Some hiccups emerge with school cell phone bans

Presented by Charter Communications: How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures
Sep 09, 2024 View in browser
 
POLITICO's Digital Future Daily newsletter logo

By Christine Mui

Presented by Charter Communications

With help from Derek Robertson

Children play games on their smartphones.

Children play games on their smartphones. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

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.

 

A message from Charter Communications:

Why does Charter invest in a US-based workforce? Because when it comes to delivering personalized customer service, workforce quality matters. Learn more.

 
labour, labor and ai

As the United Kingdom considers a major employment bill, unions are lobbying legislators to include AI in its considerations.

POLITICO’s Morning Tech U.K. reported on the push for Pro subscribers this morning, as unions say they want the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill to make sure “recruitment is free from bias and discrimination,” to establish “rights for human involvement when technology makes ‘high-risk’ decisions like hiring and firing,” and to protect workers from “AI-powered decision-making.”

Their push might place the Labour government in a tricky position, MT U.K. writes: They’ve promised a major seat at the table for business in drafting the bill, and previous iterations have faced major skepticism from industry.

crypto world splits

If the crypto industry ever had a united front on policy, it’s continuing to crack as a tough election season rolls on.

POLITICO’s Eleanor Mueller reported on the divide emerging along the ideological spectrum as this November’s elections force crypto advocates to take sides, with Democrats in the industry saying it risks going too far to the right to work with a potential Democratic presidential administration, and Republicans saying they have little to gain by doing so.

After the pro-crypto Fairshake PAC network announced it would spend massively to unseat Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a crypto foe, major Democratic donor Ron Conway angrily, publicly abandoned the effort. One anonymous congressional aide blamed that race for fragmenting crypto-world, saying “Since the [Ohio super PAC] announcement, it’s been a mess… Democrats are mad, Republicans are mad, everyone’s mad.”

“You have about the same number of Republicans as Democrats as independents,” one anonymous crypto lobbyist told Eleanor. “That’s just a unique industry, and it’s causing conflict.”

 

A message from Charter Communications:

Advertisement Image

 
TWEET OF THE DAY

ursula le guin writing about how she'd pick an old woman to be earth's representative on other planets

The Future in 5 links

Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@politico.com); Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com); Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@politico.com); and Christine Mui (cmui@politico.com).

If you’ve had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up and read our mission statement at the links provided.

 

A message from Charter Communications:

US-Based Employees + Highly Competitive Pay and Robust Benefits + Opportunities for Career Progression = Quality Customer Service. Learn how it all adds up.

 
 

Follow us on Twitter

Daniella Cheslow @DaniellaCheslow

Steve Heuser @sfheuser

Christine Mui @MuiChristine

Derek Robertson @afternoondelete

 

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Listen on Apple Podcast
 

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://login.politico.com/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings

This email was sent to salenamartine360.news1@blogger.com by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA

Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post