When Jordan School District announced a new cellphone policy prohibiting cellphones during class, high school students felt like they were being punished.

“For a lot of students, this felt, like, very extreme—it felt very harsh,” Mountain Ridge High School senior Hanah Park said. “I know phones are a huge problem in classes— students are definitely not focusing to their full ability—but I myself, was like, I feel like this is too much.” 

Park and her fellow business class peers Sadie Miles and Kennedy Haymond, both juniors, chose to focus on the cellphone policy for their DECA club competition project. They researched the topic and met with administrators, district representatives and legislators to understand the reasoning behind the policy.

“I started to understand, like, this is actually beneficial towards us,” Park said. “It’s not, ‘Oh, they hate us and they hate our phones.’ They’re trying to help us be better students and become better friends and create more social connections.”

The girls realized that educating their peers could help improve understanding and reduce pushback against the policy.

“They feel like it’s a punishment, but until they actually learn and know why phones are harmful, they’re never going to understand why the phone policy was put in place,” Park said.

The girls developed an education campaign strategy called “The Disconnect Effect.”

“Our main goal is educating students about why the cellphone policy is in place and how the cellphones are affecting them or harming them,” Haymond said.

Miles said because the harms related to cellphones have not been directly addressed before, education is a necessary part of the solution.

“We were looking at how important it is to educate people so that we don’t have to keep just making these stricter policies and taking things away,” she said. “Because ultimately, what we all want is for kids—whose brains are still developing—to learn these mindful habits that will help them inside and outside of school.”

As part of their education campaign, the three girls organized a Social Strength Week at Mountain Ridge High School. They shared statistics and facts about the harms of cellphones and social media through fliers and daily announcements, but the main focus of the week was to encourage students to make social connections.

“We wanted to educate kids in a way that was more of ‘Think of all the fun real-life connections you can have,’ while also kind of sneaking in why phones are bad for you,” Miles said.

The girls wrote and, with the help of students from a variety of social circles, filmed a short movie about a teen who was alone and depressed because she didn’t have social interactions outside of her phone. The movie ended with someone reaching out to include the girl in their friend group.

“There were a lot of kids that told us, ‘I felt that way before, I was able to kind of see myself in that video and it helped me just realize how important it is to focus on those real life connections rather than my online friends,’” Miles said.

Sophomore Tytan Hinton said the movie showed how cellphones can prevent you from talking to other people. “It makes it a lot harder for you to make those connections with people that are really big in life, and it’s what can bring you joy,” he said.

The girls hoped the video would inspire students to make an effort to connect with each other during the social activities they’d planned for the week. They partnered with school clubs and student government to organize activities such as a group service project, a pancake breakfast and lunch-time games. The girls said it was good to see people at the activities engaging with each other instead of sitting alone, scrolling on their phones.

Hinton said students who joined him in a game of nine square during lunch period were cheering on and encouraging each other. “Even if you didn’t know the people, there was just a lot of social interaction and not a lot of cell phones that I could see—that was really nice,” Hinton said.

He enjoyed socializing with games so much that the next morning, when the girls held a Positive Pancake Breakfast, giving pancakes to students who shared something positive with them, he joined in to help with the cooking.

“It was really good that I went and did that because I feel like I met a lot more people, made a lot more friends,” he said. “You could really tell that when you were talking to them as you were making their pancake, that they were really, like, zoned-in on the conversation and really intensely wanted to talk to you.”

Rachel Merrill, president of Savage Service Club, said there was a lot of socializing at the co-sponsored afterschool service project making blankets for Primary Children’s Hospital.

“We met tons of new friends, and no one had their phones out,” she said. “We were all just talking, so it was really fun.”

Social Strength Week culminated with a challenge for students to leave their phones at home. The phone-free Friday included a social at Classic Skating’s Throwback Night.

The three girls surveyed students at the beginning of their project, when 5% agreed with the school cellphone policy, and then again after Social Strength Week, when 88% said they understood why the policy was in place and agreed with it.

“I think that there’s been a very significant change in attitude towards the cellphone policy and cellphones in general,” Haymond said.

They were pleased with the school-wide impact of their project and want to expand cellphone education to a curriculum for elementary students.

“Teaching somebody before they’re faced with that decision, I think is so important, and I hope that we can make it like a societal norm to talk about that with kids,” Haymond said.

They also want to hold parent nights to teach parents about the harms of cellphones and how to teach their kids to self-limit their screen time.

“Because cellphones are a relatively newer technology, and parents aren’t fully equipped with the knowledge of how to help their kids have a healthy relationship, I think that’s really the best way to solve this issue, is to be able to teach both the kids and their parents,” Park said.

Jordan District Board of Education member Darrell Robinson has advocated for an education piece to the district cellphone policy since the beginning of the board’s discussions.

“I believe that cellphones are as dangerous as cars,” Robinson said. “And with cars, we give a student some training. They have drivers ed. They drive with a parent for six months or a year. And even after they do get a full license, we put restrictions for the first six months or so. So we teach them how to use it. And in my estimation and my experience, they don’t really teach anybody how to use the phone. We just hand it to them.”

Some parents and legislators would like to ban cellphones all day in secondary schools like they are in Jordan District elementary schools. Haymond, Park and Miles are concerned that would cause teens to have an even more unhealthy relationship with their phones.

“Banning phones completely doesn’t solve the problem,” Park said. “It solves a problem for eight hours while they’re at school, but then they go home and they’re just on their phones continuously. It doesn’t teach them why they need to get off their phones, they’re just being forced to get off their phones. So the solution, really, is teaching people how to have a healthy relationship with their phones, because students don’t 100% understand the correlation between mental health and body image or depression and their cellphones.”

The three girls began their project in August and presented it at a competition in February. They hope to qualify for the state competition this summer, but even if they don’t, the project will continue.

“We’re definitely not done—to us, it’s honestly more than just a project,” Miles said. They plan to continue to work with Rep. Candice Pierucci and hoped to attend some of the hearings for the statewide cellphone bill during the Legislative session and share their ideas.λ