Over the course of one Tuesday in late May, Rabbi Josh Kahn, rosh yeshiva of Torah Academy of Bergen County (TABC), a Modern Orthodox yeshiva high school for boys in northern New Jersey, held meetings with both the parents and students of each grade individually to review the reasons behind the school’s decision to change its cell phone policy. Beginning this coming school year, TABC will for the first time become a cell phone-free environment.
“We care about the academic, religious, social, and emotional well being of our students,” Rabbi Kahn told The Jewish Press, “And find that this connection to a cell phone on an ongoing basis has been proven to be detrimental for each of those aspects.”
TABC is one of five Jewish high schools – also including Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls, Heichal HaTorah, and Yeshivat Frisch in Bergen County, New Jersey, and Yeshiva University High School for Boys (MTA) in Manhattan – that signed onto a joint email sent on May 20 announcing to parents that their campuses would become cell phone-free environments the coming school year. “This step reflects our shared belief that schools should be spaces where students can be fully present – with themselves, their peers, and their learning,” the email said.
Though each school will implement their policy differently, the five schools made the decision to go phone-free together, after a year’s worth of collaborative discussions and planning. Rabbi Kahn thinks having the schools send the email together was important. “It shifts it from being like, ‘Oh, this school is trying to address this issue that they feel exists, but maybe it’s really not such a big issue, or maybe not everyone agrees to that,’” he said, adding that he thinks it is important to show that multiple schools in the community “are on board with this problem and how to best approach it.”
At Ma’ayanot, the cell phone policy has evolved significantly over the last few years, but head of school CB Neugroschl said it was important for the school to take this step with other schools in Bergen County. “I’m really proud that the Bergen County high schools collaborate closely on sort of these big-ticket educational values initiatives,” she said. “Everyone does their research independently and thinks about how to implement [it] and what will it look like, and what’s the right rollout, and all of that.”
At TABC, the policy will shift from students giving in their phone only while in class and getting it back during breaks to handing it in when they enter school and getting it back only when they leave at the end of the day. At Ma’ayanot, cell phones had also previously been barred from the classroom, and the school last year was already taking strides to extend this cell phone-free environment to other times during the school day as well. Now, they will be going entirely phone-free during the school day, a policy stemming from the realization that “classrooms weren’t the only spaces where our educational values were formally being worked on,” according to Neugroschl.
TABC, Ma’ayanot, and the three other schools that signed onto the joint email will join dozens of others around the country that have gone or are going phone-free. Long before this month’s cell phone ban in New York City public schools, Jewish educators, prompted by emerging research, have confronted the impact that technology has on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents, and on their ability to learn in the classroom.
Deena Kobre, who has served as the head of school at Bergen County’s Naaleh High School for Girls since it opened in 2018, said her background and interest in psychology means Naaleh has been conscious of the problems surrounding technology since the beginning. “It’s really clear to me that there’s so many levels of how the technology has really rewired the brains of the kids who are using it, and so it really does change their communication patterns, their problem-solving patterns – everything,” she said. “And it’s not in a good way.”
Though Naaleh has been cell phone-free since it opened, their technology policy has shifted over time, Kobre explained. After a year or two, the school mandated a filter, of the parents’ choosing, on every student’s phone. In a recent email sent to Naaleh parents and students, the policy adjusted again, with students no longer allowed to have their phones during lunch, and school-issued Chromebooks no longer distributed to each student but used only “as needed in specific classes and returned at the end of the period.” Phone filters will now have to be selected from a list approved by the school.
Decisions like these, said Kobre, change the environment of the school. Taking phones away on the bus during school trips, for example, has transformed students’ experiences. The culture on school buses in the last decade has grown quieter and less friendly as handheld technology has advanced, but now, says Kobre, “they’re playing games and they’re talking, and one of the teachers is on the mic and they’re doing a trivia whatever, and it becomes a whole social experience, as opposed to a very isolated experience.”
Rabbi Kahn hopes to see a similar effect when TABC’s phone-free policy goes into effect when the school year begins. “I teach a double period of Gemara – the same group of students two consecutive periods,” he said. “In between periods, they get their phones, so instead of engaging with each other in between periods, they sit around staring at their phone, and [it’s] just wasted opportunity to socially engage.”
The goal of social interaction is at the heart of Ma’ayanot’s decision to go cell phone-free as well. By only banning cell phones in the classroom but not during breaks, Neugroschl said, they were limiting their students’ growth in this area. “We were still leaving [the negative impacts] in effect during some of the most precious developmental times, which is lunch, and free periods, breakfast – all the times that so much of community building and social interactions could happen,” she said.
