It’s been a heated summer for school cell phone bans. Worried politicians and school districts in several states have been swarming to limit cell phone use during class time. Florida and Indiana policies banning cell phones during class time took effect this July; Ohio’s law went into place this August. Last Tuesday, South Carolina’s education board followed suit with a law that requires students to keep phones turned off and stashed away throughout the school day. In all, seven states have banned or restricted cellphone use in schools, according to a review this month from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Fourteen have introduced bills doing the same, and six more are testing out pilot programs or issuing recommendations with similar goals. Among the bills underway is California's Phone-Free Schools Act, which cleared the state legislature in August and is expecting the governor’s signature. It would mandate every school district to develop a policy to curb smartphone use. Altogether, these policies represent a big shift in the debate over how to reduce the harms of social media on kids’ mental health and welfare. Instead of pointing fingers at platforms — which Congress has repeatedly struggled to regulate — they turn the attention to physical devices themselves, regardless of the manufacturers or app operators behind them. It may be an easier sell as a policy. But for the majority of these new rules, they now open a whole host of practical questions that are similarly hard to solve. (One caveat: Few of the laws have taken effect yet. In South Carolina, for example, the policy won’t officially be enacted until January, with schools finalizing their rules this fall. California’s policy won’t take effect until 2026.) There hasn’t been much solid independent research on whether these school bans achieve their intended outcomes, and most of what we have is based on anecdotes rather than hard data. A couple of early accounts are positive — but so far, many have been based on voluntary efforts by some districts to keep phones out of the classroom, independent of any statewide requirement. As states — including the ones with newly in-effect policies from this summer — start the school year, the challenge of actually applying and upholding these restrictions looms large. Teachers and administrators don’t necessarily want to be the ones policing their schools for contraband devices. Districts worry that the bans will feel punitive. There are reports of students who can be so attached to their phones that taking them away triggers tears and attempts to circumvent the rules with decoy phones. Complicating the matter, a recent school shooting in Georgia renewed a common worry among opponents — that depending on how they’re implemented, these policies might leave kids unable to contact their parents during an emergency. Those fears, in combination with logistical complications, even delayed a promised school cellphone ban in New York City this summer. California state Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat, said he drew from his own children’s experiences and that of earlier bans in San Mateo County when deciding to vote in favor of the Phone-Free Schools Act. “The question now for each school is going to be, okay, what are they going to do?,” Becker told DFD. “Are they going to just discourage it and use the honor system? Are they going to require teachers to collect phones, which some are willing to do, some are not willing to do? That's really the next step.” One company has a tempting answer: If tech is the problem, maybe tech is the solution. In June, Becker promoted a company called Yondr when applauding California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s vow to severely restrict the use of smartphones during the school day. The startup has grown alongside the state-by-state policy push by offering a popular technological solution to some (but not all) the enforcement problems. Yondr sells magnetic pouches that students stow their phones in during the day and can unlock by machine as they leave the building. In recent years, schools went from making up 40 percent of Yondr’s revenue in 2023 to being projected to comprise over 70 percent this year. CEO Graham Dugoni said he founded the company when the dialogue was about the platforms, not so much the devices themselves. “The role social media companies have played in terms of mining data, privacy concerns, I'm hyper-aware of those. I started the company in San Francisco, really on the other end of the spectrum of those kinds of companies.” Yondr has been around for a decade, but Dugoni said the current momentum “is just so different” — and that most prospective customers are now contacting it proactively. (Yondr has no social media presence or paid advertising but has spent tens of thousands of dollars on lobbying.) “Most districts and the state conversations, they're reaching out to us because everyone's trying to figure out, how do we take the next step?” For several states, the next step is just seeing if something — anything — can separate kids from their phones for the school day. And at some point, the question of what’s on those phones may well re-emerge. Becker, for one, says he thinks the policy debate could shift back to platforms. “I still think we’re at the early stages of grappling with this,” he said.
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