School life for students has become a bit more phone-free following a new phone restrictions policy.

The phone-free policy states that phones are not allowed in classrooms, study rooms and the lunch room. Students are only allowed to use their phones in the hallways and in grade level hang out areas. This new policy shocked many students, causing questions to arise as for why and hesitance to give up more phone time at school.

The new phone policy accompanies the new school morals, specifically community. Dean of Students Stacy Tepp and faculty felt that phones were too present in community spaces.

“So thinking about the kind of [sense of] community that we want to create, how do you create an environment where that happens?” Tepp and faculty members asked. The answer they found was removing phones in certain areas around the school. This strict phone policy was placed in hopes for students to socialize amongst each other more and build a stronger sense of community.

“We need to help students build skills for conversation… so [we want to] provide those opportunities for discourse that don’t take place online,” Tepp said.

Junior Shefali Meagher is in favor of the new policy. She believes that the phone policy will help students interact with each other more: “Especially because this is a small school, I feel like it’s better to just be more aware of whatever you’re doing and talk to more people,” Meagher said.

Sophomore Dagny Bruun agrees: “We can connect with other people that we normally don’t talk to because we’re normally on our phones.”

However, there are some aspects Bruun dislikes, like the no phones allowed in study rooms: “I don’t like [no phones in study rooms] because I use my phone when I study… I use my phone a lot. I know a lot of people do too,” Bruun said.

Additionally to the community-driven aim of the phone-free policy, Tepp believes restricting phones will be beneficial for the health of the students in the long run based on the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory article from 2023 titled Social Media and Youth Mental Health. The article says excessive use of phones and social media negatively impacts youth mental health. It is linked to attention problems and disrupting sleep, something all youth need an adequate amount of to develop the brain. Youth who spend more than three hours a day on social media have a higher risk of having poor mental health yet 1-in-7 teens spend seven or more hours on social media in a day.

“Think about warnings on tobacco and cigarettes. Eventually, we might get to a place where there are official warnings about [phones],” Tepp said.

The aim of this new phone-free policy is for students to foster a sense of community without screens. Students expressed mixed emotions as shown by Meagher and Bruun. Students are mainly understanding of the new phone policy and also reluctant to use it less. However, there are no signs of the administration changing this policy in the near future. The hope is for students to interact with each other phone free and get to a point where faculty are not hovering around having to take away phones.