Before I dive into this week’s blog, I wanted to take a moment to ask a favor of you. If you’ve been enjoying The Screenagers Podcast, it would mean so much to me if you’d tell just one person about the show. We want to reach as many people as possible, and your sharing would make such a difference. Thank you so much!
Just yesterday, we released the episode titled “How Smartwatches Are Subverting School No-Phone Policies.”
Listen Here: Apple Podcasts // Spotify // YouTube // Website
Many of you are aware of the campaign we started in 2017 called Away For The Day — all about giving resources to parents, teachers, community leaders, and concerned individuals to help create schools where phones are put away. It's been wonderful watching schools successfully reduce distractions in their classrooms.
While the focus has been on decreasing the presence of phones during school for many years, things have started to change…
We are talking about the Gizmo watch, the Apple watch, the Troomi watch, the Gabb watch, and many others. Research and anecdotes from educators suggest that smartwatch adoption among kids is growing fast, similar to how we saw with smartphones a decade ago.
The watches allow a range of applications, from texting and location tracking to gaming, YouTube, and more. As you can imagine, this has led to a host of issues in schools.
For a while now, Lisa, my co-filmmaker, and I have been visiting elementary school classes and asking students to raise their hands if they're wearing a smartwatch. On average, about 50% of them do.
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Learn more about our Screen-Free Sleep campaign at the website!
Our movie made for parents and educators of younger kids
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
This has become such a big issue that our most recent documentary, Screenagers: Elementary School Edition, tackles it. In the film, Jonathan Haidt, PhD, and fantastic teachers speak about the issue.
You won’t be surprised that the solution offered in the film is to have schools adopt Away For The Day policies that include smartwatches. Off wrists and securely put away for the whole school day
But how does a school do this?
For my recent podcast epiosde on this subject, I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with the school counselor Tammy Fisher, PhD, to discuss this issue. Her school had been really struggling with smartwatches last year.
Here is Tammy explaining one teacher’s experience:
“ I remember last year, I had this hilarious time where my fifth-grade teacher had like seven watches on her wrist. I walked by her classroom one time, and I'm like, what do you got on there, Christy? She's like, well, it's been one of those days, Tammy.”
This year, in response to these challenges, Dr. Fisher’s school implemented Away For The Day, not just for phones but also smartwatches. And it is going really well!
One thing Tammy talks about is how the school enforces the rules in a way that builds resilience in their students. She shares an example of this when she tells the story of encountering a young girl in class who, in the middle of a lesson, started texting her father from her watch.
When Tammy took the watch away, the student was understandably upset – it was her father, after all!
But Tammy says the real power of Away For The Day is helping students like this work through these difficult emotions.
“The first thing I think is like, you can handle this. Right? Really helping our kids understand that you can handle boundaries. It can make you uncomfortable, but our job as adults who work with kids, parents, and adults is to get our kids comfortable with being uncomfortable. I knew I wouldn't do her any favors if I just said, Okay, just finish this message and don't do it again. Because then that message is she can't handle it. And I wanted her to understand, you survived this! It was uncomfortable, but now you know how the rules work. There's no penalty. You're not going to the principal's office. It's just simply, it's sitting over here. You can get it at the end of the day.”
What a powerful and empowering lesson that is! All while helping remove distractions from the classroom.
The whole episode is filled with pieces of wisdom, clear guidance, and a lot of Dr. Fisher’s wonderful humor and insight. I can’t wait for you to listen.
Questions to get the conversation started with your group or family:
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Learn more about our Screen-Free Sleep campaign at the website!
Our movie made for parents and educators of younger kids
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel! We add new videos regularly and you'll find over 100 videos covering parenting advice, guidance, podcasts, movie clips and more. Here's our most recent:
As we’re about to celebrate 10 years of Screenagers, we want to hear what’s been most helpful and what you’d like to see next.
Please click here to share your thoughts with us in our community survey. It only takes 5–10 minutes, and everyone who completes it will be entered to win one of five $50 Amazon vouchers.
Before I dive into this week’s blog, I wanted to take a moment to ask a favor of you. If you’ve been enjoying The Screenagers Podcast, it would mean so much to me if you’d tell just one person about the show. We want to reach as many people as possible, and your sharing would make such a difference. Thank you so much!
Just yesterday, we released the episode titled “How Smartwatches Are Subverting School No-Phone Policies.”
Listen Here: Apple Podcasts // Spotify // YouTube // Website
Many of you are aware of the campaign we started in 2017 called Away For The Day — all about giving resources to parents, teachers, community leaders, and concerned individuals to help create schools where phones are put away. It's been wonderful watching schools successfully reduce distractions in their classrooms.
While the focus has been on decreasing the presence of phones during school for many years, things have started to change…
We are talking about the Gizmo watch, the Apple watch, the Troomi watch, the Gabb watch, and many others. Research and anecdotes from educators suggest that smartwatch adoption among kids is growing fast, similar to how we saw with smartphones a decade ago.
The watches allow a range of applications, from texting and location tracking to gaming, YouTube, and more. As you can imagine, this has led to a host of issues in schools.
For a while now, Lisa, my co-filmmaker, and I have been visiting elementary school classes and asking students to raise their hands if they're wearing a smartwatch. On average, about 50% of them do.
