School Phone Bans Are Spreading. But Are They Working?

[00:00:03] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, September 1st. I'm Imani Moise for The Wall Street Journal. The debate over banning phones in schools has divided parents for years. But now, for the first time, public opinion is moving in favor of all-day phone bans in schools. But does taking phones out of the classroom really help kids learn? The latest research might surprise you.

[00:00:29] Then, as tourism stalls, Hawaii state officials are looking to the tech industry to help revive its economy. Past attempts to turn the islands into the next Silicon Valley have fallen flat. But this time around, a new strategy could give Hawaii the boost it needs. But first, it's back-to-school season.

[00:00:55] And this year, a growing number of students are roaming the halls without their favorite accessory. Their phones. More than two-thirds of states now have laws or policies requiring school districts to restrict phone use. Parents are warming up to the idea, too. For the first time, more Americans support all-day school phone bans than oppose them.

[00:01:17] Wall Street Journal family and tech columnist Julie Chang joins me now to explain what we're learning about life at school without phones. Julie, what do these bans look like in practice? Are schools taking phones away, locking them up, or just telling students not to use them? So there are a variety of different practices that school districts use. A lot of them do lock kids' phones up in pouches during the day. And these are magnetic pouches that kids can keep their phones with them, but they can't unlock them from the pouches until the end of the school day.

[00:01:47] Other districts have, within the classrooms themselves, they have different little portals where kids can drop their phones and then take them with them when they go to the next class. And then a lot of districts just have a blanket policy of keep your phones in your locker or in your backpack during the school day. So it's kind of a hodgepodge of policies across the country. How did phone bans go from controversial to this widely embraced?

[00:02:11] I think right after COVID, as kids were going back to school, there was a lot of parental angst about separating from kids again. And there was a lot of concern that if there was some sort of emergency for parents that they wouldn't be able to reach their kids. But as more data came out about the harmful effects of phone use and social media in particular, parents relented a little bit. And also, of course, educators were seeing the effects of school phone use.

[00:02:39] And the tide began to turn more in favor of banning phones during the school day. Do bans actually work at getting kids off their phones, though? There was just recently a very large study done of about 5,000 schools that have adopted the yonder lockable pouches. And they found that even though kids can sometimes find workarounds and cut into the pouches or find other ways to hack that kind of situation,

[00:03:06] that it really did curb personal phone use during the day. The percentage of students who used phones in class for personal reasons dropped from 61% to 13%. So these bans do typically have an effect. But that was only looking at, you know, a policy where the pouches locked up the phones. Less is known about how effective phone bans are when kids are just told to keep them out of sight during class time. How have students typically responded to these bans?

[00:03:35] A lot of students initially resist it because they're so used to having their phones during the day. And so some research has found that in the first year after phone bans are enacted, disciplinary problems actually go up. And educators and researchers attribute that to kids trying to find workarounds and using their phones anyway. And then they get in trouble for it. But after a period of time, usually after that first year, things kind of go back to pre-phone ban times.

[00:04:02] I've talked to a lot of students over the last couple of years who actually find it a relief to not have their phone out during the school day. Because when other kids don't have their phones and they don't feel the pressure to check social media, they just feel more comfortable and more free to be able to talk to each other. And socialization usually tends to go up. I hear a lot of teachers say that students are talking to each other in the lunchroom again and during recess.

[00:04:30] Have grades gone up as a result of these bans becoming more common? That's the thing that is not really showing any movement yet. Grades and test scores are a slower thing to improve. And there are a lot of factors involved in grades and test scores. Okay, their grades aren't necessarily going up. We can't track that yet. But are the students at least paying more attention in class without their phones? That is also something that has not shown a measurable increase yet either. And you would think that it would, right?

[00:04:59] You would think, okay, they're not looking at their phones, so they're going to be paying attention in class. And what the researchers found is that they might just be shifting their attention to something else. And it could be their school laptops because a lot of districts have school-issued devices for students to do schoolwork on. That was WSJ columnist Julie Jargon. What do you think? Should kids be able to have their phones in the classroom? What about in between classes? If you're a listener on Spotify, leave us a comment with your thoughts.

