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Cell phone bans don’t solve the real problem – social media is addictive

Umito October 26, 2024

Olivier Sicat
| Special for EdSource

Recently, Instagram unveiled new policies designed to address what we’re all seeing: teens suffering the harmful effects of addictive social media apps. New policies include creating private teen accounts by default, stopping notifications at night, and including more adult supervision tools for parents.

While this is a first step, as school leaders and parents we know that addiction is not limited to Instagram. This is a moment of broader reflection for us as educators, parents, and guardians of tomorrow’s leaders. We need to move beyond platform-by-platform fixes.

I have been an educator for over 20 years. Today, as the leader of seven Southern California high schools, reaching nearly 3,000 students from historically underserved communities in Los Angeles and Orange counties, I see the impact technology has had on our teenagers and how engaging social media and gaming apps have become. It took me a long time to learn the self-regulation skills needed to manage social media and more, and I’m in my 40s. Now imagine trying to learn it at 13, without knowing all the tools that work to hook us.

Jonathan Haidt, author of the book “The anxious generation: how the great overhaul of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness,” states that girls who “spend five hours or more each weekday on social media are three times more likely to be depressed than those who report spending no time on social media.”

This is an upheaval for parents, teachers or anyone concerned about the future leaders of our communities.

Just a few weeks ago, it seemed like every week another school district or state announced a sweeping ban on cell phones, but no one was asking a crucial question: Are America’s youth addicted to phones, or Are they addicted to social media and gaming apps? which have become central in their social life and to stay informed? How can we break the spell that these companies have cast on the minds of adolescents?

Cell phones themselves are not the problem. Note that we don’t need to ban the Calculator, Camera app, Google Search, or many other tools because these tools don’t have the intentional captivating appeal of Direct Messaging, New Posts, or endless scrolling.

It seems to me that social media apps and games optimized for long-term addiction should be banned or significantly modified before banning cell phones, which are ultimately a great tool for learning and communication. Mobile phones can help develop the necessary sense of independence in students.

This calls for collective action. We must work together and continue to listen to our teachers, recognizing the challenges and burden that cell phones in the classroom pose to them. But the first step should be to tackle what distracts students on their cell phones before banning it outright. Perhaps our time as educators would be better spent promoting balanced policies that protect our children rather than working tirelessly to monitor our children and their phones. Instead of focusing on cell phone use or hoping for each platform to announce its individual solutions, school leaders across the country need to come together and demand answers from social media and addictive gaming companies. Instagram is the first company to act, but other companies are actively recruiting users as young as 13 with minimal verification and monitoring these cell phone bans from a comfortable distance. Educators and social media apps can definitely come together to create an innovative solution to the real problem.

As school leaders, we should call on social media companies and gaming companies to meet with us to provide practical solutions to the addictive technologies they have created.

Oliver Sicat is the CEO of Ednovatea network of public and free charter high schools in Los Angeles and Orange County. Ednovate primarily serves first-generation, college-bound students from underrepresented and underserved communities. He wrote this for EdSource.