But sometimes, it’s simple and obvious.
Phrases like “settled science” and “professional consensus” are often overused, misused, and abused. But sometimes those phrases are accurate. Sometimes there really is a universal agreement — or one so statistically near universal that it counts as such.
Such is the case with electronics and young people. We don’t need one more research report on this. It is clear that smartphones, social media, and electronic gaming are harmful to young people: to their mental and physical health, as well as to their academic achievement.
The consensus is amazing: liberals and conservatives, progressives and libertarians, North and South, men and women, rich and poor, Republicans and Democrats, old and young; all religions, all races; all cultures; all ethnic groups. Everyone knows this.
But nobody does anything about it.
It would be a simple act: require students to turn in their smartphones at the beginning of the school day. They would receive them back on their way home at the end of the school day.
Yes, there would be a very small number of parents who’d make a very large amount of noise, protesting this. But the law is clear, and a school system could fend off any number of lawsuits about the topic.
And more than a few schools around the United States have already done this — public schools, private schools, charter schools — and done it successfully. The benefits among the student body are measurable and observable.
Yet the vast majority of schools have not yet done this. Why?
There is no doubt that confiscating the smartphones is good for the students. At some point in the future, questions will be asked about schools who failed to quickly adopt this most obvious of policies.
