To Ban or Not to Ban

Last school year saw a growing number of states implementing (or considering) bans on cell phones in schools, and Emma Willard was already deep in the conversation.

The hope of these bans was to alleviate mental health stressors and distractions in academic settings. The virality of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation contributed to much discourse on the nature of adolescents’ relationship with screens and social media. The general consensus from parents, teachers, legislators, and other adults seemed to be that too much screen time was the root of distraction during the academic day and the cause of difficulty with social interactions. Many local schools started using Yondr pouches for “bell-to-bell” phone bans and have anecdotally reported improvement among their students. 

A few months prior, starting in spring 2024 and working throughout the summer, the Resilience and Wellbeing: Technology group formed and began meeting to discuss how Emma Willard School might approach the role of technology in the school community. The group began by reading various books—some with more sound research than others—that detailed the problems associated with cell phones, attention, and how we exist in a rapidly changing digital space. They spent time articulating goals, primarily seeking to strike a balance between the evolving roles of personal devices, digital content, and social media, in order to foster meaningful and healthy connections. Comprising adults from various departments across campus, alongside students from the Wellies (red-tier student leaders focused on wellness), the group was especially in agreement that research and data would be integral to any guidance produced. 

A Problem, a Community, and a Tool

Many of the committee's conversations explored a twofold truth: although screens pose a problem for our students and adults, they also offer the opportunity to be a place of community and belonging, and therefore can be worthwhile tools in an academic setting.

“For us to put an outright ban, to say cell phones are bad, would come across as disingenuous to our students because they know as well as we do that phones are a part of our existence now and they’re not going anywhere,” says Director of Student & Community Life Emily Carton, a member of the Resilience and Technology Committee. “Instead, we’re going to work with students to set appropriate boundaries.”

The group closely examined what was happening on campus to determine the actual problem they were trying to solve. Generally, the difficulties of phone use on campus were concentrated in two areas: late-night scrolling and interrupting events.

• Students, resident faculty, and families reported many students having difficulty disconnecting at night, often mindlessly scrolling into the wee hours of the morning. The consequences were hitting them during the day, when students were exhausted during their waking hours.
• Many Morning Reports and assemblies were interrupted by phone use. This ranged from individuals being distracted from the presentation, taking videos or photos of presenters without their consent, to distractions caused by an incoming text or phone call. 

Interruptions during class weren’t as big an issue; classroom policies were mostly up to the teachers of each class, with various approaches, including the use of “phone hotels” or only allowing use of devices for class-related activities. 

The group also hoped to investigate the automatic association of downtime with screentime—the assumption that scrolling could be a rest for over-stimulated brains. 

“We want to do skill building that will provide them with the tools they need once they leave Emma to use these technologies with intention and purpose and with a goal of bettering themselves and their communities,” Emily continues.

Resetting Community Norms

No phones in Morning Reports, and look up when you’re walking!

The group recommended reinstating previous policies for phones on campus. In community events (Morning Reports, assemblies, Speaker Series), no phones were to be visible in the event space. An Emma adult could take any visible phone from a student, to be kept at Campus Safety until after school hours. During the first two or three Morning Reports events, several phones were confiscated, but students quickly adjusted to the policy. 

Less successful has been the reimplementation of reminding everyone, “Eyes up!” when walking around campus, to encourage others to pull over and finish their call, text, or calendar reminder; the community continues to work on reinforcing that norm. 

Good Night, Phone

Yielding access to phones at night has been a welcome change for some students.

Sleep is a more nebulous problem to solve, but the 2025–2026 school year has 9th-grade boarding students turning their phones into a charging box at 10:00 p.m. each evening. They still have access to their other devices, such as laptops and tablets. Feedback on this practice has been positive so far, with some red-tier student leaders (the Proctors) in upper grades asking if they can also turn in their phones at night. They can see the benefit.

“We’re not in a place where we want to mandate it for the older students unless they’re having consistent sleep issues, but we want students to take ownership over those decisions,” says Emily. Students also have the option of a digital alarm clock in their rooms, rather than relying on their phones for alarms and checking the time in the middle of the night. 

Educating with Research

Digital wellbeing is being embedded into the READY curriculum.

There are several points at which students learn about the research available on social media, screen time, and other topics related to these issues. Director of Library and Archives Caroline Buinicky works alongside the READY program, the Technology Department, and other academic departments to support lessons that give students the tools to recognize disinformation and misinformation and conduct their own research in the fraught online news space. 

The READY program has also launched units on social media in collaboration with the Communications Department, dedicating lesson time to how social media platforms work and how we might adapt to navigate the challenges they pose in high school and beyond. Students expressed interest in how social media targeting and algorithms work, their impact on study habits, and whether there is data on the relationship between screen time and exam scores. 

Practicing What You Preach

It’s important to recognize that digital wellbeing is not a “them problem”—it’s everyone’s problem, and opportunity.

Overwhelmingly, students are also concerned about adults in the community.  “Parents and teachers have just as much of a hard time disconnecting from their phones as we do,” one student said at the end of a READY course. “A lot of blaming happens, instead of self-reflection, from adults.”

As a move to continue involving the entire campus community in these initiatives, the first Tech Wellness Week  kicked off in January. Committee members developed a week of activities to raise awareness among students and adults about how and why they use screen technologies. The programming focused on a range of topics—investigating attention spans, reinvesting in boredom, the myth of productivity, social media habits, and sleep. Currently, the committee is working on a survey to determine how the programming was received, and if any of the tools, habits, or activities were useful to students and adults on campus.  

The committee continues to meet and prepare for more events in the 26-27 school year, keep updated on research pertaining to digital wellness, and help set goals for the Emma community! 

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This article was originally written by Associate Director of Content Marketing Kaitlin Resler for the Fall 2025/Winter 2026 edition of Signature magazine.
 

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Interested in learning more about how your student can pursue a balanced life at Emma Willard School? Contact Admissions or inquire today!