Pictured above: a couple sheep I saw on my recent vacation. They have nothing to do with this post, but I figure you all know what phones look like.
When my kids went back to school this fall it was to phone-free buildings. Like many states, New York has banned personal electronic devices not just in the classroom, but from opening bell to closing. From what I hear it has gone reasonably smoothly — there has been no mass revolt by the student body, and all the parents I’ve discussed it with have been happy about the change. Phones have only permeated schools for a decade, so it should not be a surprise that removing them hasn’t caused chaos.
I nevertheless find it shocking that phone bans have actually been implemented. I can think of no other example of so ubiquitous a technology being banned from such a significant part of our collective life. (If you have something you think fits the bill, whether contemporary or historical, please let me know!) The adoption of new consumer technologies often looks inexorable; once it’s in the hands of the public, there’s no removing it. Banning phones from schools is a not-so-modest counterexample.
The best argument against the bans is that, because phones will be a part of most of our lives, it is imperative for young people to learn how to use them responsibly. I find this unpersuasive when it comes to learning. School will hopefully teach students many things, but how to avoid being distracted by some of the cleverest, most addictive technologies created is beyond their purview.
But phone bans have limits. Rightly, children and schools can be subjected to levels of regulation that adults cannot, yet adults also have extremely unhealthy relationships with technology. I find this tension difficult to resolve. I would be opposed to regulations aimed at curtailing the free dissemination of information, even information I find objectionable (or, as is more often the case with the digital slop that crops up on social media, mind-numbingly stupid). But I also don’t have any patience for the idea that if the government can’t fix it no one can.
There are many things I’d like to change that are beyond my control, and I suspect most of you reading this have your own lists. Part of being an adult is accepting that the world is broken in ways that we do not have the power to meaningfully change, let alone repair. But part of being an adult is also learning to discern what we might be able to change and then acting to do so, even if the things we have some control over seem laughably modest in comparison to those we don’t. Here’s a personal example: for this, my forty-third year of life, I’ve decided to limit my phone. For these twelve months I’m using it to make calls, message friends, listen to music, and nothing else. In other words, I’m trying to use my phone as I hope my children one day will use theirs.
For my entire life technology has been compounding. I think of the eons of collective human life we spend focused on small screens, I think of the arrival of artificial intelligence capable of fulfilling any digital wish, and I think of the fatalistic complacency with which we (with which I!) accept the steady subsuming of the embodied world by the disembodied. After all, I tell myself, such trends are too big for any of us to resist individually. But this is obviously, laughably false; of course we can choose how we use technologies, and we should do so. It may not be easy, but it is certainly within our power.
If you view the increasing digitization of human life as a real issue, and I think it is the most pressing issue of our time, then what response can there be besides attempting to deliberately lead a more fully human life?