California Law Mandates Students to Not Use Phones at School

There's a trend in California that they want to ban phones in schools, and this trend may go across the country. On average, about four to five hours a day, students from fifth grade and up are spending on social media. They're not practicing directly socializing. Instead of participating in the lessons, students are on their phones. Teachers had no standing to confront this, and so it constantly was a battle. They could not teach all these lessons they were planning. They were not getting through during the day because cell phone distractions were a major issue. The Bronstein family, their 15-year-old son, Nate, was cyberbullied over social media until the point that he tragically died by suicide. The Berman-Chapman family out here in Los Angeles, their son, Sammy, 16-year-old, was bored one day, connected with a drug dealer over the social media platform Snapchat. Those drugs were poisoned with fentanyl, which Sammy ingested and died by overdose. Many California schools are looking at banning smartphones while in school, and it may soon become a law in California in 2025. What are the main reasons that are driving this trend, and what has been experiences of schools that have already been implementing a strict no-device policy? So they are not allowed to be seen, heard, anything throughout the day. And everybody on our campus is to enforce this. We'll find out in today's episode. I'm Siamak Khorrami. Welcome to California Insider. Mark, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. There's a trend in California that they want to ban phones in schools, and LA Unified did that already. And this trend may go across the country, and you guys have been involved with this. Can you tell us what's going on with this? What's this trend about? Sure. Well, first, the amount of time is really staggering, according to the research. We conduct research with UCLA School of Education, and we're finding that on average, about four to five hours a day, students from fifth grade and up are spending on social media. That's just the average. When we get into about 20-30% of the students, we're seeing over seven hours a day, so basically a full-time job where they're just scrolling through social media for hours. And that is displacing really important activities that children used to engage in, and that includes at school, at campus, during lunch. Instead of talking to each other directly, students are staring at their screen, so they're not practicing directly socializing. Instead of reading, doing homework, engaging in physical activity during recess periods, or immediately after school, or extracurricular activities, they're staring at their phone. So that displacement of activities is really concerning, and we believe driving a lot of negative mental health outcomes. Are they doing that in class as well? We have certainly seen it in schools across the country, and heard from teachers and other school staff that instead of participating in the lesson, students are on their phones scrolling through social media. So really having an impact on direct learning there as well. So kids are using their phones to kind of socialize, but not really socializing. They're looking at material on the social media, but they're not really socializing, and that was kind of the purpose of going to school, to learn how to socialize, right? That's a really important point, and the question that if I'm interacting with someone on social media, am I really socializing? Am I getting the type of interaction that I need as a developing child, as a tween, as a teen, to feel fulfilled and happy? Or is it somewhat of an empty experience when I'm doing it through social media? But I wouldn't even say a lot of it is direct interaction through social media. A lot of it's scrolling through other people's content that you don't even know, people that you do not necessarily know in real life. And is that just empty time causing problems and displacing other beneficial activities? So essentially you're watching user-generated content for seven hours a day. On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, you're just scrolling through other user-generated content delivered to you via the platform's algorithm, where the platform is choosing what they think is going to keep you engaged in using their platform, because that's how they make their money with our children's time. And so it's designed just to keep our children on and watching. And is that beneficial? The research seems to suggest it's really not. In fact, it is potentially very harmful. You mentioned potentially harmful. Can you give us examples of how it could be harmful? Besides the fact that they're not socializing, they're just watching this content? So I would put this in two buckets here. There's the potential mental health consequences. And in May 2023, the Surgeon General issued a warning over his concerns with excessive social media use in association with adverse mental health outcomes like anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorders. A long list backed by some very good research included in that Surgeon General's warning. So there's the mental health bucket that we're concerned with, and I'll get to that in a second. And then there's other more immediate acute harms. So we're seeing about 40 percent of fifth graders on a self-report being cyberbullied over social media. That triples a child's risk of suicide as well. It's a very serious threat. The FBI