A multicolored Shark Watch, one of the most popular digital watches for teens, on high-school sophomore Zella’s wrist.
Photo: Stevie Remsberg
“I feel like it started with only me, but now it’s like half of the kids in my grade, or maybe more,” says eighth-grader Pippi of the analog Timex she’s been wearing to school since New York’s “bell-to-bell” phone ban took effect. She got the watch this summer to wear while she was away at a no-phones-allowed summer camp; when she brought it to school after the first day of the ban, she soon became the timekeeper for her friend group. But now, just a couple weeks into the school year, nearly all of her peers have gotten watches of their own.
The statewide ban — which officially applies to New York public schools, though many private institutions have put similar policies in place — covers a range of smart devices, including Apple Watches. So most kids’ phones and watches are locked up or stored all day, rendering students completely screen-free — and by extension, nearly clock-free — from around 8:30 a.m. to 2:40 p.m.
“I think on the second day of school, our homeroom teacher was trying to teach us how to read the wall clock. Some kids don’t know how to read the hands,” Pippi told me. By day four, once everyone had started to understand more about how the phone ban would work, the number of watches on her friends’ wrists had started to multiply.
“The date and the day of the week are really important in class, but nobody seems to know what day it is and neither do the teachers,” adds Zella, Pippi’s older sister who’s a high-school sophomore. Zella wears a Shark Watch, one of the most popular brands among teens. Like her sister, Zella got her watch this summer before going away to camp — and has been relying on it more and more when she’s without her phone during school, where being without access to a clock is a clear source of anxiety.
“Not being able to tell the time sucks,” Zella says. “Everyone always wants to know when class is going to end. Usually, kids’ phones were either in their lap or in their bag or in their pocket, and they’d just glance at the time and then put it back down, or they’d have reminders set at the end of each period so that they could keep track of the time,” she explains. “A lot of kids just look kind of lost. People are standing around doing nothing in the hallways. Earlier today, before she even asked me the time, my friend just rolled up my sleeve to see if she could check my watch.”
Another more practical challenge is that many schools allow older students to go off campus for lunch but don’t let them take their devices with them. Before the ban, these students could use their phone or watch to check the time and pay for their food with Apple Pay. Now, unless they have a regular watch or a friend with one, it’s suddenly more difficult to make sure they get back to class on time. I heard from writer Alexandra Lange, whose 14- and 18-year-old sons each have Casio digital watches — “no analog, they consider that too much trouble” — that her younger son, a ninth-grader, told her, “Every friend group needs one kid who has a watch. I’m the watch guy.”
Over the weekend, my sister-in-law texted me that a friend’s high-school-age daughter has been wearing her mom’s vintage Cartier watch because of the phone ban. Even 17-year-old influencer Allegra Pinkowitz — who tells me that at her school, a lot of kids turn in fake phones every morning so that they can keep clandestine access to their devices during the day — has noticed many of her friends buying Shark watches and is thinking about getting one for herself.
As for simply referring to the wall clocks on campus, Charlotte, a Brooklyn senior who also wears a Shark (she initially bought hers to wear while working as a junior counselor at a YMCA camp), says they are often off by a few minutes, so she doesn’t consider them reliable. And at Zella’s school on Governors Island, “all of the clocks in the building are in the worst spots possible,” she says. “The other day a teacher asked me what time it was, which I thought was interesting.”
Charlotte’s Shark watch.
Photo: Liza Corsillo
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