Jamel Bishop changes in his classrooms when he graduates at Doss High School in Louisville, Kentucky, where mobile phones are now prohibited during the lesson.
In recent years, the students have often not been made aware and the lesson time was wasted by repeating questions, said the teenager. Now teachers who actually need it can offer “more individual times”.
Kentucky is one of 17 states and the District of Columbia from this school year with new restrictions and brings a total of 35 countries with laws or rules that limit telephones and other electronic devices at school. This change has come remarkably quickly: Florida was the first state to pass such a law in 2023.
Both Democrats and Republicans have taken up the matter and reflect a growing consensus that telephones are penniless for children’s mental health and concentrate from learning, even if some researchers say that the problem is less clear.
“Every time you have an invoice that is adopted in California and Florida, you know that you are probably on something that is quite popular,” said Georgia State Repreps Rep.
The phones are prohibited throughout the school day in 18 of the states and in the District of Columbia, although Georgia and Florida only impose such “bell-to-bell bans” from kindergarten up to eighth grade. They ban another seven states during class, but not between classes or during lunch. Still others, especially those with traditions of local school control, only require a mobile phone directive and believe that districts will take the indication and limit the access to the phone.
Students see advantages and disadvantages
For students, the rules add new rituals on school day, e.g. B. phones in magnetic bags or special lockers.
Since last year, the students have locked up their phones at the McNair High School in Suburban Atlanta during the lesson. Audreanna Johnson, a junior, said: “Most of them did not want to initiate their phones” because the students apply them to clap and “use their other friends in other classes to see what the tea is and what is going on around the building”.
This resentment now begins “to relieve itself,” she said. “More students are ready to give up their phones and not be distracted.”
But there are disadvantages – like not being able to listen to music when they work independently in class. “I am a kind 50-50 in the situation because I use headphones to do my school work. I listen to music to concentrate,” she said.
Some parents want constant contact
In a survey of 125 school districts of Georgia by researchers at Emory University, parental resistance was described as the top obstacle for regulating the apply of social and digital media.
Johnson’s mother, Audena Johnson, said she was most worried that her children are secure from violence in front of school. School messages about threats can be delayed and incomplete, she said, as if someone who was not a McNair student came into a fight in the school ownership from whom she learned when her daughter sent her an SMS during the school day.
“My child who has your phone is very important to me, because if something would happen, I know immediately,” said Johnson.
Many parents reflect this – in general who support restrictions, but receive a say in political design and better communication, especially with regard to security, and you have to know the schedules with your children and to know about problems that your children may face, said Jason Allen, the national director of the partnerships for the national parents’ union.
“We have just changed the mobile phone directive, but do not meet the needs of parents with regard to security and really train the teachers to work with students on social emotional development,” said Allen.
Research remains in an early stage
Some researchers say that it is not yet clear what types of social media damage and whether restrictions have advantages, but the teachers love politics, according to Julie Gazmarian, professor of public health at Emory University, which conducts surveillance and focus groups in order to make the effects of a telephone ban in the MARITTA school district near the school district in To explore Marietta.
“You could concentrate more on the lessons,” said Gazmarian. “There was simply no disturbances.”
Another advantage: more positive interactions among the students. “They said that children talk to each other in the corridors and in the cafeteria,” she said. “And in the classroom there is a noticeably lower amount of discipline recommendations.”
Gazmarian still creates numbers for grades and discipline and warned that her work may not be able to answer whether bullying has been reduced or the mental health has been improved.
According to Munmun de Choudhury, a Tech professor Georgia, who examines this problem, apply on social media clearly correlates with penniless mental health, but research cannot yet prove.
“We have to be able to quantify which types of social media use harm, which types of social media can be useful,” said de Choudhury.
Some states reject rules
Some state legislation swallow the momentum.
In January, the Wyoming Senate rejected the districts’ demand to create a kind of mobile phone directive after the opponents argued that teachers and parents had to be responsible.
And in July in July in Michigan in Michigan, a law sponsored by the Republicans was to ban schools to ban cell phones Bell-to-Bell in classes K-8 and during the Abitur class in July after the Democrats had existed in maintaining local control. The democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer, among several governors who have made telephones to schools this year, still calls for a legislative template to get to their desk.
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The authors of Associated Press, Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, and Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed.
