Pinterest wants teens to stop using its app during school
hours.
The social media company has begun testing a new prompt designed to remind students that “Focus is a beautiful thing” and to “Stay in the moment by putting Pinterest
down and pausing notifs [sic] until the school bell rings.”
The prompt is targeted at “millions” of users between the ages of 13 and 17 between the hours of 8 AM and 3 AM,
Monday through Friday, across the U.S. and Canada.
While other major platforms have issued prompts to remind younger users to take a break or check their safety settings, Pinterest says it is the first platform to test a
“proactive” feature to help students pay attention in class.
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Earlier this year, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready -- an early supporter of the Kids Online Safety Act -- publicly endorsed
phone-free school policies, proposing that U.S. regulators implement a national digital ID system to verify users' ages.
Following select countries in Europe, New York is close to enforcing a
statewide ban on the use of phones in schools -- also known as a “bell-to-bell” restriction.
Along with its student-focused prompt, Pinterest is giving a $1 million grant to the
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to “support school leaders in creating a healthy digital culture in their schools.”
According to the company, the grant
will pay for task forces in a dozen states to help create policies that “improve students’ digital wellbeing.”
Research shows that limiting social media use has a beneficial
effect on people’s well being, but nudging users to do so must be done in an effective way. Reminding students to take a break everyday within the same time frame may feel intrusive or generic
to users, or they may become easy to ignore.
Factors like these are likely what Pinterest will be testing for moving forward.
“At Pinterest, we believe that schools can take
advantage of all that technology has to offer students, while minimizing the harms and distractions,” says Wanji Walcott, Pinterest's chief legal and business affairs officer. “Tech
companies need to work together with teachers, parents, and policymakers to build solutions that ensure in the hands of our students, smartphones are tools, not distractions.”