January 11, 2023 – As assistant principal at Pennsville Middle School in New Jersey, Adam J. Slusher knows he won’t all the time be the preferred student.
An assistant principal's responsibilities include scheduling, enforcing policies and discipline, so Slusher – who holds a doctorate in education from Wilmington University in Delaware – sometimes has to put in writing emails or make phone calls addressing uncomfortable topics or unpopular recent policies.
Or penalties.
But last July, there was a really different response after Slusher sent a message to the homes of Pennsville's 450 sixth- through eighth-grade students. The email blast announced a brand new cellphone policy for the varsity. As Slusher explained within the message – which also went to the varsity's 60 teachers and staff – starting in September, Pennsville students will probably be prohibited from using cell phones during school hours for any reason.
Phones, he stressed, “must be turned off” and stored in backpacks or handbags, not held within the hand or put within the back pocket.
The announcement of the brand new Away for a day The policy, adopted by Slusher and Pennsville Principal Carolyn Carels, drew different reactions than his announcements about, for instance, exam dates, emergency procedures or recent detention policies.
“It was one of the most popular emails I'“This is the very best book I've ever sent out,” laughed Slusher, who has been a teacher for 17 years. “We've gotten so many thanks notes from the teachers for it.”
The same goes for the staff who, in conversations with Slusher and Carels, reported rampant phone use in the cafeteria and hallways – confirming what both had seen.
“They told us, 'You need to do something in regards to the phones,'” Slusher recalls. “They were delighted that a transparent policy was now being put in place.”
The overwhelming majority of parents in Pennsville also supported the new policy, especially given the sobering evidence of the extent of phone use in this population. A study Slusher quotes in his email showed that the average middle school child spends between 6 and 9 hours a day in front of screens.
“It’s like a full-time job,” he says.
Children's intense cell phone use – in school, outside of school, anywhere, anytime – was one of the reasons internist and filmmaker Delaney Ruston, MD, created the Away for the Day initiative, which Pennsville has adopted.
She and her collaborator Lisa Tabb were motivated to make “Away for the Day” while working on Screenagertheir award-winning Movie from 2016 It examined the impact of social media, videos and screen time on teens and their families and offered tips for better navigating the digital world.
“During the three years of filming, I visited schools everywhere in the country,” Ruston says. “I ended up seeing devices all over the place, even in elementary schools. If I asked a student within the hallway, 'What's the policy?' they'd shrug and say, 'I don't know.' When I got the identical response from teachers – who in lots of cases needed to make their very own decisions, so that they needed to be the bad guys – I spotted there was an issue.”
The result was what Ruston and Tabb describe on their website as a “movement” aimed at giving parents, teachers and school administrators tools to create policies that keep cell phones out of school during the school day.
The age of social centrality
As a cursory glance into any high school or college classroom reveals, cell phone use is widespread among teens and young adults. But Ruston and Tabb decided to focus on middle schools.
“This is the age when schools face the best challenges,” says Ruston. “This can be the age when social centrality becomes a spotlight for youth, so the urge to be in social media games where their peers are is incredibly tempting.”
In fact, a recent study within the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that middle school students who compulsively checking social networks on their cell phones seem to cause changes in areas of the brain associated with reward and punishment.
It concluded that it was in secondary schools that “the most urgent need to take effective measures on mobile phones” was found.
As part of their research on the topic, she and Tabb conducted a survey of email contacts that Ruston had collected.'s company MyDoc Productions during the filming of the movie as well as subscribers to their blog. A total of 1,200 parents – each of whom had at least one child in middle school at the time – were interviewedThe researchers found an interesting discrepancy: 82% of parents surveyed did not want their children to use cell phones at school. Yet 55% of middle schools allowed students to carry cell phones during the school day.
This survey was conducted in 2017. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s mobile phone use has increased dramatically both at school and at home. A literature review of 46 studies published in JAMA Pediatrics in November found that average screen time among children and teens increased by 52% – or 84 minutes per day – during the pandemic.
This trend has led many schools, including Pennsville, to adopt an “Away for the Day” policy. As part of the program, Ruston's website provides ammunition against the kind of backlash they face. One of the most common is the notion that banning cellphone use among middle school students is a misguided, anti-technology measure.
“We are under no circumstances anti-technology,” says Ruston. Away for the Day, she explains, advocates the use of learning technologies in schools, monitored and supervised by teachers.
“The majority of scholars have access to learning devices at college,” she says. “These have various kinds of blockers that make it difficult to your child to reply to their friend on TikTok after they needs to be using technology to learn.”
Ruston estimates that about 10,000 middle schools are currently using various elements of the Away for the Day campaign, including videos, posters, fact sheets and other materials. Other schools have taken similar measures along the same lines.
Predictable and calm? Not so much
When Katherine Holden was appointed principal of Talent Middle School in Oregon last year, one of her first goals was to bring structure to the daily lives of students (and parents) exhausted after two years of distance learning, staggered schedules and mask mandates.
“Predictable and calm,” she says, laughing. “I exploit those words day-after-day.”
Achieving both is difficult enough in a middle school without a pandemic—not to mention an epidemic of cell phone use. (Talent was also hit by a major fire in 2020 that left many families homeless.)
This school year, Holden is implementing a new and clearly stated policy: “Devices are put away from the primary bell to the last,” she says. “We want them to deal with other things. We want them to socialize, interact face-to-face with their peers, take into consideration how they get to class. We want them to make eye contact, ask questions. Learn methods to make friends face-to-face. Those are essential social skills they need to practice.”
Instead of scrolling through photos on Instagram, watching trending videos on TikTok, or texting their friends.
Like Slusher, she announced the new cell phone policy last summer in a letter to parents that was sent along with a list of school supplies their children would need.
“Students may use their cell phones and private devices before entering the constructing before 8:30 a.m. and after leaving the varsity constructing at 3:10 p.m.,” she wrote. “However, through the school day, students mayCell phones and private devices have to be turned off and out of sight.” “I feel parents generally understand the necessity for this,” says Holden. “They'They've seen their children distracted by these devices at home, so that they know the way a cellphone makes learning difficult. And parents are aware of the unfriendly behavior that usually occurs online.”
And what about the kids themselves? It's safe to say that the excitement Slusher's email generated among Pennsville's teachers, staff, and parents didn't rub off on the students.
“She'To be honest, I don’t prefer it in any respect,” he says. “But they understand's to their profit. When we sold it to them at our meeting earlier this yr, we explained our reasons. Of the children I confer with, I feel the bulk understand why we do it.”