Researching the effect of smartphone-free schools in Virginia

Virginia K-12 students who returned to school this fall may be confronted with smartphone-free hallways and classrooms as part of new state cellphone bans that are sweeping the United States. Nora McDonald, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at ��AV, is teaming up with the Prince William County School district to try to understand how students, teachers, administrators, and parents are reacting to these bans and what are the long-term implications.��

Increasing concerns about the use of personal internet-connected (“smart”) phones and other devices among youth have dramatically intensified, especially about the constant connectivity in school settings. Scholars, educators, and lawmakers are taking action to combat the distractions, cyberbullying, and reduced face-to-face social interaction they perceive to be created and exacerbated by smart devices with near or total schoolwide bans.��

McDonald says, “It is urgent that we do this work … we know that youth use technology to seek support for social and identity development, particularly for certain identities. At the same time, we do not understand how near-constant use of smartphones might simultaneously be eroding or limiting outlets for social support-seeking and identity expression offline.”��

While individual schools have already responded with cellphone bans, Virginia is among those states that will be introducing a full K through 12 ban starting this fall, though not all may adopt them until 2025. The goal of this proposed research is to talk to teachers, administrators, parents, and students before and after the imposition of cell phone bans creating a critical opportunity to determine what primarily psychosocial outcomes may be observed and whether any are sustained, or even potentially amplified over time.��

Through focus group interviews and qualitative surveys, McDonald is now working on engaging parents and students to learn more about these cellphone bans' impact on student behaviors and social experiences in and out of the classroom, specifically how it impacts how students spend their time and where they are seeking social support.

Her work builds on research in her field of human–computer interaction (HCI) that has focused on the benefits of social media for marginalized identities but increasingly acknowledges the darker side of these privacy-invasive algorithms on youth's sense of self. She published a paper at and in on teen self-perceptions and digital literacy in relationship to social media “for you” algorithms. Ultimately, McDonald says, she wants to “engage youth awareness to understand why they are seeing the toxic content or the misinformation they are seeing, and the privacy-invasive algorithms behind it.”��

This month, McDonald attended the Symposium on Child Safety Research and Policy hosted by the to talk more about these pressing issues related to social media technology and youth.��

��