New York's cell phone ban in schools is actually working
When I was in high school, my English teacher, Mr. Kaplow, started what he called a “casual dating club.” (Don’t laugh or report him — it was the 1990s!)
This wasn’t about hookups or anything messy. It was before cellphones, apps and swiping. (I don’t think we even had pagers yet.) Just kids sitting across from each other, practicing the lost art of conversation with someone possibly not in their friend group.
Awkward? Sure. Could a teacher get away with such a thing now? Absolutely not. But honestly, it was kind of brilliant. He saw that we were losing something — just the basic ability to talk, to connect. We were losing walks to get ice cream or burgers at the local diner. We were looking someone in the eye and actually listening.
Fast forward a couple decades to my own classroom in New York City, pre-cellphone ban. I would have 34 students before me, many with earbuds jammed in and faces glowing blue from their screens. Half my energy went into telling them to put TikTok away when the class started.
Even so, when the city announced the cellphone ban this fall, I rolled my eyes. Here it was, another top-down rule from people who haven’t been inside a classroom in forever — and also another moral panic about phones. And I’ll be real: I am chronically online myself. Who was I to judge? Maybe kids should figure out how to coexist with their phones.
But here’s the plot twist: I was wrong. The ban is actually working.
Now the hallways buzz a lot more again. More students stop by my desk to chat — about history and their grades, sure, but also about their weekends, their lives. Students have not even complained much about the absence of their phones throughout the day. Instead, it feels like oxygen got pumped back into the building. And only now do we realize how flat things had become.
In staff meetings, we keep saying: “How did we not do this sooner?”
In “The Anxious Generation,” psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses the phrase the “great rewiring of childhood,” to describe how widespread smartphone and social media use have altered the structure of childhood in recent years.
Whether you agree with him or not, the phrase nails what I see: scattered attention from "multitasking," exhaustion from late night scrolling and kids losing out on the essentials of face-to-face connection. He’s been pushing for phone-free schools. And honestly? I get it now.
But here’s the real point: It’s not just about test scores (though those might go up). It’s about something way simpler — the ability to sit next to another human and talk, to crack a dumb joke and get a laugh (or not). It is the ability to stumble through a story, with others interrupting you with their stories along the way, and to feel part of a group.
That’s what Mr. Kaplow was really teaching us with his casual dating experiment — not dating but basic humanity.
And that’s what schools are hopefully climbing back toward now. You can’t build community through Meta-curated feeds. You can’t learn empathy from a TikTok algorithm. Democracy doesn’t happen in comment sections. These assets are built up in classrooms, cafeterias, and hallways, where kids are forced to figure out the messy business of navigating shared spaces together. To be honest, adults like myself would do better with a cellphone ban for parts of the day, too.
Is the ban a cure-all? Of course not. The moment the school day ends, phones are back in their hands. But for six or seven hours a day, they get a break — a chance to experience life in a way that is a bit more real, awkward, messy, loud, and human.
For me, that is enough. Because for the first time in a long time, the classroom feels like a classroom again.
Welcome back to the real world, kids. We missed you.
Sari Beth Rosenberg is a veteran New York City public school high school history teacher and writer. She is the co-founder of Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence, co-creator of the AI Educator Brain and former host of the PBS NewsHour Classroom Educator Voice Series.