Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - It's not much of a debate. Cell phones are one of the biggest distractors for kids in school.
But what is occupying their time more on the cell phone? Is it texting friends and posting on social media or responding to their concerned parent who needs to know how their child is doing?
Especially following the pandemic, where students grew accustomed to remote learning and staying at home, school administrators, teachers and faculty across the nation have noticed increased instances of parents and children having non-emergency conversations via cell phone, taking away from their time in the classroom.
"In the high school, there's a lot of texting and back and forth with parents," notes Larry Scott, a school psychologist in the Kenmore-Tonawanda School District. "If something comes up, they're going in the bathroom and calling their parents and then the parents are calling the school. So it is, I would say almost a daily occurrence that somebody in one of our high schools is reaching out to their parent."
Niagara Falls City Schools Superintendent Mark Laurrie notes that the amounts of reports he is hearing of students getting caught texting in class with their parents are about as many reports as students getting caught texting friends or are going on social media.
"It's both parent-to-student communication and student-to-student conversation about things that really have no urgency," says Laurrie. "Some of [the parent conversations] are legitimate, 'I'm going to stay after school, I'm gonna go to this club.' But there are other vehicles a student could use to communicate that home and that's simply by asking, at an appropriate time, may I use an office phone to call."
Scott notes that parents sending a barrage of questions via text message to a student could be very anxiety-inducing for the child.
"I agree with some of the experts out there are that parents that feel the need to contact their children during the school day are not only causing a distraction, but also potentially creating and worsening any type of anxiety from some of the daily challenges that students face and it is negatively impacting their ability to cope on their own to learn and adjust to challenges in a school environment and along with social challenges that they face."
As a parent, Scott says both of his young sons have cell phones, but those are to be used outside of learning hours.
"My older son brings it with him to school, but it is expected that it is turned off, it's kept in his locker. And it's only used to access communication with him after the school day is over. And we would never expect him to be using that cell phone during the school day. And we would expect that the phone would be taken away if in fact it was."
Scott and Laurrie agree that schools would be better off cell-phone free in some capacity.
"I would love it if we didn't have cell phones that were used for that kind of communication. I think it's even more important that if there is an emergency or family emergency, there could be resources in the school that could help mitigate the emergency, explain to the student why their parent might be coming to get them or why their parent needs them home early. That's what we're trained to do. And when you cut off that school environment, you're cutting off the possible use of a resource that could aid and support a student," said Laurrie.
"Cell phones should be significantly limited and banned throughout the school day for a variety of reasons," said Scott. "And if parents need to reach their children, they should call the school directly. That is my professional and personal opinion as a parent."