As the school year begins, Watertown High School will debut a new technology that limits cellphone use in classrooms.

According to a press release , the school will be the first public high school in the country to pilot the Doorman app .

“It’s hard to compete with phones for attention,” Principal Joel Giacobozzi said in a statement. “Doorman allows us to pause a student’s phone use without the battle of physically taking or locking away their phone.”

The release said that the app uses VPN technology to temporarily “brick” or restrict smartphone usage by redirecting the phone’s web traffic through a restricted, encrypted server. It will also prevent students from texting and accessing “distracting” apps.

A “DoorTag” will be located at the entrance of each classroom, on which studen

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