High school and elementary students across Quebec are being asked to take on a new challenge this year. The Quebec government is forcing them to put away their phones for at least six hours every weekday – the duration of their time at school.
This is a step up from last year’s ban, which somewhat ineffectively prohibited cell phone use in the classroom. This year’s elaboration means no texting friends or parents, no games, no social media, no nothing during class time or over the lunch hour.
For some, this may not be a big deal. For others, this may be a crisis. There are an increasing number of studies that indicate that while problematic smartphone use has yet to be classified as an official addiction, many smartphone users, especially youth, show addictive attachments to their devices.
Other research is looking into the ways in which social media apps are in fact rewiring our brains to be more dopamine-driven, causing an increased reliance on the immediate and quick forms of affirmation that come from the like, the tweet or the snap.
General consensus is that these devices are undermining everybody’s ability to focus and be present in the world, and are eroding our mental health, but teenagers are being hit especially hard. There is a growing body of research backing this up.
The Quebec government is trying to create a distance between addictive devices and young brains. It’s a noble ambition. But how exactly this ban will play out is yet to be seen. Will students continue to use their phones anyway? Will the work of policing cell phone use fall to already overworked teachers? Both are likely. And how will students not complying with the ban be treated? What supports will be in place to help students who may have developed various degrees of dependency on their phones as this ban is enforced?
The process of rolling out this ban will surely be ongoing. No quick fix is possible when trying to fundamentally change how people engage with the world around them. It will take time.
This ban, and similar acts of resistance to smartphone use from school boards in other provinces, stand out to me as the first time I’m seeing government resistance to a technology.
We’ve seen governments navigate the challenges of restricting use of other inventions harmful to human health, like cigarettes and other tobacco products, but this ban on smartphones is different.
It is an admission that our widespread and rapid adoption of smartphone technology, which is only about 20 years old now, was perhaps done in haste. We were too keen to welcome in these technologies that were pitched to us as enhancing our ability to connect with others, and bringing everyday efficiency and ease to our lives.
Maybe we should have been more skeptical. But it wasn’t that easy. This technology wasn’t threatening our jobs, as the Luddites felt the weaving and knitting machines to be in the early 19th century.
The Luddites knew their material lives would be radically changed with the adoption of these technologies – that they would lose their income, and with that their way of life, and they resisted, rightfully so.
But smartphone technology was and continues to be sneakier. It slides into our pockets. It integrates itself with all of the ways in which we already relate to each other. It listens to us, and more and more these days, it understands us. Every day, as we carry these devices in our pockets, and share our most personal data with them, the technology they carry is working to become us.
And as this happens, the line between what is technology and what is humanity is becoming murkier and murkier, and the route to resistance, to boundaries, less and less clear.
The Luddites got a bad reputation. The term is used to refer to a person who fears and is close-minded to new technologies. But this word needs to be reclaimed.
The Luddites were actually quite radical. They had the foresight, wisdom and courage to fight back against the pressures of industrialization, when big corporations were trying to pay less money for labour and turn a higher profit.
Sure, they were fighting job loss – something more tangible than loneliness or poor mental health. But they were also challenging the fundamental shift of the way their world was organized, and challenging the lives the big money makers of the time were trying to force them into. The knitters and weavers revolted. Maybe it’s time we do too.
Sophie Kuijer Dickson
