I am SO EXCITED to share our “Away For The Day” initiative. Today, the Screenagers’ team and I are officially launching a website-based initiative to promote middle schools to adopt policies where phones are put away for the day in places like lockers. We have worked for many months on this and the site is full of super cool resources and videos to empower anyone to make changes.  

Would you take 2 seconds to PLEDGE at AwayForTheDay.org to show your support of this initiative? OUR IMMEDIATE GOAL is to to get 1,000 pledges by March 31st, so when we go to news outlets we can show them how much parents, teachers, principals, and others care about this issue! Please share via social, email and word of mouth.

Thanks to the many of you who participated in our national survey, we learned that 55% of middle schools let students carry phones all day, yet 82% of parents do not want their kids using phones at school. The science supports parents when it comes to academic success and emotional well-being for middle schoolers. Inspired by the science and what you told us you wanted, we created Away For The Day.

For today’s Tech Talk Tuesday here are some questions:

1. What upsides can you see for middle schoolers if they had their phones away for the day?
2. Which of your friends, family members or work colleagues seem to have a constant need to be checking their phone or looking at a screen? Who do you know who doesn’t seem to be pulled by screens in the same way?
3. When middle schools do allow students to carry phones, do you think that the students who, for whatever reason, have a particularly hard time not checking their phone, are at a minor or major disadvantage?
4. Thank you again for sharing the website with your community so that they will pledge and get all the free resources.

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As well as our weekly blog, we publish videos like this one every week on the Screenagers YouTube channel