has reported a surge in what we call sextortion. So essentially predators blackmailing children and adults as well over social media for sexually explicit content or conduct. That is a surging harm that we're seeing perpetrated through social media. Human trafficking is now significantly connected to social media use. Drug trafficking, substance use, all of those are connected through social media. Now, fraud, there's really a long list of harms that we're seeing either caused or exacerbated through social media use. So those are the active acute harms. There's the long-term mental health impacts returning to that bucket. The reason, potentially, and in theory that we're seeing those harms, three major dynamics of social media that we believe are driving that. First, as I mentioned, displacing other beneficial activities. Like recess and going and playing with. Doing other things that children used to do and has now been replaced by swiping on your phone for hours a day. That displacement we're very concerned about. The loss of direct socialization. Instead of being in a social situation, feeling a little awkward potentially as a teen just learning how to socialize and sitting through that awkwardness and developing the skills. I was at a teen event the other day and there were entire tables of children sitting there instead of talking to each other, just scrolling because they felt a little awkward and they didn't get to practice that skill of talking to someone else, which is really so important when it comes to feeling fulfilled and maintaining your social relationships. So that swapping of activities, loss of direct socialization, all reality distortion. And so children are going on to social media platforms again multiple hours a day and they're seeing videos and photos that are edited with filters to change how you look to move towards some ideal version of beauty. We are seeing children and adults as well only post that perfect moment. So for our teens, the home run they got, the part in the play that they land the A, the best five seconds at a boring party that no one showed up to. So that curation and that editing is really warping our teen sense of reality. It's impacting body image, how they view themselves, their beauty, and that's having a really negative impact on self-esteem, confidence, and leading to things like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. Now, Mark, you have your own personal story of how you got involved with it. Can you tell us why you got involved with this? Sure. So I was working as a staffer for the California State Assembly and there was a 14-year-old named Jordan Peisner in our district and he was attacked while he was with some friends at a fast food restaurant after school on a Friday. He was attacked by another teen that he didn't know. Teen walked up behind him, punched him in the head as hard as he could while the attacker's associates filmed the attack and then later uploaded it to social media where it went viral. And so this video went viral so quickly it actually reached my email inbox within about an hour or two of its happening. I later connected with Jordan's father, Ed Peisner, and he was really resolved to ensure that this horrific ordeal that the Peisners went through did not impact another family, did not happen to another family. I should say, Jordan suffered some very serious injuries as a result of that attack and so Ed was very resolved to make some positive change here. And so we drafted legislation in California that came to be known as Jordan's Law and it is first in the nation legislation to deter what we now call social media motivated violence or attacks committed for the purpose of filming and posting on social media. Yeah, exactly, posting on social media to get those likes, those shares, those views are what our teens now call clout on social media. And we found in my office that starting around 2006, so the birth of social media as we know it today, incidences of social media motivated violence were doubling every year up until that point. This was in 2016 where we could find thousands of these attacks all over the country. There were websites just dedicated to hosting these types of videos as well. So it had become a massive problem quietly but in very much plain sight. If you fast forward to today as well, we find about 80 plus percent of fifth graders are seeing these types of explicit violence videos on a regular basis. So this is a huge issue. So we drafted Jordan's Law, we passed that in California in less than a year. Jordan's Law makes clear that anyone who conspires with an attacker to film a violent attack is held liable as an accomplice and subject to an enhanced or longer sentence. And we did that really to serve as a teaching tool to the students we work with across the country. Once they understand there's a name for this social media related harm, it really serves as a good deterrent to stop this behavior and instill in the students we work with the habit of thinking about what they're posting and what they're looking at on social media. You guys have been working on getting the cell phones banned and you've been working on the social media. How has it been so far? Is there a challenge for schools to figure this out? I think it's a very important question. We actually, when we look at this and we're conducting research on this as well, we actually have three buckets. We have schools that allow phone use. We have schools that have banned essentially phone use during