Gabrielle Strauchler has been campaigning for years to remove mobile phones from her classroom. The English teacher for boys in Karnei Shomron, in Samaria, says the devices distract pupils, particularly those who are clearly addicted to digital games or social media.
Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch announced on Dec. 11 that beginning on Feb. 2 (Tu B’Shevat), a nationwide school policy will be implemented prohibiting children from using mobile phones anywhere on elementary school grounds, unless they are being used for educational purposes.
According to Kisch, “The policy is based on extensive staff work and studies in Israel and around the world that have proven that there is a direct connection between the use of devices and situations of loneliness, anxiety and social isolation. The goal of the move is to provide a space free from distractions, where students can develop and refine social and emotional skills, improve the educational climate and enable focus on learning.”
In his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says that smartphones have created a surge of anxiety and depression in Gen Z teens. He correlates the steep rise of mental disorders worldwide in teens and college-aged youth to the widespread use of such devices during formative years.
“Children born in the late 1990s were the first generation in history who went through puberty in the virtual world,” he explains in the chapter “The Surge of Suffering,” calling the phenomenon “the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children.”
Haidt suggests that no child should be exposed to smartphones with internet before they are in high school; that children under the age of 16 refrain from using social media; that all schools, including high schools, be “phone-free” and that devices in high school be locked up during the school day to free students’ attention for teachers and others; and that children of all ages be encouraged to have unsupervised play and childhood independence to develop social skills.
Haidt asserts that while American parents of Gen Z children restrict their offspring from “stranger danger” by keeping them close to home, they use electronic devices as “babysitters,” exposing them to far more danger than parents who encourage independence in their children by letting them play unsupervised with other youngsters.
According to Inna Zaltsman, senior deputy director and head of the Pedagogical Secretariat at Israel’s Ministry of Education, the decision to separate elementary school children from their mobile phones was made after a committee of teachers, principals and parents understood that throughout the world, not just in Israel, research revealed that the use of smartphones was damaging to young children.
“We found that children were affected in three dimensions,” Zaltsman explained. “Cognitive tests indicated their attention spans were affected, which lowered learning scores. Children with mobile phones showed diminished social skills—there were fewer face-to-face interactions with friends during the day, which in some cases caused loneliness. Thirdly, the phones were shown to affect children’s overall health—both physically and emotionally.”
Zaltsman says that, although children can bring phones to school and use them if their teacher is using the phones as a technology tool, the phones must stay in their backpacks from the time they arrive in the morning until they go home, even at recess.
“We found that children with phones were less active and less likely to play during recess. Phones also caused sleep disturbances, which affect cognitive performance and attention spans.”
Aspects of Israeli kids and technology
Israelis tend to have more kids than in other Western democracies, and most parents are juggling careers. According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), Israeli students in grades one to six spend 30 hours a week in school, exceeding the number of hours schoolchildren spend in other Western countries by around nine hours per week.
Many Israeli children socialize in youth groups such as the Scouts, which are operated by youth, for youth. That puts Israeli kids ahead of the curve. However, most Israelis are exposed to electronics and smartphones at a very young age, some coming to school with mobile phones as early as first grade, according to Zaltsman.
“When they are exposed earlier to smartphones, by the time they are older, they are addicted and cannot part with the phones,” she said.
Haidt says game designers build in variable-ratio reinforcement schedules that make it hard for children to take their eyes off the game.
Zaltsman said research and the ongoing committee will continue to decide how to proceed in the future. She didn’t rule out the ban eventually extending to high schools.
Some might argue that exposure to technology is a healthy and natural byproduct of being a youth in the 21st century Startup Nation. However, after the world went through two years of COVID-19 alienation, Israeli children were exposed to additional anxiety-inducing events, including missile attacks, school closures, absent soldier parents and running to safe rooms as part of their lives during the war.
“It’s a tough battle for parents,” said Zaltsman. “Much of our work must be explaining to parents why it’s important to encourage socialization in person for their children. We will keep the conversation going with the parents so they can be part of the team.”
She said there is a balance to be struck with the demands of the 21st century that we should work with cell phones and computers in the classroom, but that during recess, the children should not be accessing social media. While the Education Ministry is making great efforts to keep students ahead of the technological curve, at the same time, we don’t want to create a nation of anxious, socially inept and lonely children, Zaltsman said.
In an interview in July, Meirav Zerbiv, deputy director general for innovation and technology at the Ministry of Education, said the ministry was working on integrating unified, holistic systems, a statement of vision and a pilot to change the whole technology system in the schools.
The ministry started a program to implement AI over a year ago, she said. “When ministry personnel understand the power of AI, then we can integrate it into the system. We put an IT coordinator in every school to help integrate pedagogy and technology into the classroom.
“We are in discussions with the Ministry of Health to find out whether using the technology and managing the risk without a blanket ban is possible,” Zerbiv said. “We believe that teachers have the tools to recognize when it disrupts and when it enhances education. Almost every child in Israel has a smartphone in the classroom, yet not every child has a computer. Smartphones are not substitutes for computers, and even if children have computers, they tend to use smartphones all day long. There are distracting messages constantly flying across their screens.”
Meanwhile, Strauchler calls the ban a “drop in the bucket.” She points out that the ban only pertains to elementary school children, although she admits it is a step in the right direction. She would love to see a 1st- to 12th-grade ban. She said the ambiguous language that allows cell phones “when they are appropriate for learning” was too vague, and the ban should have been more decisive.
She quotes Haidt’s book in which he mentions a teacher named Kate Giddings, who said, “Give teachers a chance. I can and will plan interesting and engaging lessons, but I can’t compete with every movie ever made, every video game ever made, and with the entire world of the Internet.”
