Hillary Wilkinson (00:01):

In the fall of 2023 Common Sense Media published a news release reporting that some teens get as many as 237 or more notifications each day on their smartphones. So the reports findings are based on smartphone use of around 200, 11 to 17 year olds who let their data be collected via software. The interesting thing to note is that of those 237 notifications, about one fourth of them are coming through during school hours!  And this is where my guests today come in. They are called the Phone Free Schools Movement, and they are ready to take back the hours of education. The Phone Free Schools Movement is a collaborative effort by parents, educators, administrators, students, and community members. With the three co-founders, Kim Whitman, Mileva Rapesky, and Sabina Pollack. Pollack.

Hillary Wilkinson (04:17):

I believe deeply in the power of moms, there is no, I think there is no greater power than the love we have for our children. I mean, it's the stuff of fairytales and Harry Potter. It's the thing that has blazed the pathway for outlying drunk driving, leading to social change in many communities. And it does not surprise me at all that the three co-founders of the Phone Free Schools move that the phone, that the three co-founders of the Phone Free Schools movement are moms. So, talk to me about this. What is the background on you guys? What's the origin story of phone Free schools?

Kim Whitman (15:57):

So the three of us met through Fairplay screen Time Action Network. All three of us are members of the Screens and Schools work group. And we are also very passionate about the distractions and harms that phones and social media have on the school day. So we have spent the last year, more than a year really researching the impacts of phones in schools and speaking with school administrators and connecting with experts, um, experts in the field, as well as other nonprofits in this space. Um, we then started a social media pages in the fall, Facebook and Instagram page and followed up with a website. And we just recently received our 5 0 1 C3 status. So we are officially a nonprofit.

Hillary Wilkinson (16:46):

That's exciting. And you have a, you have a very impressive advisory board as well.

Kim Whitman (16:52):

We do. We're very happy with all the experts on our board. Start starting with Jonathan Haidt, who wrote The Case for Phone Free Schools.

Hillary Wilkinson:

I think that stories are really powerful. And knowing Kim, that many of my listeners are moms like us, I am gonna ask you to share a little bit about your own experience. 

Kim Whitman (05:02):

Well, I'm Kim Whitman, and I have two teenagers. I actually started my advocacy in 2018, really, um, focusing on healthy boundaries around ed tech in my children's school district. So through that advocacy, I've done a lot of research, which helped me be more prepared when they hit the age at such a young age where lots of their friends were getting smart smartphones and we delayed as long as possible.

Hillary Wilkinson (06:35):

So clearly there are issues with keeping these compelling devices of distraction in student pockets. And that being said, you guys are the experts. Can you tell me what's wrong with having phones at schools?

Sabina Polak (06:54):

I'm Sabina, um, and, um, you know, it's, it's hard to, um, put in a few words what is what's really going on, uh, in our schools because there's so much, I think there's a lot of focus that's been put on the cyber bullying that's happened. Um, we're seeing that nearly half of teens are experiencing cyber bullying at school, um, and it's really affecting their mental health during the school day. Um, and also administrators are spending disproportionate amount of time handling this type of drama that's playing out over phones and social media. Um, but aside from that, we don't, we often don't talk about the detriment to learning that we're experiencing now. schools are have been a place where traditionally children learn the skills such as focus and learning to study and developing longer attention spans and comprehension skills.

Sabina Polak (08:00):

Um, and this really isn't happening in schools anymore, especially the ones that are allowing the misuse of cell phones. Study after study is revealing that students that don't use phones during class time are writing down more notes, taking more detailed notes, um, re-calling more information, um, and just doing almost a full letter grade better academically. Um, and these studies, interestingly enough, are also revealing that the students in those classrooms that aren't on phones but are in the same classrooms as children using phones, they're also experiencing the same negative effects and distractions. So it's almost like this secondhand smoke, uh, effect that we're experiencing now. Um, I also also thought it was interesting talking to some teachers that, um, they say that, you know, a classroom is really, um, usually this give and take experience, um, and it's just really hard for them to teach when they don't have that, you know, eye contact anymore and kids are staring down at phones and it's, you know, it's also affecting the way that they're teaching.

