Yondr has been in the news a lot recently.
These phone jails, meant to “alleviate the intrusion of personal technology to create vital, distraction-free experiences that enrich people’s lives,” according to the Yondr website, are becoming more and more present in schools across the country. This drastic increase in customers can be attributed to a recent legislation banning personal electronic devices (PEDs) in schools.
According to ballotpedia.com, 27 US states, including Georgia, have passed statewide bans on the use of PEDs during the school day within the past year. As a result, many schools have adopted Yondr pouches to house students’ phones during instructional time. Yondr claims its product improves engagement, behavior, and performance. But these products are not cheap.
With prices around $30 per pouch, costs can add up fast.
Atlanta’s Midtown High School has over 1,500 students, each of whom receives one Yondr pouch paid for by the school. These numbers suggest that the district may have spent around $45,000 on Yondr pouches for current students alone. The school system is projected to need nearly $550 million more than it will have over the next five years to continue operating as it does now, as reported by The Center for Civic Innovation. This raises the question of whether Yondr is truly a practical solution, functionally and financially.
Lena M, a freshman at Midtown High School, explained the policy, saying that, “All phones and other personal electronic devices must be put in a Yondr pouch (…) and they must remain in the Yondr pouch until the end of the day.”
As may be expected, this isn’t a very popular policy. Despite what some assume, many students aren’t upset about losing scrolling or TikTok time — they see it as a safety issue. “Generally, students think it’s unsafe,” Lena says. “Because they think what if they need to contact a parent or something and (…) their phone is locked away in a Yondr pouch and they can’t.”
In theory, the policy is enforced when “a teacher or any administrator sees you on your phone, [they] take it.” This part of the policy is arguably the real thing keeping students off their phones, because the pouches themselves haven’t proved successful at preventing those who want to use their phones from doing so.
Lena says, “They’re useless, and they don’t really do anything,” adding, “People that are really, really dedicated to getting their phones, they break [the pouches] open, they cut them open, they just don’t use them.” They are so ineffective that, in less than four months at Midtown, she has seen “people recording TikToks in bathrooms, once even in libraries.”
Another freshman at Midtown High, Nate L., researched students’ perceptions of Yondr pouches for his science fair. By surveying 30 people at the school and asking each to rank how much they liked Yondr pouches, he found that people generally didn’t like them, with an average rating of 4 out of 10.
Of the 30 students he surveyed, 14 said that phones are a problem in school, and an additional 12 said something along the lines of ‘they are a problem sometimes.’
In his survey, Nate asked about alternative solutions to the Yondr pouches; the participants expressed a desire for a more human approach: “A lot of people said leave it up to the teachers to take the phones,” Nate said.
After conducting his survey, Nate felt that the policy works in terms of being universal for the whole school, acting as a kind of deterrence, “even if people don’t use them, they don’t put their phones in the pouch. For example, they’re still not gonna have their phones out most of the time.” However, it is an expensive deterrent, “the pouches themselves [are] expensive (…) not every school can afford that.”
Not all schools are as strict about students’ phone use. Gabi W, a freshman at Druid Hills High School, explains that, “You’re supposed to have [your phone] away during class and stuff, but you can have it out during lunch.”
While it may seem counterintuitive, the relaxed nature of these policies may be precisely what makes them effective. Gabi says, “They don’t have to sneak it as much (…) they know they have the option to look at it.” This results in kids “only [using] their phones for emergencies or if they’re really bored and done with all their work.”
Another school, Decatur High School, has a similarly relaxed phone policy. According to freshman Ian K, “We can’t use phones in class, but we can have them, and we can bring them around (…) in every class group we have to drop off our phones and like a cubby kind of thing, and then we can grab them back after each class group.”
When asked if this solution was effective at keeping kids off their phones, Ian replied, “Yeah, for sure! There aren’t a lot of people who are on their phones at all.”
Like Druid Hills, the student perception of this policy is generally positive; in fact, Ian thinks many students actually enjoy it. “We can communicate with our family like after each class group, or just communicate with each other, so I think it’s a pretty good policy, and I think most students would agree.”
Atlanta is an economically diverse place, having both some of the richest and poorest schools in the state. This wealth can correlate with school performance. Some schools have as few as 3% of students proficient in reading and math, such as Hank Aaron’s New Beginnings Academy. On the other hand, Midtown High School is ranked the #2 high school in APS and has proficiency rates over 50% in both reading and math. Money spent on phone pouches in high-performing schools could just as easily fund enrichment programs where students need them most.
