SACRAMENTO — There is little disagreement about what should be done: California schools should ban or restrict cell phones that disrupt learning.

A law signed by Governor Gavin Newsom mandates every school district in the state develop a plan to ban or restrict cell phones on campuses by July 2026. But educators, who recently met with Newsom on the issue, say their biggest debate is over how to impose restrictions limitations to a generation obsessed with their phones.

Newsom, a father of four children, including two teenagers, says he knows the appeal of phones. His preference, he said in an interview, would be “a ban” for the entire school day, including lunch, in schools across the state. And he wants the rules to be put in place “much sooner” than the deadline.

“I have my views, of course, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to impose this,” Newsom added, saying local school leaders will decide.

He spoke at the governor’s mansion at a meeting of superintendents, teachers, parents, policy aides and health experts to discuss how California students can free themselves from their phones.

“There was a crisis in this country that predated COVID… issues of social isolation, this kind of disembedding in society and people feeling lonelier than ever as they become more connected on their devices,” Newsom said.

Schools are ideal places to attempt massive cultural change, he and others said. And California — with some 1,000 school districts and 5.8 million students — will be the nation’s largest test case.

Banning phones from early childhood

Around 95% of adolescents have access to a cell phone, according to a survey the Pew Research Center published this year. About 6 in 10 respondents said they use TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat, and about 40% said they spend too much time on their phones.

Additionally, a majority of teens said phones make it easier to pursue their hobbies and express their creativity; nearly half said phones helped them do better in school.

But the ubiquity of cellphone use in schools calls for early crackdowns, experts say.

“Middle school is probably the fertile ground for this…High school will be difficult,” said LAUSD board member Nick Melvoin, who sponsored the project. strict ban from Los Angeles Unified School District which will take effect in February. Los Angeles schools are sorting out the rules.

Dr. Sohil Sud, director of the state’s Child and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, described preadolescence and adolescence as “a time of heightened emotional sensitivity and strong desire for peer validation,” where uniform rules across schools are more likely to be adopted. successful.

“We’re not quite at the mercy of ‘groupthink,’ but what the group thinks and does matters a lot,” Sud said. “This is why rules limiting phone use consistently for everyone in a given setting like schools are more likely to be effective than individual approaches by parents, or even individual teachers.”

It might also be easier to change the phone culture in a middle school, experts say, simply because there are typically fewer kids in a narrower age range than in high school.

Since a law signed by Newsom in 2020, schools have the right power to limit or prohibit the use of smartphones some districts moving forward. They offered advice for the future.

At first, they encountered resistance. But it eventually wore off.

The Bay Area’s San Mateo-Foster City district launched a strict ban on cell phones in 2021, when students returned to campus after pandemic school closures, a time when they were more dependent digital than ever. Students place their phones in magnetically sealed Yondr pouches when they enter campus. Phones stay in backpacks or pants pockets. At the end of the school day, students place the pouches on a magnetic release base as they leave campus. It’s a bit like when a cashier at a clothing store taps an item of clothing to remove a magnetic anti-theft device.

The district is made up of 11,000 students in 22 schools, all at the elementary and middle school levels, which made it easier to create a phone-free culture as students were just starting to get phones.

At first, dozens of people refused or forgot to put their phones in their pockets when entering school. Teachers have asked those caught using phones in class to hand over the devices. Those who refused were sent to an administrator’s office to call their parents and confess to breaking the rule.

“But we never linked it to discipline. No child was suspended or kicked out of class,” said district Superintendent Diego Ochoa.

In a district where students are all assigned Chromebooks and Google email accounts, students found a workaround. “They were using Google Chat and Google Spaces in class,” Ochoa said. The district later disabled these features.

Over time, complaints and violations faded away. The district also reported an overall drop in student suspensions and social media-related conflicts, such as bullying.

“We don’t blame everything on cellphones,” said San Mateo-Foster City District board member Gene Kim. But he said at least some of the improvements were related to the phone-free environment.

The Santa Barbara School District launched a no-phone policy in January 2023. Instead of purchasing pouches for thousands of students, it saved money by using “phone hotels” in classrooms who assigned numbers where students place their devices. Phones are allowed during lunch and between classes.

Santa Barbara officials allowed phone use outside of class because they wanted teens to learn to “self-regulate” their relationship with the devices, Superintendent Hilda Maldonado said.

“Are kids still using phones? Absolutely. When I walk into a school, I see them texting and looking at their screens during lunch,” Maldonado said. “But they don’t rush after class to grab their phones like candy.”

What about the app?

Their most difficult problem, according to educators, is application and discipline.

Nothing in state law directs schools to punish students who violate policies or discipline.

School districts have generally taken different stances on discipline, with Los Angeles having a “restorative” model that prioritizes dialogue over punishment, which so far has been limited to confiscating phones.

One of the biggest concerns, educators say, is that teachers don’t want to confiscate phones because they don’t want to be responsible if the phone is damaged or lost.

Teachers don’t want to turn into “cell phone cops,” said Edgar Zazueta of the Assn. executive director of California School Administrators and former chief of external affairs for LAUSD.

Maldonado, the Santa Barbara superintendent, said she initially heard similar complaints from teachers. After administrators told teachers they were “relieved” of financial responsibility for confiscated devices, it helped relieve “a lot of anxiety,” she said. Yet it is much more common for administrators to call parents rather than confiscate phones.

In Los Angeles schools, questions about discipline have arisen as schools move toward bans. District guidelines provide a multiple warning process for telephone violators, but are vague on forfeiture.

In an interview, Melvoin suggested that violators could receive warnings before calling their parents. He said further violations could result in confiscations lasting a period. More violations would force parents to come get their phones. “I hope in the coming weeks the district will be clearer on the consequences,” he said.

Melvoin predicts a 95 percent student compliance rate in the district, including “5 percent who will be stubborn.”

When the Santa Barbara ban was launched in the 12,000-student district last year, not all students immediately complied. This year, Maldonado said, teachers, principals, students and parents showed more interest after seeing the benefits of a phone-free environment.

Maldonado said it’s easier to overcome the obstacles faced by students who don’t follow quick phone bans “if you start by focusing on mental health and well-being rather than following the rules.”

And there will be missteps. In one case, Maldonado said, a substitute teacher incorrectly assumed a student was hiding his phone instead of putting it in the “phone hotel.” It turned out the student didn’t have a phone.

“I’m going cold turkey.”

Although phones and social media are addictive, they are different from chemical addictions, experts say. A recent study of Durham University in the United Kingdom found that voluntary fasting from social media neither increased nor decreased the appetite to return online. Other studies have found that digital detoxes lead to increases in happiness, attention span, and mental clarity.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Remake of Childhood is Driving an Epidemic of Mental Illness” has become a playbook for the phone-free schools movement. Haidt recommends not using cell phones with social media until age 16.

John Piacentini, a UCLA psychology professor who directs the UCLA Center for Childhood Resilience, Education and Anxiety Support, agreed that teens should delay smartphone use.

Piacentini said school bans would work better if teens had role models — older siblings and parents at home, as well as teachers — who stopped using the phone at the same time.

“Going cold turkey is going to be pretty tough for a lot of these kids. But it must be done. It’s up to parents and families to really work with kids to help them learn to live during times without phones,” said Piacentini, who was not present at the Sacramento meeting. “Parents use phones in the same way as their children and can be addicted in the same ways as children.”