MINOT — When Pat Traynor, North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong's interim Commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that excessive use of cellphones and other digital devices is "probably the biggest public health threat that we have," I wrote that he was wrong, and accused him of stoking a moral panic.

Traynor came on today's episode of the Plain Talk podcast to talk about it, and said that our devices leave us "continuously distracted." Referring to North Dakota's law circumscribing cellphone use in public schools, he wondered how studens can be effectively educated when in a "constant distractive state."

Since cellphones aren't going away in our society any time soon, does a ban on their presence in schools help or hinder our ability to teach kids how to deal with

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