the school day but do not really enforce it. And schools that have banned and enforced it. So there are a lot of schools across the country that have a written policy about not allowing use either in class or on campus at all. And it's really difficult to enforce that piecemeal. So we'll talk to some teachers on campus and teachers feel like, well, since no one else is enforcing it, it becomes really challenging for me as a staff member to ask children to put this, what is essentially an addictive device, away when no one else in the community is enforcing it. So there's a real disparity there. But our main point here is it needs to be everyone involved. That a student can't go to one class and have the ability to pull out their phone and then go to another and expect a prohibition to be effectively enforced. It puts the single teacher in a very challenging situation. How about parents? Are they supporting you guys? There's been a significant sea change in the percentage of parents supporting, critically looking at these policies and supporting prohibition of smartphones on campus because they're getting more acquainted with what the research is actually saying. When we do this work with districts or with individual school sites, we're able to actually bring our full experience to bear our work directly with the students on that campus. And what we can do is we can show the parents statistics on what's actually happening on their campus. So when parents see that their own students are averaging about five hours a day plus on social media, when they can see about half of their students are self-reporting being cyber bullied, when they can see a number of other harms actively happening, that basically takes support near the 100% mark for students, for parents who want to make a change, intervene and provide protection from what is active, ongoing harm. And we find that's really key to get adoption. Now across the country, there's a percentage of parents that are very concerned about the ability to access their children. We certainly acknowledge that there are different types of family situations or health situations that might require ongoing access between a child and the parent. We would say in those cases that the child does not necessarily need a smartphone. There are safe teen and tween phones where you can call a set number of contacts on the phone that does not give you, as the child, access to the wider internet or social media, which should directly address those concerns among parents. Now Mark, as you've been doing this work, have you come in touch with some stories that kind of stood out to you? Absolutely. So we work with families that have suffered the most horrific of tragedies, and I'll get into some of those examples, but it's not just the tragedies, the worst case scenarios. Parents need to realize that it's a full spectrum of harm. So from the tragedies to dealing with the families where suddenly grades are slipping with the teen student and we go work with the family and look and that child is using eight, nine, ten hours a day of social media use. They're going to three or four in the morning on their device with social media, which is cutting into sleep, impacting health and their ability to focus in school. We are dealing with families with children that have eating disorders and continue to get content on their phones glorifying eating disorders and dieting and the so-called thin lifestyle. Families that are suffering ongoing harassment and cyberbullying with their children. So there are really a full range of harms here. The worst case scenarios are really heartbreaking and they're happening across the country. We work with the Bronstein family based in Chicago. Their 15-year-old son, Nate, was cyberbullied over social media until the point that he tragically died by suicide. We work with the Berman-Chapman family out here in Los Angeles. So their son, Sammy, 16-year-old, was bored one day, connected with a drug dealer over the social media platform Snapchat. Drug dealer delivered drugs to Sammy while his parents were at home sleeping, just like ordering a pizza. And tragically, those drugs were poisoned with fentanyl, which Sammy ingested and died by overdose. Those cases are happening all over the state, all over the country as well. There's thousands and thousands of these families that have suffered really tragic, tragic results because of social media use. We are really, I think, humbled and privileged to work with them to create some change here both in the state and across the country, these impacted families. Now, Mark, some people are banning phones in schools, but the kids will have these smartphones at home. How is that going to make an impact? They're going to do the same thing at home. Excellent question. So just at the base minimum level in terms of impact here for the schools that are currently allowing phone use, that is hours a day that are adding to children's time on social media. And in theory, it is that amount of time that is exacerbating, making worse the negative outcomes. So just by cutting down that use during the school day, we should see a significant protective effect. It is true that for some of the other harms, when children go home, that they're still at risk. But I would emphasize at the base level, taking out three to five hours a day of phone and social media use alone through a school-based policy is going to be very protective. For those that are using phones actually during instruction time, during class