part 1:Context

Background: The Dais’ “Heads Up” initiative

Launched in 2024 by the Dais at Toronto Metropolitan University, Heads Up is a Canada-wide campaign to reclaim focus, learning and real connection by going “phone free” at school, from bell to bell. It is centred on the belief that, with less distraction, students are free to think, join in, work together, and thrive.

Heads Up is tackling this urgent challenge by:

• Mobilizing for phone-free classrooms, supporting parents, educators, school boards, and governments with information, policy guidance, training, and impact tracking on phone restrictions in K–12 classrooms across Canada.
• Leading a Youth Champions Program, equipping high school students in every province to engage their peers and advocate for positive change around school phone policies and build healthier digital habits.

Why schools are restricting phones and personal devices

There has been a growing movement in Canada and internationally to reduce the use of phones and personal digital devices in classrooms, as evidence grows about the harms of excessive use. Phones, tablets, and similar electronic devices can be valuable learning tools, but their use has resulted in harmful distractions that negatively impact student well-being and success.

All provincial governments have introduced some form of restriction on students’ use of phones and personal digital devices at school, tasking school boards, school leaders and educators with carrying them out. Common rationales for these policies include:

• Improving classroom engagement: International evidence confirms that phones can be a major source of distraction that interrupts learning, reduces attention spans, and fragments the classroom environment.
• Repairing school culture: Research suggests that activities like cyberbullying spill over into school hours, corroding school culture.
• Improving mental health: Excessive phone use has been linked to adverse psychological effects, such as depression and disrupted social development among children and adolescents.
• Encouraging physical activity: Evidence shows that screen-based sedentary behaviours (such as reduced physical activity, sitting for long periods) are associated with reduced sleep duration and quality, and may also contribute to long-term health risks.
• Combatting internet addiction: About two-fifths of Canadians aged 15 to 24 (42 per cent) reported spending 20 hours or more per week on general internet use in 2022, the highest among all age groups.

These findings inform four companion tools that this guide references:

• Policy Comparison Map: an interactive, province-by-province snapshot of the rules in place.
• Policymaker Playbook: guidance for policymakers to refine and implement balanced phone restriction policies.
• Implementation Guide: a practical resource for school leaders, principals, and educators with clear steps, routines, and ready-to-use tools to implement full-day phone-free policies.
• Roundtable Reflections: key themes and takeaways from cross-provincial discussions hosted by the Dais to better understand opportunities and challenges of early implementation of phone restrictions in schools.

Objectives and Curriculum Alignment

This teaching guide offers activities that reflect provincial curriculum expectations and learning outcomes. It is guided by a belief that phone restrictions are more effective and sustainable where they are clearly explained, consistently applied, and have student buy-in and input.

Each activity aims to encourage understanding, inquiry, and personal reflection about the rationale for, and application of, school phone policies, as well as broader intersecting digital wellness issues. The activities further aim to equip students to build habits for critical thinking and digital well-being, generally aligned to two curriculum subject areas that are common across all 10 provinces:

• Health curriculum, with the objective to engage with social deprivation, mental health, youth development, classroom performance, digital footprint management, and building healthy digital habits as they relate to school device restrictions.
• Literacy/English/French curriculum, with the objectives to understand the importance of media consumption and of acquiring information from a variety of sources; furthermore, to develop the critical skills needed to evaluate, authenticate, and critique information encountered online.

The following table outlines the common expectations for each, linking to the relevant curriculum documents for each province.

*Some curriculum expectations fall under different subjects

**This is not a comprehensive list of all of the French curriculum alignment across provinces

Other Resources

• Canadian Paediatric Society: Centre for Healthy Screen Use
• Phone-Free Schools Movement: Administrator Hub
• Unplugged Canada: Smartphone Pledge 
• Rogers Screen Break: How to manage family screen time + Tips for talking about screen time
• COMPASS System research platform on youth health and school-based prevention (University of Waterloo)
• MediaSmarts:  Building Better Tech Habits: A Guide to Digital Well-being
• Digital Futures for Children (UK): Smartphone Policies in Schools
• Stanford and NYU (US): Toolkit for Assessing Phones in Schools (The TAPS)