A Pessimist’s Guide To The Phone Ban

In all honesty, losing access to my phone during school hours felt less like losing a limb and more like being forced to live without one purely to ‘build character.’ That first week, my hand would drift towards my bag on instinct. I’d be ready to show a friend a message or a video before I’d stop myself and remember the new status quo. That moment of realisation often led to a quick but enraging reflection on the absurdity of it all. After a few days, the frustration dimmed to apathetic resignation. It’s interesting how quickly one can get used to silence when it's enforced.

The policy was introduced to us towards the closing of the year by our Vice-Principal, Ms Izumi Tsurumi, during an assembly. While I don’t remember the finer details of the presentation, what I do remember very vividly is the immediate backlash. Even during the presentation, whispers were going about the injustice and ridiculousness of the idea. I, for one, am guilty. 

But perhaps we were hasty. Perhaps we were too caught in the shock of the moment, a haze of overthinking that we forgot to identify where we really were. Our school is one of, if not the, best in the nation. It stood for more than half a century and has consistently ranked amongst the upper echelons of private education.

From a survey of Grade 10 students we ran, over 80% of the students agreed it was a ‘necessary action.’ Maybe it was- or maybe, like the school, we’ve started calling inconvenience ‘discipline.’ Some students mentioned how it helped those; constantly on their phones to focus better, but also expressed that this population was a definite minority. One respondent phrased it perfectly: “Whether something was a necessity as compared to whether something was logical are two completely different questions.” They admitted the ban might have been logical, but not necessary. Others noted it only truly affected the small minority of students “constantly on their phones,” meaning the rest of us are now paying the price for someone else’s overuse.

Even one of the Grade 11s I spoke to called the ban ‘stupid,’ arguing that giving students zero phone access in Grades 9 and 10 just sets them up to crash when they get complete freedom. In their words, ‘watch the 9s and 10s struggle when they get to IB because they’ve been phone-deprived for so long.’

Even though more than  80% of people claimed the school environment has improved, several responses hinted at cracks. Students mentioned it being harder to find friends during breaks, and how people worked around the ban via ‘hiding in bathrooms to use their phones’, and that not being able to take photos or videos was incredibly frustrating. So yes, while the lunch tables may look more ‘alive,’ this is coming at the cost of potentially more important things like academic convenience.

But here’s the key statistic- 100% of students said exceptions need to exist. This came in a variety of forms- lunchtime allowance, music or messaging friends. Everyone has a caveat. Because deep down, nobody truly wants a total ban; we, as human beings, yearn for a system that treats us like we have self control. 

But even the adults aren’t pretending this policy is perfect. Mrs. Burton, a tenth grade advisor, pointed out how students can’t see last minute Google Chats or reminders, a lifeline for the majority of the grade. This has resulted in numerous students coming late to PE classes especially as they either have to open up their laptop to check chats or won’t even realize there is a change of plan and go all the way to the High School Office.

She also pointed out the inherent inequity of the policy, wherein we see Grade 11s and 12s able to use their phones freely. It’s hard not to feel like the policy punishes younger students while older students seemingly get this ‘free pass.’

Beyond inter-grade injustice, a key grievance from many students was the intra-grade injustice. Many of them expressed feelings of frustration as they felt the school was punishing the many for the sins of the few. Even from the survey, barely 15% of students said they used their phone often, the remainder saying their phone was only used briefly during break and lunchtimes. 

 ‘less as judgement and more as a punishment.’ 

Ultimately, when you strip away the good intentions and the fancy ‘community-building’ language, the phone ban really begins to look less like a thoughtful policy and more like a blanket punishment disguised as moral high ground. The school may insist as much as they like about how the idea is to ‘foster connection’ but forcing people to talk isn’t the same thing as creating a community- it’s more like attempting to micromanage the silence. Frankly, the fact that students are now hiding in bathrooms for a few minutes of mere normalcy says a lot more about the policy’s effectiveness than any statistic would.

As mentioned by countless members of the grade, the deeper issue behind this ban isn’t distraction- it’s the complete lack of trust displayed. The ban inherently assumes the worst of everyone- even though the majority weren’t ‘glued to the screens’ to begin with, as the cohort has been portrayed. It punishes the many for the habits of the few, and we’re somehow expected to applaud the ‘improvement.’ Meanwhile, students- both under the harsh restrictions as well as those who narrowly escaped them- are annoyed, seeing it as flat-out stupid, and the only thing that seems to have increased more than face-to-face conversations is confusion about schedules and people coming late to lessons because they can’t check a standard Google Chat.

But the cherry on top is truly the built-in inequity. The white shirts get to stroll around with full access while the rest of us are treated like we’re one Snap away from total moral collapse. If the goal was fairness, transparency or even just pure logic, this policy didn’t just miss the mark- it wasn’t even aiming at the right target.

So yes, maybe the lunch tables look livelier. Maybe we’re having more face-to-face conversations. Maybe we can start PSE sessions five minutes earlier. But at what cost? We gave up convenience, autonomy and trust for this illusion of order. A school can call this ‘discipline’ all it wants, but to the students living under it, it feels a lot more like control for control’s sake.