We surveyed students about the phone ban. They said their social experience has changed the most.

When New Hampshire instituted a bell-to-bell ban on personal electronic devices in public schools last summer, proponents argued it would vastly improve the academic experience for students.

But six months into the school year, the bigger shift may have actually come in a different domain: students’ social lives. In a survey the Concord Monitor conducted last week, 61% of students said the ban had improved their social experience at school. Only 8% said it had made it worse.

“I like the environment that we have now,” Merrimack Valley High School student Cameron Simonds-Carrington said. “My lunch table — people who didn’t even talk to each other are now socializing and connecting with each other, just because they have nothing else to do.”

The results of the survey and a series of focus groups that followed suggest that the implementation of the ban has gone smoother than expected.

Only 31% of students said they disapproved of the state’s decision to institute it.

Thirty-six high school sophomores from eight Concord-area high schools completed the survey and participated in the focus groups. The students are participants in the Capital Area Student Leadership program, which is run by the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce.

Students expressed widespread support for the ban in classes, but some said they wished they could access their devices during lunch, study halls and passing periods. Many said it was unrealistic to coordinate their after-school responsibilities without access to their phones.

Some experienced the very real consequences of being disconnected from the world beyond their schools during the day.

Earlier this year, Concord High School student Adrienne Jalbert’s father passed away.

“At the end of the day, I opened up my phone to see mom texted me like at 10, ‘Hey, I had to take him to the hospital,’” Jalbert said. “I didn’t know until four, five hours later, and I really wish that I had.”

Students’ reported rates of compliance with the law varied. Nearly two-thirds of them said they followed their school’s policy often or almost always, while one-quarter said they used their devices multiple times per day.

The ban, students said, has also produced some perhaps unintended second-order consequences. Students’ trips to the bathroom, where they can use their devices without being caught, have increased. One student also said that cheating has been on the rise.

“It’s just made everyone sneakier,” John Stark Regional High School student Jayleigh Fournier-Shelto said. “If you go into the bathroom, no one’s actually using the bathroom. They’re all sitting there on their phones texting someone or scrolling on something.”

Academic experience

The majority of students — 58% — said the ban has not changed their academic experience. For many, this was because most schools already banned phone use in the classroom.

“Last year, they would take our phones during all the classes — you would put them in a pocket at the beginning of class — so we never had them during class anyway,” Bow student Benjamin Reardon said.

Thirty-one percent of students said the ban has improved their education. Some said they take the state-level prohibition more seriously than the earlier school-level bans on phone use in class.

“It was a lot worse last year,” Pembroke Academy student Will LeCain said. “To kind of shoot at myself, I remember watching a movie during a kid’s presentation on my phone, because I was just zoned out. This year, I’ve gotten a lot better, and I just do my work and listen to everyone around me.”

But for many, the change had less to do with what happens in the classroom, and more to do with increased productivity at other points in the day.

“I have both my study halls on both days in the Learning Center, so I’m with a lot of kids that have ADHD and just struggle to focus, and I have never seen them so locked in on something,” Hopkinton student Pippa Lang said.

One of the three students who said the ban has negatively affected the academic experience blamed the law for altering earlier school-level policies that worked better.

At Hopkinton Middle High School, some teachers used to require students place their phones in “caddies” during class. Now, because students aren’t supposed to take their phones out during the day, they don’t do that anymore, according to student Karsten Morgan.

As a result, “I’ve seen cheating on exams go way up,” Morgan said.

Social experience

Students agreed most about the ban’s positive impact on their social lives at school.

In particular, they said that the bell-to-bell nature of the law has made lunch far more lively.

“We started playing card games at school, which has been really fun,” Bow student Vita-Rose Flagg said. “It’s been one of my favorite things. I’ve learned a bunch of new card games, and it’s just a fun way to connect.”

Her favorite, she said, is Spoons, a popular, fast-paced, elimination-style game.

About one-third of students said the ban has not affected their social experience. For some, that was because their school’s WiFi hadn’t ever worked in the first place. For others, school already felt pretty social.

“I still see people the same amount; I still talk to people the same amount,” Concord student Adalyn Brissette said. “The only thing I would say that has changed is I’m not texting people throughout the day.”

Compliance

By far, the biggest reasons students said they violated the policy were to communicate with their parents and to coordinate after-school plans.

“If a bus gets canceled or a time gets moved, the only way we find that out is our phones and our group chats,” Brissette said. “So it’s kind of important to check them for us, because my school’s really bad at announcing that stuff, so I check my phone a lot to see if stuff changes for my sports.”

One-quarter of students said they used their phones to check social media or communicate with friends during the day. One student said the ban has actually increased phone use.

“It’s kind of having a reverse effect,” Bishop Brady High School student Daisy Curtin said.

“I’ve noticed many more of my peers who are even going into Ivies and getting full rides who are using their phone even more now than they were before, because it’s kind of like hunger,” she added. “When you’ve always had chocolate in your pantry, your whole life, you don’t really want it that much. But if you’ve never had candy before, and you see it, you just want to eat so much of it.”

Several students said that the increase in visits to the bathroom has caused issues.

“We have a pass system, and there is a problem of people taking up the pass and not letting other people go because they’re on the phones in the bathroom,” Merrimack Valley High School student Maxine Cornista said.

Enforcement

Some teachers worried that enforcing the ban would ratchet up tension and confrontation with students, but at least from students’ perspectives, that effect hasn’t been widespread.

“I almost feel like there was a mutual respect in place where students would respect the rule and the teacher would respond without harassing them about it,” Bow student Ava Popielarz said.

Some noted feeling friction around enforcement and said they found it unfair to require teachers to enforce state law knowing that it might strain classroom dynamics.

Students said they felt their schools were fairly lax about enforcement of the ban outside of the classroom. They also said that there was definite variation in the level of enforcement between teachers.

“I think there are definitely some teachers who are super strict and some who are more low-key about it,” Hopkinton student Sadie Serzans said. “And I think when students kind of figure out who those teachers are that are really strict, they kind of figure out what level of risk they’re willing to take in what classes.”

Because many schools confiscate phones from students they catch, the enforcement mechanism creates a dynamic in which the stakes of the punishment markedly drop as the day goes on.

“At a certain point – like the last maybe 20 minutes of the day – teachers will kind of not care because there’s no point in sending your phone to the dean’s office for 20 minutes if you’re just going to collect it right afterwards,” Pembroke Academy student Abigail Doyle said.

Recommendations

The most widespread recommendation was that lawmakers amend the law to remove restrictions on out-of-class use, but not all students agreed.

Some had a more modest proposal: create a specific time at some point during the day of just a few minutes when students can check their devices and respond to anything time-sensitive.

Pippa Lang of Hopkinton proposed allowing students to use their phones during the time after they arrive in a classroom but before the class starts.

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