Something every one of my classmates predicted would ruin this past school year ended up having the opposite impact.
My school decided to buy us all Yondr pouches – magnetically locked bags into which every student is required to deposit their phone for the duration of the school day.
There’s a fair conversation to be had about what this mandatory phone-free environment means for individual freedom, and these points were well exhausted by every one of us from the time we were first informed of the policy through the first few weeks of school. But, in hindsight, I cannot dispute the positive effect it had on my grade.
People started talking.
During free time, students from every friend group emerged from their set hangout areas and started drifting together – at first in search of respite from the boredom of a screenless existence, and then in pursuit of real connection.
I met and befriended people I vaguely knew, but would likely never have crossed paths with. And, to the displeasure of the school librarian, the library became the loudest room in school, inundated with students discussing homework and projects, reading, and, to everyone’s shock, playing chess.
The unexpected success of the Yondr pouches speaks to a larger trend in society.
Social media is smothering the greatest aspects of the human experience — conversation, resilience, curiosity, and even words themselves. As a child, I used to spend much of my free time reading. I wasn’t even really aware social media existed until late middle school, and up until the moment I was first allowed to access it, couldn’t see the appeal.
Those screen-free years vastly improved my spelling, vocabulary, attention span, and ability to write and converse on complex topics – but the second I downloaded the various apps required by social convention, eager to prepare for the new world of high school, I felt all those capacities start to slip away
Since then, I’ve learned the pull of social media well. At summer programs, I’ve watched teenagers sit around a table, scrolling on phones to avoid the discomfort of meeting new people. At school, before the pouches, I would too often catch myself sitting in a circle with my closest friends, not really engaging beyond sending the occasional reel.
The problem isn’t simply that we’re spending more time on our phones. We are actively forgetting the feeling of sustained attention. Each time we like a video and swipe instantly to the next, we cultivate an expectation for a constant stream of dopamine. And this expectation, which is so very easy to fulfill by just reaching for a screen, makes worthwhile conversations and complex ideas seem unappealing by comparison.
The habits cultivated by reading and those cultivated by endless scrolling are fundamentally at odds – and unfortunately, many in the modern era are choosing the path of least resistance.
The written word has never just been a method of entertainment. It’s one of the most important aspects of the human experience. It’s humanity’s collective memory. Every scientific discovery, philosophical breakthrough, legal tradition, and political movement survived because society agreed to write it down, preserve it, and pass it on for their children to read and improve. Writing is the essential tool of our collective advancement towards a more intellectual and free society.
It’s also our window into lives we could never otherwise experience. Even fictional characters offer unique insights into how to live a good life. We celebrate imagined victories, grieve people who don’t really exist, and emerge from those experiences with a better understanding of what we find important. Stories teach us kindness, family, courage, and curiosity by allowing us to watch people struggle toward them. Across centuries, people have documented heartbreak, failure, loss, perseverance, and hope in eternal words, and we have access to all of it — but we’re losing sight of why it’s important.
Massachusetts hasn’t yet passed a bill banning phones in schools, though two-thirds of states have. Whether these laws are appropriate measures remains up for debate.
The Yondr pouches didn’t convince me that technology is inherently harmful, nor should they have. Technology has transformed education, communication, and countless aspects of our lives for the better. But this year reminded me that some of the greatest parts of being human are falling away from us.
The ability to sit with a difficult book, engage in new conversations, and wrestle with complicated ideas will never stop being essential.
The written word has shaped civilizations for thousands of years. I hope we won’t be the generation who breaks that trend.