Are popular phone stashers worth the money?

This article is one of the winning submissions from the New York Post Scholars Contest, presented by Command Education.

Picture this:

It’s 9:30 in the morning and kids are in their first class of the day. Clank! Clank! Clank! This is heard all throughout the halls: kids slamming their Yondr pouches on the ground, on their lockers, in bathroom stalls, against the walls and on any other hard surface they could find. It sounds like someone is taking a baseball bat and swinging it into a wall. All of this energy to hopefully break open their pouches so that they can take their phones out. But guess what…Even though this is a main rule of the school, students don’t care and will stop at nothing to retrieve their phones.

For those that are wondering what a Yondr pouch is, let me define it. A Yondr pouch is a small container or bag that you put your phone inside of and then close it but it can’t be reopened without using a special magnetic “key.” Schools use Yondr pouches to give students the opportunity to have a better education and also to allow students to be able to focus better in class without their phones distracting them. As we know this generation is so locked in on their phones that the knowledge that they get in school doesn’t stick in their mind so they lose focus while having their phones. Yondr pouches are helpful in school because they help students stay focused in class and improve their grades along with less distractions. Also, they keep people in tune with the class because their phones are not there to distract them.

But Yondr pouches are also useless because at 9:30 in the morning there are five students in one bathroom stall trying to open up the Yondrs by slamming them against the inside of the stall. Clank! Clank! Clank! They slam them hard on the ground in order to break it open to gain access to their phones. All of this work so they can spend time in the bathroom with their phone out of the Yondr pouch making tik toks and not coming right back to class. It has become a common thing in my school to wait 20, 30, 40 minutes to go to the bathroom because someone is “using it” but really they are trying to break out their phones. That bathroom pass is a precious commodity.Students just don’t care because they know that the teachers don’t care if their phones are in or out the Yondr pouch. Students know that if they don’t get caught with their phones the teachers can’t take them. But if they do manage to get caught with their phone the teacher has to take it till the end of the day and that’s when they get it back. To get a bunch of different perspectives on whether or not Yondr pouches are helpful or totally pointless, I interviewed some students and teachers to get a variety of different perspectives. I asked them these questions:

Do you like Yondr pouches?

Do you find them helpful or useless?

Here is what they said:

An 11th-grader named Jenayah says “Yondr pouches are useless because kids still find a way to gain access to their phones. At this point the students at Achievement First Ujima High School will basically do anything to gain access to their technology after putting their phones in the pouch.”

A teacher named Mr. Yearwood at Ujima High school says “Yondr pouches are useful because you don’t really need to use your phones in class and they don’t really help you. If anything they make it harder for the knowledge that you get in class to actually sink in your mind.”

Another teacher named Ms. G says, “Yondr pouches are useful because cell phones and technology are designed to be distractions for kids so Yondr pouches bring a huge improvement to our students. Kids from last school year have improved their grades in a major way.”

A 10th-grader named Shanya says, “Yondr pouches are useless and a waste of money because kids are breaking/forcing them open to get to their phones because they can’t be away from it.”

A teacher named Ms. Christie says “The Yonder pouches are a great addition if used correctly in the school building. Students are more focused and it removes the immediate conflicts in school because the information does not get to the designated student(s) until the day is over.”

A student at Ujima high school who goes by “The Way Out” say, “Yondr pouches are a waste of time because they get broken and us students still find a way to open them. They are a waste of money.”

Another teacher at Ujima high school named Mr. Kantor says, “Yondr pouches are a waste of money because kids are just damaging them and still finding ways to use their electronics even though they’re not supposed to. It doesn’t make sense that the school is spending all this money to buy these pouches because students are either breaking them or forcing them open to get to their phones. I think a better solution would be to have some system where we collect everyone’s phones and keep them in a locker. I’ve heard of other schools doing this successfully and I totally think we could implement something like that.”

The principal at Ujima high school named Ms. Effah says, “Yondr pouches are purposeful if students believe and understand that it’s not a punishment, it’s a discipline to show students that we care about their education and they should too because their phones are a distraction so without them in the way their grades are improved.”

The majority of the students that I have interviewed believe that Yondr pouches are a waste of time and money. According to CBS News and other news outlets, it costs schools on average $25-30 per Yondr pouch. So if a school has a few hundred students, plus all of the extras they keep, that costs already over $10,000 which could have been used for other things like school dances, field trips, snacks for the students, better lunches…to just name a few (like actually buying us real pizza. Cough Cough Ms. Effah).

Yondr pouches are both helpful and useless because while student grades are improving and attention is up in class the Yondr pouches are not really effective because kids are still finding a way to get access to their phones or airpods and while that doesn’t relate to everybody it is definitely about 80% of kids who still find ways to use their phones in class.

Another benefit of Yondr pouches is that it does allow students to interact with their peers more during lunch, classes and throughout the hallways. They are less likely to fail classes because they don’t have their electronics to distract them and therefore their school work and grades improve.

So are Yondr pouches helpful or a complete waste? It’s both. On the one hand, their restrictive nature brings concerns about student autonomy, emergency access and the effectiveness of forced discipline but, as was mentioned a bunch, they do help students focus more, increase socialization, and help with getting better grades.

Schools should consider alternative methods to promote a healthier, more sustainable approach to phone use because I’m tired of waiting 30 minutes to use the bathroom and I’m tired of hearing the obsessive clank! clank! clank! all day, everyday.

A 10th-grader at Achievement First Ujima High School in Brooklyn, Dyall hopes to be a pediatric nurse one day.