[00:05:27] Coming up, Hawaii's young people are ditching the island as its tourism economy stalls. Can a new tech startup push give them a reason to stay? That's after the break. Hawaii is known for many things. Volcanoes, beautiful beaches. And if state officials have their way, a flourishing tech industry.

[00:05:56] Though most people would consider Hawaii a paradise, last year it lost a greater share of its population than any state except Vermont. Young people in particular are leaving in droves. Could a new generation of tech startups help turn that around? WSJ's Owen Tucker-Smith went to Hawaii to talk to recent grads and tech entrepreneurs about what it would take to build a future there. He joins me now.

[00:06:23] Owen, according to a state report, more than half of Hawaiian college grads now live on the mainland. Why is that? So Hawaii has tried before to build a tech economy. And some officials think that the problem was that they were too broad with it. They tried to become the next Silicon Valley. And that's very difficult for Hawaii. It's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's many time zones away from everyone else.

[00:06:47] And it has a lot of competitors that are more well-resourced, closer to more major universities, etc. So officials right now are trying to take advantage of Hawaii's strengths. The fact that it is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean means that they have access to a lot of maritime technology and research.

[00:07:05] And so they're trying to become an ocean tech economy and build companies that can, for example, turn seaweed into fertilizer or create sensors for flood control or promote aquaculture companies using all of the nearby fish. It's also a state that's very close to the equator. So there are some officials who think the state can build up a bigger aerospace industry, in particular by launching rockets into orbit.

[00:07:33] Because when you're close to the equator, it's easier to do that. So I can definitely understand how Hawaii would have an advantage in those types of industries. But some of them sound pretty niche. Are these industries big enough for Hawaii to build a market around and sustain an economy from? That's the big question. It's certainly going to be an uphill battle, especially given how expensive it is to build companies to begin with in Hawaii.

[00:08:00] If you think about every part that they can't create in the state, it has to be shipped in from either the mainland U.S. or Asia. But there is also a school of thought that you don't need to create that many new jobs to diversify the state's economy. Hawaii is a pretty small state when it comes to population. So whereas there are states, you know, where you're having to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in a new industry to meaningfully change the structure of the economy.

[00:08:30] In Hawaii, maybe it's just a couple really successful companies. How exactly is the state supporting these industries? What do the incentives look like? So the state has long had this agency called the Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, and it's basically in charge of running the diversification efforts. The most popular way that states try to create companies across the country has been tax credits.

[00:08:56] And it's sort of a controversial strategy because it doesn't always work, and Hawaii has tried that before. Around the turn of the century, they started offering 100% tax credits to investors in tech businesses. And when the credits ended, they found that they had no real means of seeing if they had actually created new tech companies. So instead of just throwing money at these companies, the state is trying to create the conditions for them to exist.

[00:09:24] So a big problem for a new tech company or manufacturing company in Hawaii is there isn't a lot of space or equipment or machinery for them to start creating their products.

[00:09:34] So the corporation has signed this lease on a property in Kailua in Hawaii where they're hoping to have a lot of startups operating together in a joint manufacturing facility where they can potentially share ideas and share equipment and work together to try to bring this economy to the next level. They also do still offer grants, and there are a variety of more traditional Silicon Valley-esque accelerator programs that startups can go through.

[00:10:04] But the main thing that the state wants to offer right now is this manufacturing space. And if all of this investment doesn't work, what's at stake for Hawaii? The health of its entire economy. So the state's dependence on tourism has existed for a long time. But because tourism rose for decades in Hawaii, the fact that it didn't have a diverse economy never seemed like a real problem.

[00:10:32] But now Hawaii is falling behind. So they do have to find something if they are to continue keeping and retaining their population and creating economic growth. So it's an existential question for their economy. A big issue is that even though there are some successful companies in Hawaii, there is a pay differential. So you sort of have to take a pay cut to stay. You don't take a cost of living cut to stay.

[00:11:01] It's a very, very expensive state that doesn't have competitive salaries. And so that's the problem that a lot of these economic development officials and company executives are trying to solve is how can you create jobs that pay enough to actually justify some of these young people not going to the mainland. So the first thing they have to do is create companies. But the second thing they have to do is create companies that can make enough profit to pay livable wages.

[00:11:31] That was WSJ's Owen Tucker-Smith. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producers Katie Ferguson and Melanie Roy. I'm Imani Moiz for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.