High school students face significant challenges with social media use during instructional time, a concern shared by educators, including teachers, paraeducators, and administrators. With social media access unblocked or lenient smartphone policies, we are losing precious minutes meant for learning. Even when a smartphone or device is out of sight, the cognitive hook for a digital distraction, luring a student away from the lesson, can take 23 minutes to recover. In short, we must protect instructional time. Protecting instructional time requires establishing clear boundaries with students, which may involve implementing or adopting new policies around 1:1 programs, filtering on the device, and hard stops for usage at night (among many ideas). This could further include guidelines for parental communication, especially in cases where parents encourage using social media to connect with their children.
At the same time, as we consider limiting or blocking social media and making various policy adjustments, we need to focus our efforts on restricting online dangers such as bullying, offensive content, and grooming; issues that can rival those faced by adults on these social media platforms (and elsewhere). Most school districts can access tools from vendors like Linewize or Securly, which offer solutions to enhance visibility and effectively address these risks. Our district is proud to partner with Linewize, a leader in student safety solutions. Their advanced filtering technology and holistic approach to digital well-being sets the gold standard for protecting our students. With Linewize by our side, we’re ensuring a safer, more focused learning environment like never before. Adopting and deploying these safety tools to protect students is admirable; the positives outweigh any perceived drawbacks. After all, they are children and young adults under our care, at school.
Educators often overestimate dangers in the physical world while underestimating the risks of the digital one. To keep students safe, we must learn, protect, and monitor what they do on school-issued accounts and devices. We expose ourselves to liability without proper safeguards…not from using tools designed to protect students but from failing to implement them. Again, the cost of not activating these protections far outweighs any perceived drawbacks. Just as we supervise students in cafeterias and classrooms to ensure their safety, we must extend that supervision into the online space.
We must address the core question: What is the intended purpose of laptop, Chromebook, and iPad programs? These devices should be tools for academic growth and provide educational value and development, not avenues for social media, doom-scrolling, or impulsive behavior, especially during school hours. Without proper safeguards, they risk becoming focal points of significant issues rather than resources for learning. We must align our educator practices, goals, efforts, and professional development, ensuring our devices serve as assets to education, not distractions.
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