Assistant Principal Raymond Dolphin knew he was taking a risk in December 2021 when he banned cell phones from Illing Middle School in Connecticut. But more than two years later, the program has become an unqualified success.

Secondary schools all over the U.S. are either enacting or considering some kind of cell phone ban, in part because of stories like Dolphin’s. Dan Connolly, one of the science teachers at Illing, used to have to nag students to put away their phones. “Now the first thing I say is, ‘Good morning,’ not ‘Take your Air Pods out.’”

Following the lead of not only schools but concert halls and comedy clubs, students at Illing are not required to surrender their phones, but place them in a special branded pouch called a Yondr, which can only be unlocked at certain school monitored stations.

Students at Illing predictably resisted the ban at first, but some of them have come around to seeing its benefits. “You can focus more,” said Chioma Brown, who’s grown so accustomed to the ban that she occasionally forgets that her phone is on her person.

Bans on cellphones have become much more commonplace in part because the relationship between students and their phones intensified during the pandemic years of persistent remote learning. According to Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan Linn, drastic actions like these must be taken to restore order and cultivate healthy learning environments. She said, “We have these devices which we know are at best habit-forming and at worst addictive that are increasingly linked to depression and loneliness. So why would we have them in schools?”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Living a life of holiness and devotion to God sometimes requires us to put restrictions on the things that distract us, not because such things are evil, but because they get in the way of hearing from God.