This school banned phones. Remarkable things happened.

这所学校禁用了手机。从此,奇事迭起。

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2025-12-27

22 分钟
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The cafeteria at Ballard High School during lunch is a loud place. Students are talking and laughing, playing card games and going out to the courtyard for an informal recess. On Fridays, students have started playing bingo. It’s a big change from the past couple of years — and it’s not the only one. In the first month of school this year, students took out 67 percent more books from the school library than the same month last year. Today on the show, we interview psychologist Jean Twenge, author of the new book “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World.”  Listen to our episode about the young people giving up their smartphones. Today’s show was produced by Maggie Penman and Rennie Svirnovskiy, who also mixed the show. It was edited by Allison Klein. Subscribe to The Optimist here. And if you want more optimistic stories in your podcast feed, write to us at podcasts@washpost.com.  Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
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  • This fall, I talked to a principal at a high school in Kentucky.

  • The school had just instituted a bell-to-bell phone ban.

  • That means no phones all day, not even during lunch.

  • And the principal said that the change he saw in students was immediate.

  • Students are talking to one another, they're having conversations,

  • you know, engaging in class discussions.

  • More assignments are getting turned in.

  • Just the general vibe throughout the day has been very, very positive.

  • This is Jason Neuse.

  • He's the principal at Ballard High School in Louisville.

  • Just seeing students engage with one another, especially during lunch when normally, you know,

  • the last couple of years you'd walk in there and everybody's got their head down.

  • They're just kind of scrolling through, not really interacting.

  • And it's fun to see smiles on faces.

  • and students having a good time with it.

  • We've gotten to the point where we even on Fridays during lunches have offered up bingo and so the kids have kind of jumped in and started to do bingo and now they've asked for other games and events and things like that to happen.

  • He noticed something else too.

  • Students were checking out way more library books.

  • There's been about a 65 to 70% increase in books that have been checked out of the library.

  • Jason actually sounded a little sad that his oldest son had already graduated