how alluring these algorithms are.

Reena Ninan
When parents are having this conversation with phone bans in schools now, what do we need to say to our kids? And what are the messages we need to get across that you think are important?

Lisa Damour
So I think it’s actually really, really important that we try to do this in partnership with kids. And I think it’s hard because it doesn’t feel like a partnership. They don’t want this. They didn’t ask for it. But my take on it is, it’s much better if you frame this to kids, not as “Look, it’s the adults, and we’re trying to stand between you and your phones, because you guys are so addicted to your phones.” I think it’s much better if the framing is along the lines of, “Listen, these algorithms are wildly powerful. They are so much more powerful than anything we’ve seen in this vein. They have so much data on all of us. They are designed to put in front of us things that we can hardly resist. It’s not a fair fight. It’s like all the Silicon Valley versus you, my sweet child, and nothing a school puts in front of you, no matter how phenomenal your school is, no how, matter how fantastic your teachers are, is really ever likely to be as engaging as what an algorithm can put in front of you. And so this is unfair to send you into the building asking you to learn, asking you to pay attention to things. Learning can be hard. Learning can be boring. To ask you to do that, part of how we’re going to try to make it easier for you is to take this algorithm that is so magnetic out of the picture, so that you’re not having to fight it while trying to pay attention in school.” What do you think? Would a kid go for that?

Reena Ninan
I think usually when these things happen, it’s like Moses has come down with the stone tablets, and this is what’s been dictated, right? But I love what you’re saying is helping them to understand why they’re doing this, and how addicting the phone can be.

Reena Ninan
You know, we we go to Maine every summer, and it is two weeks out of the year where all of us really leave our phone behind because it’s Acadia National Park. We go hiking. They love that time together, and they notice it. They actually, this summer, said to me, “Wow, Mom, I feel such a difference not being on my phone.” They have noticed it and are aware of it. And I feel like when they get to that age, and they kind of get it a little bit… You know, it doesn’t mean that they stopped using their phones. They came right back to it when we were back in real life. It’s addictive. Raising that awareness is interesting, in how you put it.

Lisa Damour
I think that’s right. And I think having it be not, “Oh, it’s because you kids are so dumbly addicted to your phones. We have to do this…” Like, who wants to be treated that way? But instead to say, “Listen, this is bigger than all of us, but we’re not gonna let it mess up your learning. And it’s not fair to ask you to try to focus at school when this thing that is like so engaging is sitting in your pocket.”

Reena Ninan
I gotta say, Lisa, my mind wanders to the worst case scenario as a parent, not having access to my kid all day. I think school shootings. If something terrible were to happen and I get word, I want to reach my kid.

Lisa Damour
That is a concern that comes up a lot, that parents are really, really worried about. And I get it. I mean, that is really terrifying. All of us, if we imagine that moment, the idea of not having access to our kid is just horrible. Horrible. What I understand is that law enforcement will tell you, if you want your kids safe, a phone’s not going to be what it’s about.

Reena Ninan
What do you mean?

Lisa Damour
Their worry is that when kids are using their phones or lost on their phones in a threatening situation, that it is making noise, it is distracting the kid. That if you actually want a kid to be safe in that scenario, a phone isn’t going to be part of that picture. So it’s, of course, a horrible conversation even to be having. But I know on this piece, law enforcement has been really clear that in a worst case scenario, your kid having a phone in that moment is not a great thing.

Reena Ninan
And I guess I just think, generally, I am so used to being able… So many parents are so used to being able to text their kid throughout the day. And at some point we’ll hear from them. But what do you say to parents who are like, “It’s going to be an eight hour window where there’s no contact whatsoever,” and that can be an anxiety-ridden thing to think about.

Lisa Damour
It can be. What I would like to think is that there’s nothing that the parent needs during the day that needs to happen to interrupt the kid’s school day. Now, of course, it may be that the kid needs information, and hopefully the school can pass it along. Now, I still text my kid during the day. I just know she doesn’t get them. Because I think of the thing. I’m not going to remember the thing. My mind is a sieve. So I text her knowing full well that when she gets her phone back into her hands, she’s gonna see a bunch of texts from me. I think we can make it work.

Lisa Damour
But it’s funny, Reena, you just reminded me of something I’d totally forgotten about: Years ago, I cared for a kid who was texting her mom all day from school. Super anxious, texting her mom all day from school. And the mom, I actually wrote about this in “Under Pressure,” the mom had this brilliant idea: She gave her daughter a notebook and said, “Write down everything you want to text me during the day. I’m interested. I care, but don’t text me during the school day unless you can help it.” What happened in that situation is that by the time the kid got home, she’s like, “Yeah, no, you don’t really need to know all this.

Reena Ninan
Ah, interesting.

Lisa Damour
So it was such an interesting thing. So I think families are getting a lot of pushback from their kid of like, “But what if I’m anxious and need to tell you something!” Be like, “Check it out: pen and paper. We can do it this way.” And that’s a nice in between of like, “It’s not that I don’t care, I don’t want to know. And you don’t have to hold it all day. But we don’t need to be in contact while you’re supposed to be doing math.”

Reena Ninan
Overall, I got to say, the research does show this is a great move for schools all across the country. I am really thrilled we’re doing it in our district. I really believe it’s there’s a big difference.

Lisa Damour
I think it’s a really, really good direction for things to go.

Reena Ninan
You know who else would love a bell-to-bell ban is my husband, who I text eight hours throughout the day, where 98% are to-do lists. So if that can be implemented at work, boy, would he love it.

Lisa Damour
Well, maybe he should go back to school. Maybe that’s the answer.

Reena Ninan
Send him back to school so he doesn’t have to communicate with his wife, who has lots of to-do lists. Well Lisa, thank you so much for helping us work through this. It is a massive policy all across the United States and in many schools internationally, as well. So I’m so glad that we could kick the year off talking about this and what parents and and students are thinking about.

Reena Ninan
So Lisa, what do you have for us for Parenting to Go?

Lisa Damour
Well, one thing that hasn’t come up, and I think we should talk about: Parents worry if kids have not had access to their phone all day, now they’re going to come home and they’re going to want to be on it nonstop, and now I have to regulate it more. That is probably not untrue. So this is something families are going to have to account for. And what I would say is you can take some comfort in the fact that your kid has been away from their phone all day, so their coping muscles have built. Their attention muscles have built. So a little mindless downtime on their phone is probably perfectly fine, and maybe better than it’s ever been, given that they’ve been away from their phone all day. But as kids launch into these new rules, if your kid is in a school that is establishing them, there’s probably a conversation to be had about revisiting how the phone gets used at home, where it gets used, how long kids are on it, what the parameters should be for screen time controls and time spent on screens. Make it a negotiation. If you can, recognize that kids do catch up with their friends there and will want time to do that. But go into this with eyes wide open and be ready to deal with it directly and be open to negotiating. Kids appreciate that.

Reena Ninan
Thank you so much, Lisa. I’ll see you next week.

Lisa Damour
I’ll see you next week.