Noshin Sayira is a junior at Stuyvesant High School, meaning she’s in the middle of the highest-pressure year at what may be one of the highest-pressure high schools in the country. She tells me that students’ top objection to the phone policy is that it’s become cumbersome to do homework between classes or to quickly study in the hallway before a test. But Noshin recently started printing out her study guides and has found that reviewing on paper actually works better: “I don’t get distracted by notifications,” she says. She and her friends have developed a stress-relieving free-period ritual: They sketch one another’s outfits. “One of my friends usually has supplies like colored pencils and proper paper,” she says.
Tokyo Levy, a seventh-grader at I.S. 318 in Williamsburg, is a discernibly different kid than he was in his phone-carrying days, at least according to his mother, Krystyna Printup, an art teacher at the Brooklyn School for Social Justice in Bushwick. “He was forced into the rapid learning and usage of technology during COVID when he had to attend school from home via Zoom,” she says. That led to a fixation on video and computer games — Minecraft, Clash Royale — then social media. “Now, his phone is no longer clutched by his side to run to after dinner or before bed. There have even been a couple days where he’s left his phone accidentally at home.” At school, after noticing kids gathered around chess boards during lunch, he decided to sign up for the chess club. “I’ve always thought of people who played chess as really intelligent people. I see other people play, and it has really motivated me to try it out for myself,” he says. Participating in soccer in the schoolyard at recess inspired him to join a soccer league in his neighborhood, too.