“Leave your phone on”.

That’s how I started ever new semester with my USC students.

I said, I’m leaving my phone on and you can leave yours on, too.  But I’m not going to take calls or answer a lot of texts while I am with you teaching and you should do the same as you are learning.

Rules don’t work.

Responsibility does.

Keeping the phone in your pocket or purse during dinner, establishing a “no screen zone” a few hours before bed actually helps relationships and helps us get better sleep.

It also leads by example.

For those of us with children, it’s a bad example to scream at them when we should be taking ourselves to task.

I’m not giving up my smartphone any time soon and I’ll bet you aren’t either.

We must learn to integrate their advantages into our lives instead of let them take over.

In all my classes ever, not once did a student visibly abuse the privilege of being trusted to manage their own phones.  When it becomes a burden, we all know what to do.

It’s in our hands.

Control that which we can control – how we use our smartphones.

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