This has become such a big issue that our most recent documentary, Screenagers: Elementary School Edition, tackles it. In the film, Jonathan Haidt, PhD, and fantastic teachers speak about the issue.
You won’t be surprised that the solution offered in the film is to have schools adopt Away For The Day policies that include smartwatches. Off wrists and securely put away for the whole school day
But how does a school do this?
For my recent podcast epiosde on this subject, I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with the school counselor Tammy Fisher, PhD, to discuss this issue. Her school had been really struggling with smartwatches last year.
Here is Tammy explaining one teacher’s experience:
“ I remember last year, I had this hilarious time where my fifth-grade teacher had like seven watches on her wrist. I walked by her classroom one time, and I'm like, what do you got on there, Christy? She's like, well, it's been one of those days, Tammy.”
This year, in response to these challenges, Dr. Fisher’s school implemented Away For The Day, not just for phones but also smartwatches. And it is going really well!
One thing Tammy talks about is how the school enforces the rules in a way that builds resilience in their students. She shares an example of this when she tells the story of encountering a young girl in class who, in the middle of a lesson, started texting her father from her watch.
When Tammy took the watch away, the student was understandably upset – it was her father, after all!
But Tammy says the real power of Away For The Day is helping students like this work through these difficult emotions.
“The first thing I think is like, you can handle this. Right? Really helping our kids understand that you can handle boundaries. It can make you uncomfortable, but our job as adults who work with kids, parents, and adults is to get our kids comfortable with being uncomfortable. I knew I wouldn't do her any favors if I just said, Okay, just finish this message and don't do it again. Because then that message is she can't handle it. And I wanted her to understand, you survived this! It was uncomfortable, but now you know how the rules work. There's no penalty. You're not going to the principal's office. It's just simply, it's sitting over here. You can get it at the end of the day.”
What a powerful and empowering lesson that is! All while helping remove distractions from the classroom.
The whole episode is filled with pieces of wisdom, clear guidance, and a lot of Dr. Fisher’s wonderful humor and insight. I can’t wait for you to listen.
Questions to get the conversation started with your group or family:
Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel! We add new videos regularly and you'll find over 100 videos covering parenting advice, guidance, podcasts, movie clips and more. Here's our most recent:
Sign up here to receive the weekly Tech Talk Tuesdays newsletter from Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD.
We respect your privacy.
Before I dive into this week’s blog, I wanted to take a moment to ask a favor of you. If you’ve been enjoying The Screenagers Podcast, it would mean so much to me if you’d tell just one person about the show. We want to reach as many people as possible, and your sharing would make such a difference. Thank you so much!
Just yesterday, we released the episode titled “How Smartwatches Are Subverting School No-Phone Policies.”
Listen Here: Apple Podcasts // Spotify // YouTube // Website
Many of you are aware of the campaign we started in 2017 called Away For The Day — all about giving resources to parents, teachers, community leaders, and concerned individuals to help create schools where phones are put away. It's been wonderful watching schools successfully reduce distractions in their classrooms.
While the focus has been on decreasing the presence of phones during school for many years, things have started to change…
We are talking about the Gizmo watch, the Apple watch, the Troomi watch, the Gabb watch, and many others. Research and anecdotes from educators suggest that smartwatch adoption among kids is growing fast, similar to how we saw with smartphones a decade ago.
The watches allow a range of applications, from texting and location tracking to gaming, YouTube, and more. As you can imagine, this has led to a host of issues in schools.
For a while now, Lisa, my co-filmmaker, and I have been visiting elementary school classes and asking students to raise their hands if they're wearing a smartwatch. On average, about 50% of them do.
This year, millions of students are experiencing a major shift: school days without phones, smartwatches, or other personal devices. Today we explore the wins, hurdles, and solutions helping schools succeed. We also share our resources that you can use to support technology policy changes in your schools.
READ MORE >
I recently sat down with middle school principal Zach at his school in Washington State. We talked about the challenges Zach and his team faced in his early years as principal when students used phones during school, and how he brought about a powerful transformation by having phones and smartwatches put away in locked pouches for the whole school day. In today’s blog, to raise awareness of the challenges, I share five real examples from Zach of the troubling ways students use phones at school to be unkind.
READ MORE >
It is with great pleasure that I share with you today a piece that Lisa Tabb and I did for Jonathan Haidt's (Author of The Anxious Generation) and researcher Zack Rausch's Substack blog — After Babel. In it, we discuss the rise in use of smartwatches in elementary schools and the problems they pose. There is a real cost to arming (pun intended) our kids with these devices and sending them to school. Now is the time to stop and fully address this topic and ensure that schools become smartwatch and phone-free.
READ MORE >for more like this, DR. DELANEY RUSTON'S NEW BOOK, PARENTING IN THE SCREEN AGE, IS THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE FOR TODAY’S PARENTS. WITH INSIGHTS ON SCREEN TIME FROM RESEARCHERS, INPUT FROM KIDS & TEENS, THIS BOOK IS PACKED WITH SOLUTIONS FOR HOW TO START AND SUSTAIN PRODUCTIVE FAMILY TALKS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AND IT’S IMPACT ON OUR MENTAL WELLBEING.