In making these decisions, Rabbi Kahn, Kobre, and Neugroschl credited the research of Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of the influential 2024 book The Anxious Generation. Though he couldn’t be reached for an interview, Haidt has actually taken somewhat of a special interest in the world of Jewish education. According to his popular Substack newsletter “After Babel,” in 2022 Haidt met Caroline Bryk, who founded the Jewish Parents Forum of the Tikvah Fund, a Jewish nonprofit. Bryk invited Haidt to give a lecture for the forum featuring representatives from dozens of Jewish schools in December 2023, shortly before the release of Haidt’s book.
Of the many Jewish educators who were influenced by Haidt’s discussion of the problems technology poses for young people and how to solve them was Dr. Yoni Schwab, a clinical psychologist and the assistant head of school at the Shefa School, a Jewish K-8 school in Manhattan for children with language-based learning disabilities. “As a psychologist, a day school administrator, and a parent, I had been observing the negative impacts of screens on kids for years, but aside from counseling those around me to use them less, there was no coherent set of data or thoughtful strategy to approach the problem holistically,” said Dr. Schwab. He added that Haidt “concretized in clear research what I had understood intuitively.”
The Shefa Center, a division of the Shefa School, then began collaborating with Tikvah and Prizmah, a center that joins together Jewish day schools across North America, to, in Dr. Schwab’s words, “begin to rally our community for the difficult change work ahead.” Dr. Schwab has since spoken at more than two dozen Jewish day schools and yeshivot across the U.S. to facilitate discussions about healthy technology use. “It’s been a whirlwind to do that while still serving the community at the Shefa School, but the communities I visit seem to appreciate a voice from inside the Jewish community who can interpret the research and fast-moving trends and share how our community is making substantial changes already and really leading the way in our country on this topic,” he said of the experience.
“I like to say: If I wanted to invent a machine to generate anxiety and depression, I think I would invent a smartphone,” Dr. Schwab added. Rabbi Kahn and Kobre have likewise noted the impact technology has on kids’ ability to handle boredom, resolve conflict, and interact socially with others.
These problems all extend beyond the classroom setting, which is why even though dozens of Jewish day schools have gone or will be going phone-free, many have discovered that this is not far enough.
Change, they think, needs to be communal, not limited to the school day. One such school to understand this is Brauser Maimonides Academy (BMA), a Modern Orthodox K-8 school in South Florida. “Even though we were a phone-free campus, as a head of school I can’t tell you how many hours I was spending on dealing with issues of social media misuse and cyber-bullying, kids being exposed to things they shouldn’t be exposed to. It was almost on a weekly basis,” said BMA’s Rabbi Yoni Fein.
Haidt’s 2023 speech for Tikvah inspired Rabbi Fein to find solutions. “Until then, we just saw the issue as a school issue, like, ‘Let’s become a phone-free school, and the problem is solved,’ but if the kids have the phones at home and over the weekend, then all that’s going to funnel into school.” So, the school implemented a “Wait Past 8th” initiative, giving parents the option to sign a pledge saying they will wait until after their child graduates eighth grade to give them a smartphone or access to social media.
Jillian Gliksberg, a BMA mother who has always been passionate about healthy technology use when it came to her four sons, did not know about this plan before it was announced, but she was enthusiastic and wanted to get involved. Gliksberg had come to realize that if she really wanted to make an impact on the technology front, her advocacy had to extend beyond her own home. “I realized that it wasn’t enough that I felt a certain way, that you really needed social buy-in because it matters what your kids’ peers are doing when it comes to this,” she said. “So, it became something that I not only just felt in the home and encouraged in the home, but started speaking out about outwardly.”
When she heard about “Wait Past 8th,” she and other passionate parents realized, “Wow, there’s actually a partner here,” she said. “It’s not just having to talk amongst friends. The school notices it, sees it, and feels the same way.” Gliksberg and her friend and fellow BMA mother Alissa Kashani reached out to Rabbi Fein, and they soon became parent co-chairs of the “Wait Past 8th” initiative, meeting regularly with Rabbi Fein and other administrators, and organizing panels, speeches, and events at the school to raise awareness about the dangers of social media and technology for children.
