Liz Repking featured in Catholic Register Article
Catholic Schools Ahead of the Curve When It Comes to Curbing Cellphones
Matthew McDonald
Always connected? The latest technology? Easy access to the web? Cellphones everywhere?
St. Alphonsus Parish School in Seattle has none of that. And it doesn’t want it.
“When I tell prospective parents we’re tech-minimal, people light up about that,” said Nick Padrnos, who just started his fourth year as the principal. “It’s refreshing to them. I think everyone knows it intuitively makes sense.”
What does “tech-minimal” mean?
For one thing, no cellphones. Teachers can use them during the day. But students can’t.
Padrnos told the Register that a survey this past spring at the school, which serves about 185 kids in preschool through eighth grade, found that 75% of the more than 100 parents who responded said they wish they would have waited longer than they did to give their kids a cellphone. The parents not only put up with the no-cellphones policy at school, Padrnos told the Register — they embrace it.
“We talk about it a lot in Catholic schools: Parents are the primary educators,” Padrnos said, referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2223). “This movement, to me, is about empowering parents to reclaim that role.”
“Parents are just crying out for support,” he said. “I don’t think the Big Tech companies are going to give it to them. So that’s where we step in.”
Catholic schools across the U.S. like St. Alphonsus are ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing sensible policies aimed at keeping student distractions to a minimum. Nationally, exasperated teachers and parents are leading a charge to keep phones out of the classroom.
The California Legislature approved a bill Aug. 28 that requires public-school districts to adopt a policy by July 1, 2026, “to limit or prohibit the use by its pupils of smartphones” at school or school activities, including possible “enforcement mechanisms that limit access to smartphones.” The vote was almost unanimous in both chambers.
Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina have statewide restrictions in place. (Florida and South Carolina laws ban using a cellphone during class unless a teacher allows it; Louisiana law says a student can’t have a cellphone “on his person” during the school day.)
Ten other states either require (Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia) or recommend (Alabama, Connecticut, Washington) that school districts have a policy limiting use of cellphones or provide incentives (Arkansas, Delaware, Pennsylvania) for local school districts to do so, according to EducationWeek.
43 Minutes a Day
Cellphones are common among kids at schools across the United States.
In a 2023 report called “Constant Companion,” Common Sense Media cited studies finding that about half of children in the United States get a smartphone by age 11. About 43% of kids ages 8 to 12 have one. That figure rises to 88% and higher for adolescents ages 13 to 18.
Kids who participated in a Common Sense Media study received a median of 237 notifications on their smartphone on a typical day, of which they saw or engaged with about 46. During school hours, students’ median use of cellphones took up about 43 minutes a day.
Such numbers have some school officials thinking smartphones aren’t good for students at school.
Some Catholic school administrators also are skeptical about cellphones.
“Our Catholic schools do not allow cellphone usage during instructional time. Most schools do not allow them during the school day,” said Brian Disney, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, by email.
Kevin Somok, principal of St. Jerome Academy, a Catholic parish school in Hyattsville, Maryland, that emphasizes classical education, told the Register that students there have to give up their cellphones at the beginning of the school day and can’t get them back while school is in session.
Somok is in his first year at St. Jerome, but he has had his own kids there as students for several years. He has also seen during his 19 years as a Catholic educator what cellphones do to social life in schools that allow them, even if only during non-class time such as lunch.
“Instead of talking to each other in the cafeteria, they’re looking at their phones. They’re missing out on positive interactions,” Somok said in a telephone interview.
Somok has five children. The oldest is 11. None has a cellphone.
“My 11-year-old, the way he interacts with his friends, it’s not on Instagram; it’s not on group chat. It’s a healthier childhood,” Somok said.
No Need for Change?
Some Catholic-school systems don’t see a problem with cellphones in schools because they think they have them under control.
“Student cellphone usage during the school day is not a concern within the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” a spokesman for the school system there told the Register by email. “Each school has established its own cellphone policy for students, tailored to meet the needs of their individual community, with best practices in place.”
Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, have some leeway in how they deal with cellphones, but most don’t allow students to use them most of the time.
“I don’t think we have a need to ban them, because we pretty much have in place a requirement to keep them in the backpacks or lockers and not to be used during school,” said Vince Cascone, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Kansas City. “We just need to make sure that that time in school is sacred and focused on learning, and we try to eliminate any distraction that a cellphone might bring.”