time, that's going to make a big difference for educational achievement and learning as well. The research that the Surgeon General highlighted in his May 2023 advisory also showed a significant correlation between time of use and adverse mental health outcomes. Now do you have any other thoughts for our audience? I would highlight, and this is a takeaway really whenever we talk, is how severe and pervasive social media-related harms really are, and I went over the statistics. But that should really be the takeaway. I think despite the increased awareness among the public with concerns with social media and phone use, people really need to take away that we're not talking about theory. When you just look at the provable, acute, severe harms, there's a lot of them. There are millions of children suffering from these, and we really have an urgent need to take action at the federal level, at the state level, the local level in terms of policy, in terms of education, and in terms of continuing to increase our technological ability to protect children on social media. Mark Berkman, CEO of Organization for Social Media Safety, it was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate our conversation and your focus on this issue. Tricia, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me today. We want to talk to you about cell phone bans. And there is a trend in California that schools are banning more cell phones across different schools, and there is a law that's about to pass in California. Now your school, you have implemented these bans for a couple of years now, right? We started last year, correct. Can you tell us what's your experience with this? We started with a survey about a year and a half ago, and I surveyed our teaching staff, and one of the questions I asked our teaching staff is, how effective do you feel on our campus right now in their job? And a year ago, May, there was about 50% of our teaching staff that felt effective. After a year's worth of the cell phone ban, we have up to 68% of our staff feeling effective. And so their voice telling us how the cell phone was affecting them in the classroom led to this decision. It was for the benefit of our students and the teachers that we needed something different on our campus, especially to make a difference in our students after the pandemic and the learning loss that we were experiencing. So the bigger percentage of teachers are saying they feel they're more effective. Now that cell phones are not allowed in the classroom, they feel more effective. And for a lot of people might be wondering, how are you guys implementing, how is this possible to implement on campus? So we have chose to have a no device policy, meaning no devices, personal device policy on campus at all from the time they step onto campus to the time they leave at dismissal. They can have it on their person, but it has to be turned off and either stored in their backpack or we provide lock boxes in the classrooms where the students can put their phones in the box and they can stay there all day safe and protected. And the students, it's actually plexiglass, so they can see their phone all day and know that it's safe. Most students do not take us up on the lock boxes, but they do turn them off and put them away during the day. So they are not allowed to be seen, heard, anything throughout the day. And everybody on our campus is to enforce this policy on our campus. So there cannot be any weak links, there cannot be any adult that just says, oh, just put it away. There are no warnings on our campus with the cell phone, we see it, that's their first offense or second offense or whatever. So what will happen if they use the phone? The first offense is basically like a warning, but the phone is taken away from the student and held to the end of the day. The family is called at home and then the student can pick up the phone from the admin or the counselor at the end of the day. That goes until the third offense. By the third offense, the parent then has to pick up the phone. By the time they travel to the sixth offense, they have lost extracurricular activities like sports, the non-educational field trips, dances, the fun stuff. They start losing those things. And then by the sixth offense, if they still don't get the idea of what we're trying to do on our campus, they're invited to our school board and have to answer in front of our board. The family does. So the student and the family members have to come to the board and answer why are they not climbing on board with this. And then they're also told and reminded that SOAR is a choice. We are a charter school, so it is a choice school. So there are plenty of schools out there right now that do not have a cell phone ban. So if parents are not on board, they can go back to their home school. We did find we had two students who traveled all the way to the sixth offense by November and December of last school year, and they were invited to the board. And after that board meeting, they did not have another offense. So the parents kind of got the point and the students. We started this school year with only, in the first month of school, only eight offenses. Last year, the first month of school, we had 30 offenses. So we can tell the kids just after a year, excuse me, after a year of doing this, they're getting the habit of their cell phones are not OK on our campus. And they just don't do it anymore. I mean, they're kids. So if they feel a buzz because they have it in their pocket, the