Digital Wellbeing: Attention, Phones and School Life

Separate the two concerns behind phone policy — classroom distraction and adolescent wellbeing — and say which one your own school actually has evidence for.

Redesign one lesson around where attention is really lost, and teach it in your first week back.

Write a one-line classroom device norm and a spoken response you can use the moment a phone appears, with or without a school policy behind you.

Draft a one-page school phone policy stating why, when, where and how, together with the parent letter that goes with it.

Plan the first six weeks after a rule starts, and describe the kinds of student for whom the standard approach is likely to fail, and what happens instead.

State what a school still owes its learners digitally once devices are restricted, and put your request to leadership in writing, addressed to a named person.