The invasion of surveillance capitalism into educational spaces has triggered an attention crisis and weakened students’ cognitive resilience. This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of smartphone restriction policies implemented at SMAN 5, SMAN 6, and SMAN 9 Bogor City as a bureaucratic intervention to mitigate digital toxicity. The research employed a mixed methods approach using a concurrent triangulation strategy by integrating the perspectives of street-level bureaucracy, developmental psychology, and collaborative governance. Primary data were collected through structured questionnaires and narrative notes from teachers and students, which were analyzed integratively to evaluate policy implementation. The findings indicate that smartphone restriction policies successfully established a high level of administrative compliance, although implementation challenges remained due to teachers’ discretionary decisions arising from tensions between rule enforcement and digitally oriented learning needs. From a psychological perspective, students experienced withdrawal symptoms as a consequence of reduced digital access; however, they gradually demonstrated improvements in learning focus, emotional stability, and social interaction. The study also revealed a collaboration paradox in which parental support for school policies was normatively high but was not accompanied by consistent supervision of smartphone use at home. These findings confirm that smartphone restriction is not merely a disciplinary instrument but a form of social engineering that requires collaborative educational governance to develop a sustainable cognitive recovery ecosystem in the era of digital disruption.
Copyrights © 2026