Join the Phone-Free Schools Movement to create healthier, more focused school days. We help schools implement bell-to-bell phone-free policies that boost learning, safety, and student well-being.
'Life needs to be more like this': Some bars and restaurants are going phone free
It's not just schools that are banning cellphones. Some bars and restaurants are joining the offline trend.
Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health
How smartphone usage affects well-being and learning among children and adolescents is a concern for schools, parents, and policymakers. Combining detailed admi
Childhood and Education #20: Phones and Screens
We have a respite, so I thought I’d tackle various thoughts on children, phones and screens.
Too risky for the road but safe for schools? Rethinking smart glasses in the science classroom
This paper critically examines the governance of smart glasses in K-12 science education, using science classrooms as a case through which policy design challenges become visible. We position these wearable technologies not only as tools of pedagogical innovation but as governance challenges requiring regulatory attention. The vendors of smart glasses claim that their devices enhance real-time visualisation, support hands-free inquiry, and personalise activity. Yet, despite increased consumer availability and promotion by vendors, smart glasses are inconsistently specified in Australian school policy, unlike other high-stakes sectors such as transportation where wearable device categories are explicitly regulated. Drawing on a comparative analysis of policy associated with Australia’s K-12 mobile phones and the 2023 Victorian Road Rule Amendments “New Driver Distraction Road Rules”, this study proposes that science education requires similar anticipatory governance. Whereas the road safety framework classifies wearable technologies as potential sources of cognitive distraction and provides a stratified risk profile, device-specific restrictions, and enforcement mechanisms, we illustrate a stark contrast to the comparable provisions analysed in educational policy. This analysis identifies governance-relevant risk categories for staff, students, and schools that are not consistently addressed in the education policy texts examined, and that are difficult to standardise through discretionary, school-level interpretation alone. As such, this paper contributes to global conversations on educational justice, digital governance, and the ethical integration of emerging technologies in education.
Modeling the Engagement-Disengagement Cycle of Compulsive Phone Use | Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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How to secure your phone before attending a protest
Here are some privacy measures you can take
Home | Protecting Kids Online
Our mission is to protect children and defend parental rights by equipping families and citizens with the tools to keep kids safe online. We oppose government surveillance disguised as child safety legislation and seek to build an informed, independent parent-led coalition to #ProtectKidsOnline.
Sosc Core to Institute AI Ban, Technology-Free Classrooms This Fall
All social science Core classes will transition to an “analog” approach for the upcoming academic year, restricting in-classroom technology use and banning AI-assisted writing and grading for students and professors.
Ensuring a safer online experience for U.S. kids and teens
An overview of our approach to age assurance and our commitment to online safety for young users and families.
Young people are crowding underground phone-free parties. I went to one.
I went to an underground phone-free party in Brooklyn, and it’s nothing like I expected.
Decentralizing My Smartphone With Single Purpose Devices
Lately, I’ve become nostalgic for the days before smartphones, when the internet was a place we went to deliberately, and not a place that lived on all of ou...
How useful are smart glasses in improving accessibility in higher education?
Smart glasses have the potential to support learning for disabled students, but this technology also comes with significant privacy concerns. Helen Nicholson-Benn looks at how to balance functional benefits with data security and safeguarding
Social Media Use and Well-Being Across Adolescent Development
Importance Social media’s association with adolescent well-being remains debated. Heavy use has been associated with distress, while abstinence may cause missed connections. Objective To investigate 3-year longitudinal associations between after-school social media use and adolescent well-being using a large longitudinal cohort dataset modeled within a repeated cross-sectional framework. Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study included Australian students in grades 4 through 12 (2019-2022). After-school social media use was self-reported and grouped as none, moderate, or highest. Well-being was assessed using 8 validated indicators (eg, happiness, life satisfaction, emotional regulation), dichotomized as high vs low. Well-being was assessed concurrently with social media use during the annual school-based survey in each year of data collection. Data analysis was conducted from June to July 2025. Exposures Self-reported after-school social media use between 3 pm and 6 pm (weekdays), classified into 3 categories: none (0 h/wk), moderate (>0 to <12.5 h/wk), and highest (≥12.5 h/wk). Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcome was overall well-being, measured as the mean score across 8 validated domains (happiness, optimism, life satisfaction, worry, sadness, perseverance, emotional regulation, and cognitive engagement), dichotomized as high vs low (<3 on a scale of 1-5). Secondary outcomes were each individual well-being indicator, similarly dichotomized. Mixed-effects logistic models were used for analyses, stratified by sex and adjusted for demographic covariates. Results The analytic sample included 100 991 adolescents, contributing 173 533 observations (86 582 [49.9%] observations from female participants; mean [SD] age, 13.5 [2.2] years). A U-shaped association was observed between after-school social media use and well-being. Compared with moderate users, adolescents with the highest use had greater odds of low well-being (grades 7-9, girls: odds ratio [OR], 3.13 [95% CI, 2.88-3.39]; boys: OR, 2.25 [95% CI, 1.86-2.72]), while nonusers also had higher odds of low well-being in later adolescence (grades 10-12, girls: OR, 1.79 [95% CI, 1.41-2.27]; boys: OR, 3.00 [95% CI, 2.01-4.46]). These patterns were consistent across survey years and robust to sensitivity analyses. Conclusions and Relevance In this cohort study of students in grades 4 through 12, social media’s association with adolescent well-being was complex and nonlinear, varying by age and sex. While heavy use was associated with poorer well-being and abstinence sometimes coincided with less favorable outcomes, these findings are observational and should be interpreted cautiously.
‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom
Education is at a crossroads, argues the author and academic. Should we embrace new technology in the name of efficiency, or is it time to fight back?
The Linear Oppression of Note-taking Apps
What we lose when our digital notes remove the freedom to move
