While school ends for children in the United States, a warming problem is to ban students’ mobile phones.
In May, Georgia, Alabama, Nebraska and Oklahoma finalized the laws aimed at keeping personal technology outside the academic day. New York included a prohibition policy in its last budget, signed by the governor on May 9. At least two states, Texas and Rhode Island, have actively taken into account the bills in the legislatures of the States. Five states, including Iowa and Utah, have promulgated new laws in April prohibiting the use of mobile phone.
The result is a wave of land across the country, with more than 20 states which have prohibited or limited the use of mobile phones. Several others, including Connecticut, offer encouraging advice to restrict access.
Why we wrote this
The end of the academic year has brought a crescendo of laws in the United States aimed at restricting the use of mobile phones in K-12 schools. Efforts reflect a growing feeling that the well-being and success of students depend on social media technology and railings.
The increase in prohibitions is one of growing calls to a several -strict approach to help young people balance technology and social media in their lives by learning to use it.
“We have already protected our children from cigarettes, alcohol and driving driving, and now we protect them from the addictive technology designed to divert their attention,” said the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, a democrat, announcing that in September, public schools would be without smartphone of “bell-Bel.”
The momentum coincides with the results of the April survey showing that almost 50% of adolescents believe that social media has a mainly negative effect on people of their age. The educators were among those who asked politicians to consider the prohibitions.
Towards “90% of my day was resumed with the drama concerning mobile phones”, recalls Jen Butler of his time as an advisor in a private school in Philadelphia which serves students from sixth to 12th year. “It was chaotic,” she said.
A bill to make social media platforms prohibited for children under the age of 18 is also in motion in Texas. He and at least nine other states already have books on books on access to social media and minors. “There is no greater action than we could take to protect our children than to eliminate this harmful product from their lives,” wrote the representative of the republican state Jared Patterson, the author of Texas Bill, on X.
More than two -thirds of American adults, 68%, say they support the mobile phone prohibitions in class for college and high school students. Less of them, 36%, support prohibitions all day, according to Pew Research Center.
Florida paved the way for mobile phone prohibitions in 2023, and certain schools and districts experienced restrictions without state mandates. The ban on Oklahoma is in force for the 2025-2026 school year and is optional for districts after that.
An approach that schools have adopted is to use magnetic sachets of $ 25 to secure phones during the day. This can be an option in New York State, where the government has put aside $ 13.5 million to help storage.
Last August, the Connecticut State Board of Education approved voluntary directives for districts to create their own mobile phone policies and recommend restrictions by removing mobile phones from all elementary and intermediate classrooms. A public secondary school in Connecticut using sachets this year reports higher grades and better behavior of students during the day.
When Ms. Butler, the advisor, passed in 2023 to a job at Country School in Madison, Connecticut, who had implemented mobile phone restrictions in 2018, her experience changed. Students played recess instead of looking at screens in their palms, she said. They knew how to talk to their friends face to face instead of sending sms a few meters away.
Private school teachers, who now have years of experience with a day’s ban, say that their students seem more social, more committed in class and more prepared to sail in technology.
Bill Leidt, director of technology when the policy was implemented for the first time, said that the school has taken measures when mobile phones have become “enormous distraction”, in addition to a handful of incentive incidents involving phones and social media. At the time, he faced a repression of parents and students. He “was not on the list of Christmas cards of anyone,” he said.
Mobile phone policies must be adapted to each school and be built by the community, explains Renee Hobbs, professor of communication studies at the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island.
When these decisions are made “with community contribution, thanks to a community process … It is a local education for its best,” said Dr. Hobbs.
In some cases, efforts to prohibit mobile phones also include technological education components. The Alabama law, called Libering Our Classrooms of Useless Screens for Safety (Foor), obliges the Ministry of State Education to offer training on social networks for students before the eighth year. Joe Lamacchia, the current Director of Technology at Country School in Connecticut, says that he also runs through prices through subjects such as the safety of the digital imprint.
The students of this school have adapted to the environment without a phone – although some are still devices in the bathrooms trying to get screen time, say the teachers. Students in higher primary school have mixed feelings on mobile phones in general. A girl worries about her friends “send me a SMS late at night, and that would overwhelm,” she said. Another has concerns to become like his older brother and friends, “glued to their phones, even on the chair.”
For Ms. Butler, what stands out is that human interaction has become more present when mobile phones are largely absent.
“The children are really engaging, and it’s so healthy to see,” she says. “They are much more open to mediation or … [talking things] with a friend or an adult.
