FAIRFIELD: Connecticut Attorney General William Tong held his two phones in the air and gingerly laid them on the ground.
“How does that make you feel?” he asked the group of high school students who sat before him.
“I’ll tell you how it makes me feel,” he said. “A little anxious, right? I was feeling them in my pocket before I took them out, and now that I put them under my chair, I’m now very conscious that they’re there. And I’m wondering what’s happening on my devices.”
“Does this feel familiar?”
Tong was visiting Fairfield Warde High School Thursday to discuss the harms of social media on students’ mental health – part of a burgeoning issue school districts like Fairfield are wrestling with how to handle. He sat in a semi-circle with roughly two dozen Civics and Law students and Fairfield’s delegation of state lawmakers to hear from students about the issue and explain his own pushback against technology companies in response.
As Tong and other attorneys general pursue a lawsuit against Meta for allegedly trying to addict children and teenagers to its platforms, concerns about the devices’ social and cognitive effects has placed pressure on Fairfield Public Schools to create a technology policy regulating digital devices. Some parents have started demanding Fairfield’s school board ban cellphones throughout the school day, like other district have done, and limit students’ access to Chromebooks, which they first receive in Grade 3
Research has documented the links between cell phones and mental health issues among children and adolescents, and a Pew Research Center report released this month states nearly half of teenagers in the US say they are online “constantly.” Fairfield has allowed students to hold onto their phones during the school day and use them for necessary academic work, leaving classroom restrictions up to teachers.
“My concern is that the current policies, which do exist, are really entrusting these preteens and teenagers are self managing devices that are like slot machines in their pockets,” Fairfield parent Deb Lauren Poole said before the town’s school board earlier this month.
Parents have started increasingly speaking up about the issue as Fairfield’s school board revamps its curriculum for the library and media department, which integrates technology throughout the school system. The updated curriculum includes AI and other emerging technologies and places a greater focus on media literacy, wellness and digital citizenship, or the responsible use of technology.
The public has yet to resist any particular component of the curriculum during recent school board meetings, but they’ve raised concern about students’ screen exposure in the classroom. Parents have mentioned “dummy phones” students keep in their pockets while scrolling on another device in their lap and elementary school students opting to play on their Chromebooks instead of with others during recess. Superintendent Michael Testani has said students need Chromebooks for state testing.
“Children are walking through the hall with their cellphones. Why is this allowed?” parent Nina Salzman asked the school board. “And also substitute teachers – don’t the teachers hand off some sort of program when the teacher’s absent? No, my daughter’s watching movies with her friend on the cell phone. So the teachers and myself, parents, everyone, we’re really looking to you to really set some boundaries and some policies.”
In August, the Connecticut State Board of Education recommended local school districts to set policy restricting cell phone access during the school day.
Fairfield’s Board of Education unanimously approved the updated curriculum for its middle and high schools, but Testani delayed its decision on the curriculum for kindergarten through the fifth grade due to possible revisions. He expects the district to refine its technology rules in some way but doesn’t see the brunt of the issue in Fairfield’s schools. He said the school day is just a sliver of the time students spend on their phone, which he said do the most damage at home.
Testani said phone use among students has translated to anxiety, depression and a lack of social skills in a world where social media posts and likes create a culture of comparison and self-doubt among peers. In a biannual survey last year, more than one in three Fairfield students in grades 7 through 12 said they were depressed, with the highest rates among Hispanic and female respondents.
“I’m happy to take the phones away in the morning and give them back at the end of school day,” Testani said. “But I need a commitment from parents to take it (from) kids an hour before bed and don’t give it back until they’re getting out of the car maybe to go to school or a little bit before so they can get their little fix. But if they’re not willing to make that commitment, then we’re just taking a little sand from the beach.”
Students in the room with Tong Thursday acknowledged their phones’ addictive nature and the unique challenge their generation has faced in growing up surrounded by the devices. One likened the phone to an “infinite source of dopamine.” Another said using it has become a “psychological muscle memory.”
“I feel like as soon as I get home I’m just scrolling on TikTok, Instagram, and I don’t think I realise how much time I do spend on it because it can be like you’re just sitting at home for hours and just burning through time,” senior Ainsley Dahlstrom said to Tong at Fairfield Warde. “And you don’t even realise, and you’re not getting things done. You’re actually just rotting.”
But phone addiction isn’t keeping the school district from strengthening its education about technology that continues to advance.
“Cat’s been let out of the bag,” Testani said to the Board of Education. “We’re not going back to 1985. I mean, as much as people have nostalgia about when they were in school, this is a curriculum that’s moving forward and having to teach kids to operate within a world not just today, but 10 years from now. Like it or not, the world is changing.”
-Connecticut Post, Bridgeport/Tribune News Service
-TheStar