A phone-free prom night

For Saahil Mishra, student body president at Lick-Wilmerding, the elite private high school in Ingleside, this year’s prom was the culmination of a dream. The theme was Enchanted Forest, complete with an ice cream sundae bar, a tarot reader, a glitter tattoo station, and a band, all set inside San Francisco’s golden-domed City Hall. 

But while Mishra looked appropriately classy in a tuxedo with a navy blue bow tie and shiny shoes, one item was conspicuously missing from his fit: a smartphone. At every other prom he’s attended, phones were everywhere. Kids would dance with them in hand, snapping pics and sharing Instagram Stories and Snapchats. “Phones are so core to the prom experience,” Mishra said.

This year, he spearheaded something different: a prom devoid of phones. Though the devices were not outright banned, students were encouraged to get them tagged, bagged, and stored in “Phone Home” lockers beside the entrance. Anyone who stored their phone received a wristband that was also a raffle ticket.

Phone-free proms and dances have been tried before at schools in states including Connecticut, Illinois, Colorado, and Wisconsin, but all these efforts were adult-led. Lick-Wilmerding’s screen-free prom was the first that originated with the student body. Around half of the 250 kids handed in their phones, according to one teacher. Even more wanted to participate, Mishra said, but the check-in line got too long.

Across the U.S., schools have been struggling to address the growing problems posed by phones, which research shows contribute to rising youth anxiety, cyberbullying, and poor grades. In 2019, California lawmakers passed a bill encouraging schools to limit in-school phone use. Some have banned phones altogether, though most just discourage them in the classroom. Amid this, there has been a growing teenager-led movement to go phone-free. 

Mishra had been thinking about screen fatigue for a while. In 2022, he founded Unwiring, an organization advocating for “responsible” teen social media use, and joined the teen advisory board of #HalfTheStory, a Bay Area-based nonprofit focused on reshaping teens’ relationship with technology. At one board meeting, Mishra learned that #HalfTheStory was looking into the idea of screen-free proms.  “It aligned with my mission,” he said, so he volunteered his school as ground zero. 

“Everyone talks about taking phones out of the classroom, but what about taking phones out of places that bring young people together?” said Larissa May, 30, founder of #HalfTheStory. The nonprofit paid Mishra a stipend to cover his time — he had to petition the student council and get administration buy-in for his promposal.

Knowing that students would still want some way to capture memories, #HalftheStory used funds donated by Pinterest to purchase Polaroid cameras and digital point-and-shoots.“The goal was to empower [students] to focus on being present,” said Alise Marshall, a corporate affairs director at Pinterest.

It worked as planned for senior Leah Lashinsky, who opted to go phone-free for the night. (Lashinsky’s father Adam is an editor-at-large for The Standard.) “Not having it helped me be in the moment,” she said. “I didn’t miss it.

When she arrived at City Hall, fresh from a pre-prom photoshoot at the Palace of Fine Arts, a senior tradition, Lashinsky handed over her phone in exchange for a wristband, which granted access to the analog cameras. “It seemed fun,” she said. “Something different.” (Plus, the raffle paid off — one of her best friends won AirPods.)

Christine Godinez Jackson, a teacher and director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Lick-Wilmerding, was impressed with the screen-free vibe shift.  “Even the kids that kept their phones, you didn’t see the [phones] on the dance floor, which was really special,” she said. 

Jackson had worried that students might feel compelled to turn their phones in, but that wasn’t the case. “If it was run by the school, they might feel forced,” she said. “Here, it was their choice.”

Nyara Dandu, a 16-year-old junior, made an on-the-spot decision to give up her phone.

It was weird at first; she said she felt “a little disconnected.” But she’d been feeling conflicted about her cellphone use for a while. “I was a huge reader when I was younger, but I’ve lost that because social media is so easy, after a long day,” she said. “I miss reading.”

The biggest problem with the screen-free prom was an unanticipated one: “No one knew what time it was,” Lashinsky said. “There should have been more clocks at the dance, or a heads-up to bring a watch,” she said.  When her lacrosse team was supposed to meet up at a specific time for a group photo, it was chaos.

That was OK by May of #HalfTheStory, which educates teenagers about the impacts of technology. She envisions a culture revolution that lets Gen Z “go back to the dance floor like nobody’s watching — like it was in the ’90s,” she said. (Yes, she was five in the ’90s, but secondhand nostalgia is real.) 

May is looking at expanding screen-free celebrations to other school dances around the Bay Area and is in talks with a Marin school about running a screen-free homecoming next school year. Mishra is headed to Harvard this fall, and is considering bringing screen-free socials to Cambridge.

As for Dandu, she’s looking back fondly on the memories she made at her first prom. She loved using the digital cameras but was peeved that, nine days after prom, the photos still hadn’t been uploaded to a shared drive as promised. 

“Every group chat the next morning is: ‘Can you send over the photos?’”