Quick, what issue unites Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom? You’d be hard-pressed to find many topics that the conservative stalwart and his progressive counterpart agree on, but the Florida and California governors have both signed bills that restrict phone use in public schools. Ohio, South Carolina, and several other states have recently followed suit. A rare moment of bipartisan comity seems poised to upend our previously lax approach to social media-addled children.
These moves are welcome insofar as they reflect a growing awareness that it is unhealthy for young people to spend all day staring at phones, a fact that has somehow taken years to penetrate the public consciousness. Legislation limiting phone usage, however, tends to be broad, toothless, and riddled with exceptions and loopholes. Meanwhile, boarding schools, private academies, and affluent public school districts have pushed ahead with their own rules, which are typically more comprehensive than the well-meaning but vague directives handed down by statehouses.
New technologies, from classroom tablets to artificial intelligence-powered tutors, are often sold as solutions for the ills of public schools. Yet the most consequential technological change of the past 20 years has been the ever-growing influence of smartphones and social media on childhood. Our education system’s current approach to this admittedly thorny problem saddles the poorest and worst-performing schools with weak phone restrictions while high-achieving institutions insist on rules that actually work. A classroom insulated from outside distractions used to be within reach of any school willing to enforce good behavior. Now student focus is becoming just another luxury good.
Newsom’s legislation limiting phones in schools, which will likely be modeled by other states simply because of California’s political and cultural clout, is a case in point. The bill Newsom signed to much fanfare requires every school “to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting smartphones by July 2026.” There are enough holes in this language to drive a school bus through. Any school with pro forma restrictions on phone usage will presumably meet California’s vague criteria, even if such rules are rarely enforced or limited in scope. And the Florida legislation, which only prohibits rules during class time, isn’t much better.
Here it is worth noting that halfhearted restrictions, especially those that place the enforcement burden on harried teachers, are almost useless. The new phone-addled classroom presents educators with some truly absurd dilemmas. Writing in Slate, one teacher described a parent eavesdropping on a class discussion through a child’s phone and immediately emailing with a complaint about the lesson. Like most of us, young people respond best to rules that are simple, clear, and easy to follow. Teachers, meanwhile, should not be expected to confiscate phones or lay out the rules before every class (speaking from experience, enforcement is both tiresome and time-consuming). Strict, uniform restrictions ease the burden on teachers and establish clear expectations for students. Rules that fall short of that threshold might satisfy California’s new standards, but they’re not going to do much for public education.
The shortfalls of lax enforcement are backed by a growing body of social science that connects youthful phone use to a host of psychological problems. New York University professor Jon Haidt, whose bestselling book The Anxious Generation documents the compelling links between widespread smartphone adoption and rising rates of teenage depression and suicide, said he agrees that phone bans should be clear and comprehensive. Schools are meant for personal interaction, whether it’s academic or social. While in class, students should be focused on the lesson. When in the hallways or at lunch, they should be talking to friends or scribbling late homework assignments. The aspirational goals of our education system are often at odds with the awkward realities of public schooling, but those goals are at least plausible when children aren’t glued to their devices.
The arguments against strict phone bans, meanwhile, are uniformly unpersuasive. Parents are wary of locking up phones in case of an emergency or a school shooting, but classroom rules shouldn’t be designed around unlikely catastrophes. Students are also free to keep low-tech phones for emergency situations. Other objections are less urgent. In the Willamette Week, a student at Grant High School in Oregon complained of having trouble finding friends in the lunchroom after her school banned phones. High schoolers who need to get in touch with mom and dad say they’re confused by the school’s old-fashioned landlines.
Grant, a public school in an affluent Portland district, is representative of the institutions most likely to enforce effective phone bans. It is difficult to track the spread of smartphone restrictions because the issue is a relatively new one and rules vary from place to place, but a spate of recent headlines is certainly suggestive. Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, St. Andrew’s School in Delaware, and Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C., all received glowing coverage in the Atlantic after they opted to ban smartphones. Buxton Boarding School in Massachusetts received similar treatment in the Guardian. The reaction of students, parents, and teachers to these bans has been overwhelmingly positive. But most families aren’t sending their children to Deerfield, where annual tuition exceeds $70,000.
A similar pattern is evident in public school districts. Local headlines tout the success of smartphone bans in Aspen, Colorado; Evanston, Illinois; and Mercer Island in Seattle. Some poorer schools will surely follow suit, but your typical California district is left with vague guidance from Newsom and little else. A comprehensive smartphone ban for New York City public schools was recently derailed, in part over union objections.
Underfunded inner-city classrooms are a perennial liberal talking point, but per capita student spending reveals a surprising degree of parity among school districts. In recent decades, however, a new divide has emerged in education. Call it the fad gap. Poorer schools seem to bear the brunt of our worst education policy ideas, which are often connected to unproven technologies or fleeting instructional fads. When these ideas fail, as most inevitably do, underperforming public schools are left to clean up the mess.
Last July, an AI tutor developed for Los Angeles County schoolchildren was junked after the company behind the program suddenly went bankrupt. An “equity-based” proposal from a Stanford University education professor caused California to issue guidance against students taking algebra classes before high school. San Francisco public schools went so far as to get rid of middle school algebra courses entirely in 2014, before finally reinstating them earlier this year after sustained parental outcry. “Context-based” literacy, the brainchild of another crusading academic, replaced traditional reading instruction in many schools for decades, with predictably dismal results. After years of experimentation, it turns out that the old-fashioned method of teaching children to sound out words syllable by syllable still works best. The Columbia University center associated with context-based reading was shuttered in 2023.
Perhaps the most egregious example of the fad gap in action was the recent era of remote learning. School closures, which did little to contain COVID-19 and led to a shocking decline in both attendance and academic performance, lasted longer in poorer schools than in upscale districts. Private school students were the fastest to return to the classroom.
High-performing public schools and private institutions are fairly resistant to education fads, not because they are repositories of special wisdom but because their parents are exquisitely attuned to anything that might threaten Junior’s future prospects. Moreover, affluence and attentive parenting give many families a certain educational margin of error. A young boy whose mother reads to him regularly will likely survive “context-based” literacy lessons unscathed. When San Francisco got rid of middle school algebra courses, concerned parents rushed to enroll their children in private math lessons.
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So far, school smartphone bans are following the same depressing pattern. While affluent families are increasingly wary of excessive screen time, too many public schools rely on outmoded or loophole-filled smartphone policies. Yet creating a focused, distraction-free environment doesn’t require expensive infrastructure or pricey classroom technology. Instead, it should be a baseline expectation for all students, regardless of socioeconomic background.
The fact that state governors from opposite ends of the political spectrum have seized on this issue is a hopeful sign that schools are finally waking up to the dangers of smartphone addiction. The proposed remedies, however, are sadly lacking.
Will Collins is a lecturer at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary.