“Wait Past 8th,” which according to Rabbi Fein “essentially inspires parents to take collective action themselves,” has been a huge success. Today, more than half of the families in each grade from kindergarten to fifth have signed the pledge. This over 50% benchmark is key: Once it is crossed for a specific grade, broken out by gender, the grade is considered “activated,” and BMA “will then publicize who those families are that signed up,” said Gliksberg. “The intention there isn’t to make anyone feel left out, but also to encourage others to be a part of it, and also to inform people who [are] a part of it, just so that you can kind of encourage people. It might impact the way people do things, and also to create that social pressure.”
Gliksberg, Kashani, and others at BMA also, through Rabbi Fein, became involved with the Tikvah Fund and its work on technology in Jewish education. They attended a Tikvah summit on the topic in 2024, which, Gliksberg said, “allowed us to make the connections and create community in a space that we thought we were kind of operating [in] individually.” BMA’s efforts, with the leadership of Rabbi Fein, Gliksberg, and Kashani, have expanded far beyond “Wait Past 8th.” “If people are passionate about it, they’re truly passionate about it, so we try to involve parents and parent committees and just continue coming up with ideas to have touchpoints, to get people to be a part of it and to want to learn more,” said Gliksberg.
This year, they are starting “No Tech Tuesdays,” where homework on Tuesday nights will require no technology, encouraging families to “not use any tech to help our children disconnect,” said Rabbi Fein. Last year, the school gave out copies of The Anxious Generation.
Parents and teachers at other schools have also played a role in making the issue of healthy technology use emanate outward from schools and influence the rest of children’s lives as well. Tamar Kahn, a teacher at the K-8 Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey (RYNJ) and wife of TABC head of school Rabbi Josh Kahn, has played a major role in a parent ambassador program responsible for creating new initiatives around technology. Through what she calls “parenting together,” the goal is “to create social norms for our children, to avoid the issue of kids coming and saying, ‘Everyone has, everyone does,’ because when we converse with other parents, we kind of know more about what everyone has and everyone does.”
One of these RYNJ initiatives, which Kahn said has around 95% participation, has been to create a device-free environment at bar and bat mitzvahs. This is “an opportunity for the children to really together without the barrier of having devices, and especially also the barrier of some people having devices and some people not having devices, which creates another added layer.” BMA has done something similar. “I think the norm now in our community is to have phone-free simchas without the school having to make a rule,” said Rabbi Fein. “It’s all the parents doing it on their own.”
“I’m really proud because I think that the community is really rallying around this idea of healthy childhood and healthy living,” he added.
At Yavneh Academy, a Modern Orthodox K-8 school in Bergen County, the attitude is also parent-driven. The school’s Healthy Tech committee, consisting of parents of students at the school, developed a Healthy Tech pledge to, like BMA, encourage parents to delay their children’s social media and smartphone usage until after graduation. “We knew that the only effective way forward was to make a big change together, as a community, to ensure a happier and healthier future for our children,” said Nava Krohn, the committee’s co-chair. “The Healthy Tech pledge provides like-minded parents a way to band together to delay smartphones and social media, with the knowledge and comfort that other parents in their children’s grades are making the same choice.”
The pledge, which Krohn said was developed after “debate within our own committee, speaking to many parents and members of Yavneh’s administrative and guidance team, and researching the similar efforts that have been made in other schools across the country, to varying degrees of success,” has led to an “enthusiastic” response from the Yavneh community.
“For the incoming 5th-7th grades, around 45-50% of parents have signed the pledge to delay smartphones and social media until after 8th grade,” said Krohn. “That number jumps to 60% for the incoming 3rd and 4th grades, and to 75% for the incoming 2nd grade.”
The conversation around the impacts of smartphones and technology has reached summer camps as well. NCSY’s Michlelet, an Israel program for high school girls, made their campus phone-free for the first time this summer, with girls having access to their phones only on trips and during designated hours at night. Alana Lewis, a head madricha (counselor) on Michlelet, said that the change was made in order to free the girls to more fully immerse themselves and engage in what Michlelet has to offer. She added that a lot of the girls were coming from phone-free schools anyway, so allowing them to have unrestricted phone access on Michlelet would have been “a setback in their phone usage because they all of a sudden had it all day, whereas in school, they didn’t have it.”