It’s a similar situation in the Archdiocese of Las Vegas.
“I don’t see them as a problem. I think the expectation is set: Students know when and where they can take their cellphones out,” said Catherine Thompson, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Las Vegas. “We don’t want it to be a distraction, but we know that it’s part of the fabric of our lives.”
The Book on Smartphones
But some Catholic schools are rethinking their approach.
Most Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of San Antonio “restrict access and use of cellphones throughout the day, except for lunch and breaks,” Jordan McMurrough, a communications director for the archdiocese, told the Register.
But archdiocesan officials are thinking about doing more. This summer, Catholic school principals and pastors of parishes with Catholic schools were asked to read a book that came out earlier this year that recommends against allowing children to have smartphones, “and there is a move on campuses toward the direction of an even more phone-free environment, working in close consultation and discussions with administrators and families,” McMurrough said by email.
That book, The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, argues that the transition from a “play-based childhood’ to a “phone-based childhood” during the past couple of decades has led to sharp increases in anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction and self-harm.
Haidt, whose arguments have been challenged by some, calls for no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, and no cellphones capable of receiving text messages available to kids in school during the school day.
“Let’s get kids through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers,” Haidt writes in the book.
Distraction?
Cellphone restrictions get mixed reviews.
At St. Alphonsus School in Seattle, two eighth-graders told the Register they don’t mind the policy.
Callum MacLeod, 13, has had an iPhone 10 for more than a year, and he has friends at other schools who use their cellphones at school to listen to music and read text messages. But he said he prefers being without one at school.
“I never feel the urge to want my phone during school time. I don’t think about my phone during class. I just focus on my schoolwork,” he said.
Emma Noble, 13, has an Android cellphone with no access to the internet, which she got about a month ago. But she, too, said she doesn’t mind the school’s policy preventing her from having access to it during the school day.
“I like it because it really makes sure you get your mind on your schoolwork instead of, ‘Oh, what are my friends texting about? What are these people doing right now?’” she said.
But some find such restrictions concerning.
Matthew Haas has had five children go through Cardinal O’Hara High School in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Only the youngest, a 16-year-old junior, has to deal with the school’s new policy requiring students to keep their cellphones in their lockers while classes are going on.
Haas told the Register he understands the need to limit use of cellphones during the school day. But like his daughter, he said, he’d prefer that she have immediate access to her phone in the event of an emergency, particularly if she doesn’t have time to get to her locker.
“I am all for no phones active during classes,” Haas said in a telephone interview. “But some of the more restrictive ones like that, where you can’t have it in your bookbag, that’s tough for me.”
Even so, restricting cellphones seems to be a trend.
Jesuit Father John Belmonte, superintendent of Catholic education in the Diocese of Venice, Florida, told the Register that he recently proposed to principals there “a diocesan-wide ban on cellphones at our diocesan schools.”
Liz Repking, chief executive officer of Cyber Safety Consulting, who advises schools and parents about cellphones and related technology, said she is hoping to start a pilot program at two or three schools in the diocese starting in January 2025 in which students would be required to put their cellphones in a lockable fabric pouch at the beginning of the school day, which would be unlocked for them at the end of the day.
“It completely unplugs the kids for six to seven hours a day, which is a wonderful thing,” Repking said.
She said pushback to similar policies tends to come from parents who are worried about not being able to contact their children quickly if after-school plans change or in an emergency.
“We’re really accustomed in society to immediately having access to whoever we want, whenever we want. And they want that access to their kids,” Repking said. “Parents, they just want to have that level of control. We have to recognize the parents’ concerns and address them.”
Addressing those concerns, she said, could include setting up a system in which students can get a message at school within an hour or so, either by telephone through the central office or through a dedicated email station. As for emergencies, by which many parents mean active-shooter situations, she points out to clients that training for lockdowns in schools includes no talking and no noise, with teachers giving kids instructions by hand signals, and that a cellphone might be a hindrance in such a situation rather than a help.
A more constant negative factor, she said, is distraction.
The most obvious distraction is during class, if a student is paying attention to a cellphone rather than to a teacher.
But another kind of distraction comes from the constant urge to check other kids’ social-media postings throughout the day. Eliminating access to cellphones eliminates that problem, Repking said.
“It’s just kind of a very level playing field: No one’s on their phones; no one’s posting anything on social media,” she said. “You’re not missing anything.”