Sabina Polak (09:21):

and then, you know, kids are using phones to cheat, um, and there's a lot more, uh, pornography and inappropriate materials that children are accessing during the school day, even if they don't have a phone, they're being exposed to these types of things. Um, and then, you know, another thing that we really don't talk about enough, I think is the social emotional loss that we're experiencing during the school day. I mean, these were traditionally these like micro-communities where kids learned these important skills that they were going to need to become healthy and functioning adults. Um, and, and were really losing that experience which is, which is just a huge, a huge problem, um, happening in our loss of experience. Um, it was oftentimes the first, um, experience of independence that kids had away from their parents. Um, and now we're, they're just tethered to them even during the school day, um, and not getting a taste of that ex independence. Um, and they're just, they're also missing a lot of school. Um, parents are, there's a, there's a, you know, an extraordinary amount of school app absences that schools are reporting now. Uh, and this is coming from parents just texting their children outta schools outta school during the day.

Hillary Wilkinson (10:59):

As a former educator, I can speak clearly to - you spend so much time getting trained in building classroom community, and when you have this kind of digital wall up around individuals in your community, it's very hard to pierce that veil. So, um, Sabina, you were featured in a CNN article about phone use in teens. Can you tell us about your family's experience?

Sabina Polak (11:53):

Uh, yeah. So my journey started several years ago when my daughter was entering ninth grade. So it was her first year in high school. Um, and we got a call out of nowhere from the counselor's office, uh, saying that she was suicidal and we needed to come pick her up. Um, and so I got to experience firsthand the damaging effects of social media. And I kind of, um, you know, my eyes were really opened to what kids were experiencing online, and I was pretty horrified. And I made it my mission to begin, um, advocating around this and wanting other children to, to not have to experience what my daughter did, um, and to make parents aware. I realized pretty quickly that, um, this wasn't gonna be a problem that we could solve as individuals, that it was really this collective action, um, problem that we were experiencing and it was going to take something much bigger than just each individual person making changes to really solve this problem. And that's what led me to, um, the understanding that we really needed schools to be the leaders in this.

Hillary Wilkinson (13:13):

Mm mm When we come back, I'll be asking the crew from Phone Free Schools movement a bit more about actionable tips and resources surrounding safety, smartphones, and school. 

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Hillary Wilkinson (17:00):

I'm speaking with the three co-founders of the Phone-Free Schools Movement. The mission of the movement is to provide youth the freedom to excel academically and develop socially without the distractions, pressures, and harms of phones and social media during the school day. So much of what we see in the news surrounding school safety is fear inciting. And in the United States, our kids have grown up practicing lockdown drills. And a lockdown for those of you outside the US occurs as a precautionary measure in response to a threat directly to the school or in the surrounding community.

However, I can tell you as a parent who has received notification of a lockdown going on at my child's school, there is a one thought that's running through your head and that's active shooter. And many, many parents use exactly this circumstance to define why they want their child to have a phone on them. So I am interested to know how do you address these concerns of safety? Because many parents I talk to, they say they feel like they need to be able to access their child. So what do you recommend?

Mileva Repasky (18:42):

This is Mileva Repasky and as a mother of three kids, high schooler, middle schooler, and elementary school, I can say that I totally understand and feel this concern myself. Um, one of the main issues is we've all grown accustomed to and overly comfortable with the convenience that having a phone allows us, we can contact our children and remind them of events after school, what they want for dinner, to just check in with them on, on how they're doing throughout the day. Um, we really have become unnecessarily tethered to our children and the ease of communicating with them whenever we want. However, as parents, we really have to ask ourselves like, is that really what's best for our kids? If we reach out to 'em during the school day, we're interrupting their focus and their learning. We're contributing to the interruption of their education. And, um, our children are then trained to always be attentive to their phone in case that they need to see a message that's coming in from their parents.

