Utah lawmakers are using statewide legislation to ban cell phones in classrooms starting this summer.
The state Senate and House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 178, which prohibits the use of cell phones and smartwatches in classrooms unless a school district establishes a policy outlining specific exemptions. The bill goes into effect on July 1 if it is signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox.
All three school districts in Summit County — Park City, North Summit and South Summit — already have policies in place that have effectively banned cell phones for years.
“I think anytime we can pull them away from the screen, especially in the world of social media and gaming, we’re doing a lot for student learning and healthy adolescent development,” explained Caleb Fine, interim career technical education director for the Park City School District.
Fine said the district will likely work on creating an overarching policy and formalizing procedures for Park City High School, but both Ecker Hill Middle School and Treasure Mountain Junior High School already have a strong, established system.
“Ecker Hill has a pretty firm no cell phones rule, and it’s working. They’re not using any pouch devices or whatnot,” Fine said. “At Treasure Mountain Junior High, we piloted Yondr pouches, and we’ve had incredible data coming out of that. …These are pouches the kids keep on their person. They lock, and you cannot access your phone without a specialized unlocking magnetic device.”
Holland Lincoln, whose three children attend McPolin Elementary School, said she’s excited about the new state law because social media and screentime negatively affects kids’ mental health. She said she doesn’t plan on giving her children a cell phone until eighth grade at the earliest.
“I think there’s a lot of grassroots support for this kind of thing, but having it come from the top down is so invaluable, especially since things aren’t being done at a federal level,” Lincoln said. “It seems like it’s really up to states now, so we’re over the moon. … I think it just bolsters and gives parents more support in making these really hard decisions.”
Children learn how to grow both socially and academically while at school, and removing the temptation of cell phones helps them with development, Lincoln added.
“If you put a cell phone in front of a kid who doesn’t have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, I think that’s really problematic,” she said. “These kids aren’t learning how to interact with one another, to navigate conflict, to debate, to be kind. They’re not learning that. There’s an intermediary, and it’s a screen, and that’s how they’re interacting with their peers. That’s really sad.”
Parents across the Park City School District overwhelmingly supported a cell phone ban in schools in a survey distributed last year, Fine said. Students, too, have been fairly cooperative, and the policy’s effectiveness has been evident in the district’s disciplinary numbers.
“When kids are not on social media during the school day, getting charged and aggravated and upset, the interactions in the hallway are healthier. They’re not spurred on based on communication happening all class period,” Fine said. “Face-to-face communication is powerful in terms of development, and it’s also a powerful mechanism to keep student behavior in line with what we want our students to do, just be quality young men and women and continue to learn to grow.”
South Summit High School also has a policy requiring students to put cell phones away while class is in session, and North Summit School District uses cell phone “pockets” to mitigate distractions and track attendance.
“Each classroom has a pocketed display that has enough room for each student to have a cell phone in it. A lot of the teachers, that’s how they do their seating chart or attendance, by whether or not a cell phone is in that pocket,” explained North Summit High School principal Devin Smith. “They have an assigned pocket that they are to put their cell phone in, and we’ve been doing that for at least five years.”
Smith agreed with Fine and Lincoln’s assessment that cell phones have changed how students interact with each other, but he said there haven’t been as many noticeable behavioral differences at North Summit High School because it’s a smaller community.
“Most of our kids, even ninth and twelfth graders, they know each other, so while they’re at school, they’re very active in communicating with each other face to face,” Smith said. “It’s when they’re not together, whether they’re at home from school or it’s the weekend, that they’re really on turbo communicating with each other on social media.”
And although Smith recognized technology has its perks, he said he generally supports restricting cell phone usage in schools.
“We always want to do what’s best for kids, and we want them to get the best education possible,” he said. “Being in compliance with this law during the class period, I think helps kids be less distracted and will give them a better chance of learning.”