Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel
It took far too long to ban smartphones from classes because we put the burden of evidence on the wrong side of the argument:
People demanded overwhelming scientific evidence to remove phones from schools. They put the burden of evidence on people who wanted to remove phones. Or they claimed the effect sizes were too small to care. This maintained the status quo for a long time.
But we never required RCTs to keep video games, personal TVs, walkie talkies, or all kinds of other distractions out of the classroom. It was common sense that these would distract students from learning.
Instead, we should require clear scientific evidence before we *add* student smartphones or any other distruptive technology en mass into schools.
We need to establish the right baseline set of assumptions before we start to craft evidence-based policies or people end up defending a bad status quo.
I'm open to being convinced on this issue. But I have yet to see any compelling evidence we should ever let these devices back into classes. The more anecdotes, reports from teachers, scientific studies, and reasoned arguments I've heard on this issue have convinced me that we should keep them out.