Mileva Repasky (19:28):

This then creates a downward spiral of checking for all other notifications that have come across their phone throughout the day. Um, as you mentioned in the start of this Hillary, the Common Sense Media report outlined that students are receiving roughly 55 notifications on their phones during the school day by having 24/7 access. We could be preventing our children from growth opportunities, both educationally, socially, and developmentally that they really need if they're texting their parents every time they have a question about something that they aren't afforded the opportunity to think for themselves and even problem solve. Unfortunately, phones really have become a safety blanket for us. In reality, our kids aren't any safer just because we can contact them or know where they are at all times. And to address that specific concern around, you know, the active shooter drills that we're seeing and just the increase of, um, you know, violence in the schools.

Mileva Repasky (20:19):

Um, school security experts actually say that phones make children less safe in a crisis situation. Using phones in an emergency situation distracts children from following the, um, the directions that their teachers are giving them. The sound of a phone, whether it's ringing or vibrating from when we're trying to get in touch with them, could actually alert an assailant to where they're hiding. The shooter could be monitoring the event themselves on social media and find out exactly where other victims are, are hiding and be able to, to figure out where they are that way. And victims and worried family members trying to get through can actually jam communications interfering with first responders ability to assess the situation. So in reality, yes, as parents, we all wanna be able to connect with our kids, but we're actually doing a disservice to the safety that, um, we really need them to have.

Hillary Wilkinson (21:06):

Yeah, yeah. Very interesting points. So, Mileva, what brought you to kind of this digital wellness pond?

Mileva Repasky (21:18):

Um, so actually, like Sabina had shared, um, my son also experienced a severe mental health crisis. Um, and I, as we're, we were going through that with him, um, found Sabina through her CNN article, um, and was not only devastated to learn that another parent was going through almost identical to what we were going through, but shocked that we were in the exact same town, in the exact same school district. Um, and so I had reached out to her. Um, we quickly became friends sharing just the common stories of both receiving that very scary phone call from our school counselors, letting us know that our our children were suicidal. Um, we recognized very quickly that, um, our school district needed help and we dove into advocate locally in our, in our school, um, quickly realizing that it wasn't just a local problem that, you know, it's, it's more of a national crisis going on. And so yes, we wanted to proactively take action to help our own children, but we really wanted to fix this problem, um, on a national level, which brought us to Screens In Schools. And then, um, in the long run connected us with Kim, which really got us on this path for the phone Free Schools movement.

Hillary Wilkinson (22:22):

Nice, nice. I, uh, I'm, I'm sorry for the circumstances that brought you together, but I'm awfully glad you found one another. <laugh>,

Mileva Repasky (22:31):

We are too.

Hillary Wilkinson (22:32):

<laugh>. So it seems like when I talk to educators and when I talk to administrators, there are many schools that seem to have given up. Like teachers are kind of adopting an apathy towards phone usage. Cause they don't wanna constantly battle students or parents. And some teachers think that, uh, phones are a tool that kids need to learn how to use in moderation. Um, but how do you suggest, I mean, if I'm running up against that and I am, you know, I've got the backing of the healthy screen habits, you know, crew behind me, I can go in saying, well, I've been in this blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, how do you suggest parents talk to administration or their child's school about implementing a phone-free school policy?

Kim Whitman (23:28):

This is Kim. And I just wanna say how much respect I have for teachers. I couldn't do what they do and I applaud them and I am grateful for them and they need administrative backup. They can't battle this and police phones on their own. That's why we advocate for school-wide or even district-wide phone policies, all day phone policies. It just doesn't work to leave it up to the individual teachers. Some do phone pockets and I, I applaud them for that, but they still have to police because there's other teachers out there that don't. And students are always, um, pushing the boundary, right? Testing what they can get away with. So if, if a parent would like, um, their school to go phone free, we suggest setting up a meeting with the principal. And there's a few steps that they can take, um, in that conversation.

