“The last thing you want is your kid starting at a screen, trying to take a video, communicating with other people,” says Raj Goyle, founder of Phone Free New York, when discussing unimaginable emergencies on school grounds. This was said during the statewide conference in Melville, with the reoccurring topic of banning cell phones in classroom environments. 

Many concerned parents, teachers, and officials beg to implement the banning of cell phones in school, while many students are more concerned about the idea of what to do during a school shooting when you don’t have your cell phones. In the article, “The Relationship Between Stress and Smartphone Addiction Among Adolescents: The Mediating Effect of Grit”, the author Chaeyoon Kim states, “Smartphone addiction is characterized by repetitive failure to resist the impulse of using smartphone, withdrawal, excessive time spent on smartphone usage, and recurrent physical or psychological problem caused by excessive smartphone use.”

With today’s generation growing up on cell phones, the idea of not having our cell phones in our possession seems unusual.

Tenth grader, Nazih Dandrich, states in his interview, “It’s not the phones. It’s the apps, It’s social media. I feel that limits and restrictions need to be placed on the apps, not the phones.” Overall, cell phones have a controversial place in our schools, and can sometimes hinder our learning, but can also be our only option in desperate times.