Want more Jeff Edelstein? Head over to jeffedelstein.substack.com New Jersey recently handed out almost a million dollars in grants to help schools go phone-free. Let me say that again: We are spending nearly a million dollars to teach children to put something in a locker. This is where we are. We invented a device so addictive that we now need taxpayer-funded equipment to keep it away from 12-year-olds. The solution is a Yondr pouch, a tiny fabric prison with a magnetic lock. A little phone sleeping bag your kid can’t open until dismissal. It exists because we have collectively failed as a civilization. And I am 100% in favor of it. My 16-year-old is a junior. His district went phone-free this year. He hates it. “What if there’s an emergency?” Ah yes. The Emergency. The thing that has never happened, but is always about to happen. The thing that can only be solved with immediate access to Snapchat. “What if something happens and I need to call you?” Kid, you’re in a building full of adults with phones. The office has phones. The nurse has phones. If something actually happens, the school will call me the way schools have been calling parents since before we were all carrying supercomputers in our pockets. But that’s not what he’s worried about. He’s worried about missing stuff. Texts. Memes. Notifications. Group-chat drama so urgent you’d think the NATO alliance depended on it. And that’s exactly why the phone needs to be sealed in a pouch. But daaaaaad! Full disclosure: I’m addicted to my phone. Completely. Embarrassingly. I check it constantly. I scroll while watching TV, which means I’m not actually watching TV, I’m just sitting near a TV while staring at a rectangle. I pick it up, look at nothing, put it down, and then pick it up again 30 seconds later like I’m checking to see if the laws of physics have changed. So sure, my kid could look at me and say, “You’re on yours all the time.” And he’d be right. But I’m also right. I can be the cautionary tale and the guy giving the warning. That’s parenting. “Do as I say, not as I do” gets mocked, but sometimes it’s just the most honest thing you can tell a kid: I let this thing eat my brain. Don’t let it eat yours. And since you’re 16 and your judgment is still under construction, we’re removing the choice. Now, about the money. Newark got $176,625. Trenton got $55,573. Other districts got smaller amounts. Some charters got their share too. The pot is around $980,000. And what do we buy with it? Pouches. Lockers. “Check-in cabinets.” Staff training. Staff. Training. We are now training adults on how to take phones from children. There is a professional development session somewhere right now where a grown person is learning Best Practices for telling a 13-year-old to hand over an iPhone. This is insane. This is also completely necessary. Because here’s the dirty secret: schools were afraid to do this. Not because they didn’t know phones were wrecking attention spans — they knew. They’ve known. They were afraid of the blowback. Afraid of the parents. Afraid of the complaints. Afraid of the “what about emergencies” crowd. So the state basically said: Fine. Here’s money. Buy the pouches. We’re giving you cover. Good. Whatever works. If it takes a million bucks to give schools the backbone to do the obvious thing, spend it. It might be the best million bucks New Jersey spends all year. Dictators can be good! And can we talk about how weird it is that we even needed to get here? We tell kids what to eat. When to sleep. Where to be. What time to be home. We control virtually every part of their lives because they are children and we are the adults and that’s the deal. We are not their friends. We are benevolent dictators. Sometimes not so benevolent. And yet, with phones, we pretended we were powerless. We handed them a dopamine slot machine and acted surprised when they couldn’t stop pulling the lever. We watched them get anxious and distracted and half-present and we said, “Well, we can’t just take it away. That would be mean.” Yes. It would be mean. Do it anyway. Here’s my modest proposal: Make this a national law. No phones in school. Honestly? Trump should just do it with an executive order. Yeah, yeah, constitution, federalism, local control — save it. You can argue about that on your phone at home. After school. Ban phones in every school in America. K-12. Done. It would be the single most popular thing any president has done in the last decade. Democrats would support it. Republicans would support it. People who haven’t agreed on a single thing since Washington’s first term would look at each other and say, “Yeah, OK, this is correct.” My youngest is 11. She’s not in middle school yet. And I’m hoping that by the time she gets there, this is just normal. Boring. Obvious. No phones in school. Like no smoking in the cafeteria. Like no dirt bikes in the hallway. And my 16-year-old, who currently thinks I’m ruining his life because I support a policy that makes him lock his phone in a tiny fabric sleeping bag for seven hours a day … well, he’ll survive. He’ll get over it. And maybe he’ll learn something in third period instead of scrolling through whatever fresh brain rot the algorithm cooked up for him that morning. Ban the phones. Lock them in the pouches. Spend the money. Save the children. Even the ones who don’t want to be saved. ...read more read less