natural instinct is to take it out. If they take it out and look at it, it's an offense. If they get caught, then the consequences just kind of build from there. Why did you guys decide to do this ban? Every May, we put out a teacher survey, and I was noticing that our teachers were, it was only like 50% of our teaching staff that was saying they felt effective in their job. And as an administrator, I can't imagine feeling that way, that everything, teachers pour a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into their daily job. And to know that at the end of the day, our staff was not feeling effective, we started having discussions about why. And cell phones came up. And the fact that students just felt that they could pull out their phone at any time. And it wasn't just friends and social media that was attracted. Their parents were contacting them on their phone in the middle of the day. And so when they would say, well, it's my mom. And so it's how do you go against that a parent is trying to get a hold of their child in the middle. So teachers had no standing to confront this, and so it constantly was a battle. They were feeling like this distraction was making it so that they could not teach all these lessons they were planning, they were not getting through during the day because cell phone distractions were a major issue. I mean, you do have students who would listen to the teacher and put it away right away. And then you have other students who wouldn't. And so a teacher had to decide what battles to fight. And if they took that on, it was a power struggle, because what are you going to do at that point? We didn't have a policy. And so it came out of that teacher survey over a year ago that we need to do something different. And so we had 100% of our staff on board to try something new. And in 2019, Newsome actually made it possible for us to do it. And so we took advantage and put a no personal device policy in place. Now when kids were using their phones, what would they do with them? A lot of times they were on social media. They were also texting each other. And so we had a lot, especially in class. And we also had a lot of middle schoolers in different rooms texting and meeting up at the bathroom, because they had that way to communicate. We also had students, if any kind of idea of a physical fight was going to break out on our campus, the rumor spread really fast. And those cell phones were on the ready. Like these kids were ready to videotape so they could push it up to social media and spread it. There was a lot of cyber bullying going on. Our students would take random weird photos of each other and post them on these mean burn accounts. It just was a lot of social and emotional drama going on on our campus and us trying to chase it when it was already out of hand. I mean, now without cell phones, if we get any kind of knowledge that something's going on, we can dig in before it spreads to the kids first. There's just a lot of lack of interaction between the students. They would be huddled around their phone watching something or just one-on-one on their phone. And so there was no playing on the playground. You wouldn't see basketball games or four square games or kickball games going on. You would find just students in little groupings or by themselves hanging out around a phone. So whether they were watching, of course, we didn't always get to see what they were doing because the minute an adult would walk up to them, they would put it away. So that was always an idea that something that probably wasn't supposed to be going on was going on. So the social kind of fabric kind of was broken. It was broken. I mean, especially after the pandemic, that just added a whole nother layer of non-interaction. Our students forgot how to problem solve, how to socially interact with each other, how to developmentally, you know, learn how to create friendships. I mean, new students were lost because when you're a new student on campus, you at least have other students trying to bring you into the fold with cell phones on campus. We weren't having that either after the pandemic. We were having social isolation, a lot of isolation on our campus. And even though we were having to do distancing and all that kind of stuff, when we first came back, it just was the feeling on campus was we were not a family anymore. We were very disjointed and divided and the relationship building was almost non-existent. Teachers would try and students were just not, were receiving that. So taking cell phones kind of forced people to talk again, have eye to eye contact and play games together and make friends. Did you see any pushback? Not at the beginning. We actually made this decision without parent input. We chose to do it with just staff input because at that point, we were doing this for the betterment of our students and our staff, not necessarily the families. We had a lot of communication before we started the school year last year, letting parents know this was a new policy on campus. I think because of the amount of communication we did, everyone was in the know and they knew that we were not going to have any warnings when they stepped on campus that first day. We were hitting the ground running and all staff would be paying attention. And when we first started taking cell phones away last year, we would have some kids saying, but you can't, you can't. And we would just continue to show them the new policy, tell them what their options are, show them what the offense is and how the consequences grow. Educating our families, I think, really helped. So the pushback wasn't that great. By the end of the year, we had only those two kids that traveled all the way to the sixth offense. We had, I think, a total of like 80-something kids who had one offense only and it just slowly dropped. That's out of 400-something. 