At Columbia MS, along with our fellow Network 4 schools, we will be going phone-free for all students. Our reasoning for this new policy was largely grounded in data from Jonathan Haidt's thought-provoking book, "The Anxious Generation." This book explores the challenges faced by today's youth due to the complexities of being on social media and having increased screen time. The book offers valuable insights for supporting students’ well-being and thoughts on how to reduce anxiety in today’s youth. This book resonated with what we experience as a school, and we began to look into methods to decrease the number of negative interactions among students as well as to address the increase in the levels of anxiety among students. As a result, we will be implementing a new policy to end the use of cell phones by students during school hours. We have received a grant from the Colorado Attorney General's Office to provide educational opportunities about healthy smartphone usage and to purchase Yondr pouches to safely store phones during school hours.