Kim Whitman (24:26):

And the first one we recommend is to share your common ground, acknowledge that, um, both you as the parent and the principal care about kids and want the best for them. So start out on that positive footing. The second would be to share your concern regarding youth having access to phones during the school day. And as we know there's a plethora of concerns, whether it be academic or social or um, discipline related, cyber bullying and so forth. There's also a lot of, um, unfortunate video taking and that being posted to social media. I know that's a concern for a lot of students and even teachers. So the third step would be to supply research as well as a list of benefits that phone- free schools have experienced. The research that we recommend is the case for foam free schools article by prominent social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who is also on our advisory board.

Kim Whitman (25:31):

It's, um, one article, but it has links to all the research needed. And then the benefits. There are many, many benefits, but you can focus on the improved focus, attention and comprehension, which all lead to higher grades once phones are removed from the school day. Another is, um, students are more engaged in the classroom with their teachers as well as engaged with their peers outside the classroom. We heard from one principal that even activities after school were more popular once they had a phone free policy in place because students were making friends, right? They were talking, talking to each other during lunch and therefore participating in other activities as well. As we've mentioned, another benefit, um, is when teachers do not have to police phones, when it's a building wide policy, they actually report being ahead of schedule on their lesson plans. Students are getting more done because they're focused.

Kim Whitman (26:35):

Teachers aren't having to repeat themselves over and over because kids are distracted. And another benefit I wanna mention is less cyber bullying, fewer fights, and therefore a decrease in drama, which equates to fewer disciplinary referrals, which administrators I know, um, have to deal with, um, on a daily basis. So that lightens their load as well. And I also wanna point out that the administrators we've talked to that have all day phone policies in place have not mentioned a single negative to having that in place. They've only, the entire community really benefits students, teachers, administrators are all experiencing those benefits and they've stressed how parents are thankful and grateful that they put the policy in place so they hear more positive feedback from parents than negative. And then the last step we suggest is to contact the phone free schools movement. We are putting together a, uh, toolkit for administrators on how to implement a successful bell to bell phone free school policy. It will include communication to all stakeholders along with the research surveys, uh, and actual policy, including consequences and more. And so we're working on that toolkit now and that will be on our website when it's finished.

Hillary Wilkinson (28:02):

Well, I love that. I love a toolkit and I also love that phrase, that bell to bell because so many parents when you're like, well I have to get, you know, when so many parents, when you say a phone free school, they kind of take that to mean that it's a phone free day. And they're like, well, I have to get my in touch with my child for practice or orthodontic appointments or anything along those lines. And it's like, I like that phrase bell to bell. It's like, no, and establishing appropriate boundaries around this and that, you know, the whole school situation is quite frankly, I don't understand why more parents aren't really angry about what's being taken from them. 'cause as you know, in the United States, public education, public education is paid for with tax dollars. And it makes sense that a public institution that is responsible for creating the next generation of educated working class would be supported by the public wanting to do the very best to support this type of learning. And I, I know from talking to you guys and from my own experience and hearing story after story from students, teachers, parents, that more time is being spent watching YouTube streaming entertainment platforms, playing games than actively participating in educational lessons. And I do not understand why people are okay with this, why the American public is okay with funding this.

Sabina Polak (29:46):

This is Sabina and I hoping I can respond to that as well because I do have a personal experience with this that I, I feel like a lot of parents just don't know what's happening, um, in the schools or it's the, you know, “not my child.” Um, I, I know that for us, um, it wasn't until we went to a parent teacher conference and actually asked the question after my daughter had been struggling with mental health issues around this. Um, and, and we flat out said, you know, “Is our daughter on her phone during class time?” And we went and asked every teacher and every teacher said, “yes, she is on nonstop.”  There's an assumption that if something like that is going on, um, you'll be notified. Um, and I know in my experience, I was not, um, uh, so she lost a good deal of her academic learning time and experience. Um, and, and quite frankly, we're still trying to get her back on track even after two years.

