Boston students discuss Massachusetts bill that would ban cellphones in school
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A Yondr pouch is a small bag that can only be unlocked using a special magnet that would be controlled by a school official. At least four BPS high schools, including English High School, started using Yondr pouches to restrict phone usage last year.
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Ladan Mohamed, 15, a rising sophomore at Boston Latin School and a member of the Boston Student Advisory Council, opposes BPS spending money on Yondr pouches. Boston Latin School hasn't implemented them yet and has an honor system where students are not required to turn in their phones, but many classrooms have organizers where students can store their phones, so they don't get distracted during class. Mohamed also said the district needs to get better at contacting parents during emergencies, before enacting a cellphone ban.
'Let's say somebody ... breaks into the building, students and parents don't find out until after the fact,' Mohamed said, 'If students don't have their phones, the city and BPS need an emergency contact system. Right now, students are using social media as a positive tool.'
Caitlin Murphy, head of school for The English High School, said that using Yondr pouches has been successful in encouraging healthy social interaction during lunch and made it easier for administrators to provide students with mental health support, since they aren't worried about student interactions on social media during the school day.
'The support team was constantly running to put out fires that were being started by social media that were causing incidents during the school day instead of actually doing responsive work. We're able to sort of proactively plan stress and anxiety groups,' Murphy said.
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Murphy also said that The English High School was focused on helping students reach out to their parents if needed.
'I've been very clear with our main office staff and with anyone who ... has a phone in their office, that if a caregiver calls, then we drop what we're doing and we're getting to that student,' Murphy said.
Laura Lara Santos, 16, a student at Fenway High School, where Yondr pouches have been implemented, is supportive of a 'bell-to-bell' policy where cellphones are banned throughout the school day, based on her own positive experiences in a phone-free school.
'It was reflected in my grades. The teachers actually told me that they saw a big change,' Lara Santos said in Spanish through an interpreter, 'and it helped during lunchtime too because we had real connections. We were not just talking about what had happened on TikTok.'
Lara Santos is a member of Sociedad Latina, a Roxbury nonprofit that supports Latino youth with education, workforce development and other after-school programming. Alexandra Oliver-Dávila, executive director of the nonprofit, who spoke with her at the hearing, advocated for implementing a uniform bell-to-bell cellphone restriction policy across BPS at the hearing, to make education equitable for all students, irrespective of zip code.
'What I could foresee happening is there's going to be certain schools that are thought of as needing discipline that need to use the Yondr pouch,' Oliver-Dávila said, 'And we're going to come back down to the divide of the exam schools versus open enrollment schools.'
Most of the students at the hearing testified against cellphone restrictions, saying that a ban would not help teenagers develop self-control when it comes to technology. Munira Saeed, 15, a student at the Boston Latin Academy, said that a cellphone ban would merely delay the challenge of teenagers learning how to use cellphones in a healthy manner, rather than solving the issue.
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'Trust and responsibility goes both ways. Give us the structure, the support and the chance to show that we can use our tools responsibly,' Saeed said.
David Bickham, research director at the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, said that based on a
'If the school clearly communicates the goals of the policy to the students, it doesn't matter how strict it is, the kids [in the survey] said that this policy increased their sense of independence ... so the details of the policy were less important,' he said.
Angela Mathew can be reached at
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