In Michlelet and across Jewish day schools, the results of changing technology policies have been remarkably positive. “The benefits that we’ve seen from the phone policy [are] out of this world. It’s such a massive change,” said Lewis. “The girls are present, and they’re expanding out of their friend groups more because they don’t only sit with their friends. They don’t have the clutch of their phones, but rather they’re almost forced to speak to different people when they’re sitting across from somebody that they don’t know.” Even girls who were skeptical at the beginning have come around, she added. “We’ve had so many girls come over to [me] and other head staff and thank us for the rule, say that it’s freeing their summer, that they’re actually able to engage and enjoy, and that they wouldn’t be able to do it the same way if they had their phones.”
The success of this policy has meant that Michlelet has expanded opportunities for girls to choose not to take their phones even when they are allowed to. “We want to empower them to be able to make positive phone choices where they feel like they’re in charge of their phone and their phone’s not in charge of them,” said Lewis.
Kobre has seen a similar response when she implements new technology policies at Naaleh, saying that this kind of structure is valuable for the girls. “Sometimes they push back and roll their eyes, say, ‘Oh, I wish we had our phones.’ But deep down, I actually think they appreciate it, and I think that comes from many, many conversations with students,” she said. “I do exit interviews with my seniors, and they’ll say, ‘You should have been stricter with us with the phones,’ ‘You should have taken the phones away more because it was so hard to make friends when everybody was on their phone,’ ‘I wish we didn’t have phones at all’ – those kinds of things – and it’s fascinating to hear the kids talk about that.” Both Lewis and Kobre said that Michlelet and Naaleh, respectively, have received numerous emails from parents thanking them for their phone-free environments. Ma’ayanot has seen a similarly enthusiastic response from parents since announcing its new policy.
A cell phone-free school experience isn’t so much about phones being taken away but about what will be gained as a result, said Neugroschl. “For us, the focus is building pro-social experiences for our students. So, we really spent a lot of time this summer investing in [asking] what does that look like?” she said. “It can’t just be what you’re losing. It has to be, what are you gaining? You’re gaining more opportunity to have connections with your friends.” This summer, Ma’ayanot invested in new patio furniture and bought new foosball and ping pong tables, as well as board games and digital cameras so students can still take pictures and “have their memories” from school. “It’s not about just getting away from your phones,” Neugroschl said. “It’s [that] when you’re away from your phones, you’ll have clearer opportunities to invest in the connections and the community.”
Gliksberg also hopes that setting boundaries around technology will help kids thrive. “We grew up in a world where we at least developed [social and emotional] skills before we were given these devices, so we are mature enough to be able to understand when it’s too much and when we have to kind of tweak our own behaviors with them,” she said. “Kids are growing up in a world today where they aren’t running around, they aren’t getting bruises, they aren’t making mistakes.” Limiting technology use in children, she thinks, can help solve this problem. “We don’t even have iPad time in our house. I just feel: Be with your siblings. Get bored. Boredom is a blessing.” This way, “when we implement these devices in their lives, they’ll at least know what life is like without it,” she said. “And they can kind of monitor their behaviors to know when it’s too much.”
For Kobre, Rabbi Kahn, and Rabbi Fein, these mental, social, academic, and emotional benefits are the reason they have enacted the policies they have; they aren’t really motivated by particular religious or hashkafic considerations. “I’m grateful to apply it in Jewish ways, but I think it benefits our kids…in so many ways, just being able to emotionally self-regulate and being calmer, and being able to work through problems and being able to focus for longer periods of time,” said Kobre. She added that these benefits are not exclusive to a Jewish setting.
“The approach we took is not to make it a religious issue,” said Rabbi Fein. “We really did make it about a mental health issue because that approach is inclusive of all types of people. We can use the lens of mental health to really tackle it.” Rabbi Kahn said, “We have been very adamant in how we describe this – that it’s not actually related to hashkafa at all,” adding that though religious development is important, this is primarily about mental health and well-being.
“At RYNJ… technology has always been regarded as a tool to help facilitate the learning, so it’s like index cards, dry erase boards, dice – it’s just a tool,” said Kahn. “And I think at home, the parents, through this program and just through their regular day-to-day parenting, are really trying to figure out how to use it at home like a tool as well.”
To do this requires everyone’s participation. “We need to start with ourselves – to face our own tech addictions,” said Dr. Schwab. “Can we stop using our phones when we’re with friends, family, and especially our children? Can we charge our phones on the other side of the bedroom and read a book before we fall asleep? Can we go to a restaurant with our kids and have them color or play cards or even talk to us while they wait rather than going on a screen? Can we have phone-free dinners every night, not just on Shabbat?”
He added, “When technology serves us rather than our serving technology, we will have found our balance again.”