Should we all start locking up our phones?

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Does your phone feel like a blessing or a burden? Either way, there's probably a lot you can learn from new phone bans.

Many K-12 students are going phone-free - but not by choice. In over half the country, there are now restrictions on cellphone possession and use in class. The goal is to increase student focus and enhance learning...but when you think about school shootings, phones have been a big part of parents' safety plans for their kids. So are phone bans the best solution? And what do these policies teach all of us about the role phones play in our lives?

Brittany is joined by David Figlio, professor of economics at the University of Rochester, and Kathy Do, Assistant Project Scientist at University of California Los Angeles to find out.

Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluse

For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:16.5	How are classrooms different, pre and post smartphones?
0:21.4	Back in the day when I went to school, we communicated with one another by passing notes and hoping the teachers didn't catch us, right?
0:30.3	But a lot has changed since then.
0:33.0	You know, a lot of us adults didn't grow up with phones.
0:36.3	But for young people, phones are now like the main ways that they stay connected.
0:41.0	They keep their social lives intact.
0:42.9	They learn new information.
0:44.9	And so also I think it's really important for us to help young people figure out that balance
0:49.3	because it's kind of everywhere for them in a way that wasn't as pervasive for us growing up.
0:55.2	So when I was in school, like K through 12, I was probably most worried about report card day,
1:01.5	finishing my homework before class, and who was reading my live journal.
1:06.8	One thing I was not worried about was whatever notification was coming up on my phone.
1:12.1	I didn't get a cell phone until my freshman year of high school, and it was my dad's old Nokia.
1:16.8	I don't even know if it could send or accept text messages, and the only game on it was Snake.
1:22.8	So obviously, you could barely do anything with this phone. But classrooms today are a different world than they used to be.
1:30.1	You're constantly getting interrupted.
1:32.7	You're constantly getting this feedback.
1:34.6	You're constantly getting tempted to be brought into who knows what.
1:41.3	That's David Figlio.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.