The Monongalia County Board of Education enacts a phone-free policy.
Recognizing the distraction that smartphones and social media represent for students, a Monongalia County Schools policy for the 2024–25 school year requires students to lock their phones away during the school day. Although the policy has some mixed reviews and it is still early to tell, one school implemented a smartphone-free policy a year earlier, and it’s clear that students are benefiting.
The Monongalia County Board of Education enacted the policy during its August 13 meeting in response to years of concerns at every level, from classroom to national, that smartphones and social media are contributing to a decline in student engagement and achievement and a rise in anxiety among young people—all of which has made for an increasingly difficult classroom environment.
“I appreciate that Mon County Schools is handling the phone issues in schools,” says Jennifer Secreto, a longtime English teacher at Morgantown High School. “Cell phones are not needed during school. They cause distractions and contribute to unnecessary drama. Enough research has been done to support this.”
There’s been so much research, in fact, that, in May 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on social media and youth mental health. “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content to bullying and harassment,” he said. “And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address.”
It’s also true that parents feel anxious, in this era of school violence, about losing their all-day lines of communication with their kids—but cell phones in schools don’t solve that problem.
“I’m torn with the issue, because our children don’t need distractions during class but do need a lifeline for parents during these troubled times of school shootings,” says Rachel Harouff, whose child is a student in Mon County. But asked what she believes she could do during an emergency if her child did have a phone at school, she responded with resignation: “Nothing. That’s my anxiety.”
The policy came after Suncrest Middle School experimented with a smartphone-free school environment during the 2023–24 school year. “I was spending so much of my time handling bullying and other interpersonal problems among students, all phone-related,” explains Principal Dawna Hicks, who says she was losing sleep over it. She started working collaboratively with parents during the 2022–23 school year with the intention of eventually installing homeroom lockboxes.
“When parents asked ‘What about school shootings?’ I explained that the lockboxes can be removed from the wall and that phones would be returned to students when the classes were reunified in the schoolyard.” And when parents asked how they would be able to coordinate transportation or communicate about mental health or other needs during the day, her response was simply, “Call the office.”
When the lockboxes were installed in August of 2023, Hicks says, the parents’ concerns had been answered, and everything went smoothly. And when she detailed her 2023–24 experience to the Board of Education during its May 2024 meeting, she reported that she had seen an 85% decrease in phone-related discipline.
The Board now had evidence: Suncrest Middle was seeing more engagement and fewer disruptive behaviors. This, combined with the surgeon general’s statement a year earlier regarding the connection between cell phone usage and the high risk of harm to our children’s mental health, led the Board to adopt the smartphone-free policy at its August 13 meeting.
At the beginning of this school year, Mon County students in grades 6–12 were issued Yondr pouches. The pouches fit the various sizes of phones and are made of magnetically sealed fabric, mostly neoprene. Upon entering school in the morning, students place their phones in the pouches and, when the magnetic seals are closed, they lock. Students unlock their pouches at the end of the school day at unlocking bases in the hallways, and they are responsible for carrying the pouches to and from school every day.
The results so far? Based on our conversations with the sources quoted in this story and with others, many parents and teachers are seeing encouraging results. The temptation for distraction, at least by phones, has been removed, and this is bound to have positive effects, most say. Others say it’s still too early to tell. Hicks, now in her school’s second phone-free year, is heartened. “Students are learning how to build age-appropriate, meaningful relationships and conflict resolution skills. They are encouraged to have civil conversations with one another, which helps to build more trusting relationships. And teachers are thankful to be seeing increased engagement during class.”
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