Hillary Wilkinson (30:51):

I believe it. And I wish that there was a, a better line of communication there. To me it's the equivalent of taking the Department of Education's budget and basically handing it to Big Tech. I mean it's, um, it's, it baffles me.

Kim Whitman (31:19):

This is Kim. I just wanted to add that it, it seems to be the norm, right? That everybody has accepted it as the norm when that should not be the case, we should have higher expectations. I like to say that, um, our society is putting convenience before the developmental needs of children and we need to turn that around and we believe the tide is turning.

Hillary Wilkinson (31:47):

Right. Right. Because I, I was, that was my next question. <laugh>, in my befuddlement of our current state, I I'm hoping that you guys can provide some positivity. 'cause I feel like I just kind of went down a rabbit hole, but <laugh> are, are you hopeful that schools can actually become phone free zones?

Mileva Repasky (32:09):

This is Mileva Repasky. Absolutely. As Kim just said, we really do feel like the tides are turning. Um, since the formalization of our Phone-Free Schools Movement, we've received an overwhelming positive response since we launched. There are articles that are coming out daily about more and more schools attempting to go phone free. There's a growing number of people understanding the negative impacts that phones are having on our students and their educational experience. Um, it's just clear that phones and social media are a constant disruption to learning academically, mentally, and socially. Um, and so we, we, we really feel strongly and are super passionate about the fact that this is the time, this is the time to take back the future for our children to give them a better foundation that they have been lacking over the last several years. Um, and a great example of that is yonder. And if anybody's not familiar with yonder, yonder is a tool that is, um, helping schools implement their phone free policy by providing pouches where students can lock away their phones. Um, yonder sales have increased from 174,000 to 2.13 million since 2021. So all signs are definitely pointing to an easier, even busier 2024 for them as well, which is definitely trending in the right direction for this type of movement.

Hillary Wilkinson (33:21):

That is great news, and I'm really glad you, I'm glad you have those stats <laugh>. So we have to take a short break, but when we come back, I'm going to ask the moms from phone free schools for their healthy screen habit. 

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Hillary Wilkinson (33:49):

I'm speaking with the Phone Free Schools movement and I want to urge everyone to go check out their website at PhoneFreeSchoolsMovement.org. And of course, this will be linked in the show notes as well. So, okay. On every episode of the Healthy Screen Habits podcast, I ask each guest for a healthy screen habit. And this is going to be a tip or takeaway that our listeners can put into practice in their own home. Do you have one?

Sabina Polak (34:33):

We do. And it's a pretty simple one. Um, unless you know that your school has phones turned off, locked and put away, um, as parents resist the urge to text your children at school. Um, it is a simple one. Um, you know, it starts with, you take the lead, set the example. Um, I can tell you myself, you know, kids learn pretty quickly once you stop responding to them <laugh> not to text their parents!  I do it and with my kids, and then they catch on pretty quick. <laugh>

Hillary Wilkinson (35:12):

Very good. Yeah. And I find myself, I will draft a text and then I'll set an alarm for myself to know when the, when the final school bell ends, then it's like my alarm goes off and then I can just go in and hit send on the text. I'm glad to hear I'm following your advice. <laugh> <laugh>, you guys are the experts. <laugh> as always, you can find a complete transcript of this show and a link to any resources discussed by visiting show notes for this episode. You do this by going to healthy screen habits.org. Click the podcast button and find this episode. So thank you three so much for being here today. Thank you for your passion and commitment to kids and all the work you're doing to make schools phone free!

Kim Whitman (36:04):

Thank you, Hillary.

Sabine Polak

 Thank you.

Mileva Repasky (36:06):

Thank you so much.