This July, Governor Tina Kotek signed a new order banning the use of phones by students during the school day for all K-12 public schools all over Oregon. This has been reinforced by the implementation of YONDR pouches throughout the state’s public school system. For those unfamiliar with YONDR pouches, they are a pouch designed for your phone to be kept in for the entire school day and unlocked when school gets out. These phone bans, intended to decrease phone use, would, in theory, promote students’ focus on their education and reduce school distractions.
Students’ voices on the matter aren’t frequently represented much, however. Catch Me Up to Date Media received the chance to talk with two Oregon students about how they deal with the phone ban and their opinion on having to use YONDR pouches. One student said, “I don’t deal with the phone ban very well, I prefer to be able to have my phone because at the end of the day I’m responsible for if I graduate or not.” She also said, “I hate YONDR pouches with a burning passion because if there’s an emergency, I’ll have no way to contact my family, and it’s not the school’s responsibility to withhold [my phone] from me.” Another student said, “I truly believe that the phone ban and the YONDR pouches are stupid because most of us will use another device to do the same thing, which doesn’t fix the problem the school was attempting to address.” With the phone bans’ unwavering unpopularity among students and many students not seeing much of a difference in their accessibility to technology, the entire phone ban is truly called into question. The actual efficacy of the YONDR pouches themselves, as well as the phone ban in public schools, is entirely questionable. This all begs the question: are these pouches and phone bans effective?
Many students have expressed opinions on disdain for the phone bans and for the YONDR pouches themselves. As previously mentioned by one of our interviewees, the lack of phones does not necessarily imply a lack of technology, as students still have access to laptops and tablets, both of which have social media, video games, or other distracting material that is still accessible. This thus means that the issue of distractions isn’t fully resolved, since students can still engage with the material deemed to be so detrimental to their education. Even more, many students, and even parents, fear that children not having access to their phones can prevent communication between parent and child during emergencies. However, educators have expressed that they need a solution to deal with the distractions plaguing their classrooms, and their concerns undoubtedly have significant merit. So what could be the real solution that can encompass and solve all underlying issues with technology in schools, and the problems that come forth from said technology? It seems no catch-all solution has come to light yet, but it is with hope that we may find one soon for the future of Oregon’s students, for educators, for parents, and for America in its totality.
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