We feel like we’re in the 1980s again.

That’s what lunch monitors told Bethlehem Central High School principal Dave Doemel this fall, after the school — in the suburbs of Albany, N.Y. — implemented a total mobile phone ban.

Bethlehem students now have to keep all electronics in a locked pouch for the entire school day — a change of policy that was “completely transformational” from the first week, Doemel told me when I visited the school.

He gestured to the cafeteria in front of us as though to a miracle. Clusters of chatting students made a hum punctuated by the clatter of trays and the squeak of chairs. It seemed totally normal to me. But that could be because the last time I was in a high school cafeteria at lunchtime was … in the 1980s.

I am usually wary of complaints that frame the past as the standard and the present as some dangerous deviation from it. When alarms sound about marriage rates falling or teenagers coming out as nonbinary or Gen Z leaving religion in droves, I wonder instead how many people used to marry for lack of other options or conform to rigid gender norms despite their discomfort or stay in church even though they didn’t feel like they belonged.

The past, familiar as it is, was not necessarily better.

So it is with some reluctance that I say: Kids these days are on their cellphones too much. A recent Gallup poll shows teens spend an average of nearly five hours a day just on social media — not including games and texts. A report by Common Sense Media finds teens check their phones an average of more than 100 times a day.

All that screen time is bad for adolescent mental health. Cellphone use jeopardizes social interaction and weaponizes bullying. Cellphones are also distracting. Even when they’re not being used, they’re sitting at the ready in pockets and backpacks saying, “Hey! Hey! Hey! Look at me!” That makes it tough to concentrate on anything, let alone Applied Geometry.

Schools — and now some states — increasingly try to contain the damage by restricting phones in class. That’s what Bethlehem tried first. But classroom distraction isn’t the only problem. According to Doemel, because of phones outside class, every in-school dispute was recorded and posted, every insult or provocation was shared, gathering strength as it pinged around the apps.

So he pushed for a total ban, and the school board voted unanimously in favor. Parents were concerned — that they wouldn’t be able to reach their children during the school day or that their children would be cut off in an emergency. But they can still call the office or even email. All the students have Chromebooks, and all the classrooms have phones that can dial 911.

There was also resistance from some teachers, who protested that students should be treated like adults. It’s a pretty common argument: We’re leaving students unprepared for life if we fail to teach them self-control and good judgment.

But how can we possibly prepare students to battle technology that is designed to be addictive? Adults can’t resist them, either.

The question isn’t whether kids these days are addicted to their phones, or whether that addiction affects their mental health, their social skills and their community. Of course they are, and of course they do. The question is whether we are willing to use schools to try to break that addiction. Or at least to give kids a seven-hour break from it, 180 days a year.