Actively locking up students' phones in schools can have several negative effects, including:

1. Increased Anxiety and Distrust: Students may feel anxious or distrustful if their personal property is taken away, potentially leading to resentment toward school policies and staff.

2. Lack of Access to Educational Tools: Smartphones can be valuable educational tools, providing access to educational apps, online resources, and research materials. Locking them up can limit students' ability to use these resources. Chromebooks are highly restrictive leaving information not to be found.

3. Safety and Communication Concerns: In emergencies, students and parents may need to communicate quickly. Locking up phones can delay important communications, causing safety concerns and increased anxiety for both students and parents.

4. Loss of Responsibility and Self-regulation: Taking away phones can prevent students from learning how to manage their own screen time and develop self-regulation skills. Responsible phone use is an important skill for adulthood.

5. Negative Impact on Mental Health: For some students, not having access to their phones can increase stress and negatively impact mental health, especially if they use their phones to stay connected with support networks.

6. Potential for Theft or Damage: Collecting and storing phones in a central location increases the risk of theft or damage, leading to potential conflicts and issues for the school administration.

7. Inequity Issues: Not all students rely on their phones in the same way. For some, phones are essential tools for managing medical conditions, caring for family members, or other critical functions. Locking up phones may disproportionately affect these students.

8. Disruption of Learning: Implementing and enforcing phone-locking policies can be disruptive to the learning environment, taking away valuable class time and causing unnecessary stress for both students and teachers.

From Concerns from Students:

If there's a school shooting or a similar emergency, parents will want to know if their students are okay. The school cannot possibly verify the safety of thousands of children to their parents during an emergency, which is why it is so important that students are able to do that themselves.

Teachers will not take the time to unlock these "phone cases" during a crisis, leaving children stranded. Some of which, mind you, are miles away from home, with no way to contact help.

What are students going to do if something happens to the teacher who is supposed to be their lifeline to the outside world? What are they going to do if their teacher has a medical emergency and they need to contact 911? Who is going to even REPORT these emergencies if the first eyes on the scene, the students, are unable to contact anyone themselves or call for help.

Taking away student's phones is well within the school's rights, and I understand why they would want to do so, in order to maintain the focus of their students, but taking away phones only treats the symptoms of students' unwillingness to learn, entirely disregarding the root cause of the issue.

Taking away phones so that students focus is the equivalent of treating a poisoned water supply by banning thirst. Furthermore, students who are on their phones during class were not going to focus in the first place. Kids being distracted during class has been an issue for over a hundred years, with cellphones only being another outlet for this issue, not the cause of it.

What do you think disengaged students are going to do when you take away their phones? Well I can tell you that it WON'T make them magically adopt some newfound passion for education. They're going to act out! They're going to talk to their friends, literally do anything BUT focus!  If anything, it would cause an even greater distraction for those who actually WANT to learn.  

Kids who do not want to pay attention during class will not pay attention. Period. Regardless of whether or not they have their phones. They say "You can bring a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink" The same philosophy applies to education as well.

Taking away phones to increase productivity is a frivolous, tyrannical endeavor that endangers not only the safety of its students, but fully exemplifies the fact that the faculty views its students as nothing more than a statistic.

Because, let's be honest Lincoln High School, that's the only reason they're implementing this policy: to increase their numbers. If God forbid there were an incident at Lincoln High School, there is absolutely no way teachers are taking the time to unlock these "phone cases". Is a potential 10% increase in productivity really worth a parent potentially not being able to hear the last words of their child? I guess we already know their answer.

-Anonymous student