When the 65 high schoolers who attend Buxton boarding school in Williamstown, Massachusetts, resumed in-person learning in the fall of 2020, Head of School Peter Beck noticed that the kids had lost something important.
After months of remote learning due to the pandemic, kids no longer knew how to interact with one another.
“The students had completely forgotten the basics of face-to-face interaction,” Beck, 33, told The Post. “They had spent so much time glued to their smartphones.”
A zombie-like transfixion to screens had been a rising issue for pupils even before the global health crisis, but post-quarantine, it was even worse, the administrator said. “The students struggled to converse with one another, the ability to be with or sit with other people was completely gone.”
“Everybody’s attention was being sucked into their online lives — text messages, emails and social media apps — on their phones,” added Beck, a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper East Side.
So in the spring of 2022, Beck, alongside Buxton’s tightknit staff of 15, decided to take drastic measures: They issued a ban of all smartphones.
The institution-wide embargo prohibits both students and staffers from having their iPhones and Androids on the school’s 114-acre campus. It took effect at the beginning of the academic year this past September, and, thus far, it’s been on overwhelming success.
“The students are thriving. They have adjusted so well to the change,” Beck said. “[Life without being chained to their smartphones] is something I think a lot of them knew they needed, but didn’t know was actually possible.”
Of course, teens — and even some adults — were initially none too thrilled about ditching gadgets. One outraged family even withdrew their child from the school.
“Some students were really scared,” Beck said, remembering how kids anxiously gripped their phones during the announcement in dread. “They couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not have this device that has become a crucial part of every second of their lives.”
Pupils who live nearby must leave their phones at home, while those who board have had their devices locked away in the school coordinator’s office until the end of the semester. But the students aren’t totally disconnected.
Each member of the Buxton community was gifted a Light Phone, a sleek gadget with minimal features made by a Brooklyn company. It can make and receive calls and rudimentary texts but, according to its website, it “will never have social media, clickbait news, email, an internet browser, or any other anxiety-inducing infinite feed.”
Students can also still access social media on desktop computers at the end of the school day, if they desire.
The ban has had a positive impact on both academic and social life at the school.
“Everyone’s ability to be present has gone way up, and it helps everything,” Beck said. “They’re spending more time doing academic work, creatively expressing themselves through art, getting to know one another and getting to know themselves.”
While the Light Phone does allow the students to text, Buxton’s Senior Director Franny Shuker-Haines said it seems less appealing to do on the phone, which has a matte screen and tiny keyboard. Kids no longer seem to be sneaking away to send digital messages.
“One of our most veteran teachers noticed that kids are asking to go to the bathroom less often,” said Shuker-Haines, noting that some students find the Light Phone’s keyboard challenging to use. “Our theory is that they would go to the bathroom to text and check TikTok or whatever.”
Neither Shuker-Haines nor Beck are worried that the benefits of their experiment will be lost on the student body during Buxton’s upcoming three-week winter break.
“The world is always going to have technology, and we’re not trying to completely take that away from our students,” Beck said. “We just want them to experience being present, here on campus and back at home, without the constant dinging of their phones.”
