When the high schoolers who attend Buxton boarding school in Williamstown, Massachusetts, resumed in-person learning in the fall of 2020, the head of the school noticed that the kids had lost something important. After months of remote learning due to the pandemic, kids no longer knew how to interact with one another.
“The students had completely forgotten the basics of face-to-face interaction. They had spent so much time glued to their smartphones.”
Everybody’s attention was being sucked into their online lives — text messages, emails and social media apps — on their phones. The students struggled to converse with one another, and the ability to be with or sit with other people was gone entirely. They decided to conduct a social experiment: a smartphone ban for the entire campus - faculty, students and administration. Instead, each community member was given a Light Phone, a minimalist device designed to be used as little as possible. Where smartphones make it easier to do wrong things - like doom scroll and binge watch - the light phone makes it easier to pay attention to what matters - the people and experiences right in front of us.
The kids have never been happier.
In this episode with light phone co-founder Joe Hollier and Buxton School co-director John Kalapos, we discuss:
- How smartphones and social media negatively impact campus culture: “The smartphone makes it easier to do the wrong things.”
- Faculty-led concept of (and participation in) going smartphone-free
- Student-written technology policies
- Positive impacts of removing smartphones from campus: “Now, I don’t have to be a smartphone cop.”
- How minimalist phones like Light make it easier to do the right things
- Digital well-being advice for school leaders
• • •
Supported by JOMO(campus), Season 4 explores the landscape of students, smartphones and social media, asking global experts to explain the hard truths about the mental health decline among youth on campuses worldwide and inspire us with evidence-based strategies that will turn the tide.
Get more JOMO at jomocast.com.
Learn more about the JOMO(campus) digital well-being program at jomocampus.com
Check out the new JOMO Goods shop at www.jomogoods.com
Music by Thomas J. Inge
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