CELL PHONES, CONTROL, AND THE TRUTH ABOUT TEENS

I’ve been subbing in middle and high schools this year, and like everywhere else, the rule is the same: No phones. This isn’t new. It’s one of education’s greatest hits — dragged out every year like we haven’t debated it for a decade straight.

The Exhaustion of Control

I used to enforce the rule religiously. I wrote phone policies, took phones, fought phone battles, and spent entire class periods chasing screens instead of teaching content. I hated every minute of it.

There’s nothing more exhausting than trying to control people who don’t want to be controlled.

Teachers cling to control because it’s familiar. It’s old habit. It feels like “good teaching” even when it’s not. And honestly, many teachers are terrified of being judged if a student misses something because they were scrolling TikTok.

Many classrooms today are about compliance, not learning — and teens know it.

What a Puppy Taught Me About Choice

Years ago, when I lived in Kentucky, I got a puppy and hired a trainer. She didn’t train my dog — she trained me. Her whole philosophy was simple: the dog has the power to choose. Reinforce the right choice, make it feel good, and eventually the dog chooses it because it works — not because someone bosses them into it.

Thirteen Years of Commands

Students spend thirteen years being told what to do and when to do it — be on time, sit down, be quiet, raise your hand, no phones. Then at eighteen we send them into the world and expect them to suddenly know how to make independent decisions, even though we’ve spent their entire school lives making decisions for them.

The Phone on My Desk

Around 2017 I stopped micromanaging phones. I’d ask kids not to use them, but I wasn’t policing it. Most put their phones away. One didn’t — he stared at that thing all period long, day after day. I said something occasionally, but I didn’t waste my life fighting it.

Then one day, he walked up and asked if he could put his phone on my desk during class. At the end he told me, “I learned more today than I have in a long time. I didn’t think my phone mattered that much.” That moment shifted me.

A Test and a Choice

I was proctoring a standardized test recently. A student I didn’t know stood up and said, “I don’t want to take this test. Can I just leave?”

I told him, “You can do whatever you want. It’s your choice. But whatever you choose, there’s always a consequence.”

He said it was the best answer an adult had ever given him — and then he took the test.

What Happens When We Let Go

When we give kids choice, we give them power. Not chaos. Not disrespect. Not open rebellion. Power.

When I stopped controlling everything, the whole room relaxed. Students became accountable to themselves — not to me. And honestly? It feels damn good when a teenager chooses the right thing without pressure.

We Need Thinkers, Not Compliant Workers

We don’t need more compliant factory workers. We need thinkers, problem-solvers, young adults who know how to regulate their own behavior because they’ve practiced it — not because someone hovered over them for thirteen years.

Let Them Choose

Kids will enter a world full of distractions. No one is going to follow them around demanding they put their phones away. But if they learn the value of self-control for their own sake, they will carry that skill far beyond the walls of any classroom.

When I relinquished control, everything shifted: the class became collaborative, empowered, human. My life got easier. My students became more responsible.

I dare you. Free yourself. Give it to the kids.