450 students. 83 students had their first offense last year. Like I said, it's already slower this year than it was last year. So they were able to change, like essentially. And a couple of our parents that I have talked to since the beginning of this school year has said about what they feel this has done for their child. She told me that she sees an engagement in her child back with his academics that she did not see before we took the cell phone. And a couple of our parents are also staff members and said their children are now, a habit is in place after a whole year that as soon as they approach the campus, they throw their cell phone in their mom's purse and go on their way without even a discussion. So I think just training our kids that this is just a new habit, a new way of doing things. We really haven't had much pushback, but we are also a smaller school, so it's easy to communicate with our entire population pretty fast. You mentioned that the kids were not interacting much with each other. Right. The phone was in the center of what they were doing. Did things change after you guys banned the phone? Oh yes, absolutely. When you walk on our campus now, kids are being kids again. You see the basketball games, the kickball games, the four square. You see kids actually playing on the playground equipment. They are, I mean, they're interacting, they're creating new friendships and relationships. The students in the classrooms are now engaged in the lessons more. The teachers are feeling their engagement more. We haven't necessarily seen a difference in their academic performance after a year. I mean, there's a lot of things going on besides the cell phone thing going on, but we're hoping that we're going to start seeing academic performance increases. One of the pieces of research shows that when a cell phone goes off in a classroom, it takes about 23 minutes to refocus. If you think about it. 23 minutes. 23 minutes to refocus, and that was a bit, when we started telling our parents that our middle school classes are only 50 minutes long, and if it takes 23 minutes to refocus even if they don't interact, if they just hear the buzz or the ding, that's a half a class period for them to refocus. And that's not just the person who has the phone, that's the person sitting next to the person with the phone. So that alone, that piece of research blew us away. I mean, we were feeling it, we were seeing it, but we didn't know the data behind it. If you think about us as adults and the addiction we have to our own cell phones and the lack of self-control we as adults have about putting that cell phone down and realizing we don't need it at our side all day long, we have to be able to teach our kids that there's boundaries and that they can make it through a day without their cell phone being on them. I'm hoping that we're training these students to have new habits that we personally are struggling with. Cell phone addiction is a real thing, and I think that if we can find some way to help our students find those boundaries and that self-control, I think we're doing everybody a favor. Some parents might be concerned that they may not be able to get a hold of their kids, and it's been the biggest concern that the parents have. What are your thoughts on that? Research is what we have given our parents to understand that during emergencies, actually our students having cell phones in the school is actually doing us a disservice. There's a lot of misinformation that gets put out there when the student has a cell phone. Students find that the research shows that students don't pay attention to safety protocols and aren't as quick to act when they have their cell phones in front of them. We went through the shooting in San Bernardino years ago, and that was when everyone did have cell phones. We have not been through another trauma lockdown situation since we put our cell phone ban into place. I don't know what that's going to look like when and if we have an emergency situation. Their phones are still accessible, so if there was a true emergency on our campus, our students would still have access. I don't think we would want them out just because of what the research says until it's an appropriate time for our students and our students to get a hold of their families. We do not need an influx. What happened at the shooting in San Bernardino, and we locked down for six hours. We had so many parents flood the front office trying to check out their kids. We could not release their kids to them, so it created even more chaos for the office staff during that emergency situation because students were getting a hold of their parents instead of letting us do the communication, and parents were rushing to school to check out their kids, and we couldn't release them. So we were having traffic on our campus with first responders around our campus, and it just created more chaos. So I don't know what that next emergency is going to look like with our cell phone ban on campus, and I'm sure we're going to have parents having that conversation after the school shootings that have been going on, but so far, we've had drills on our campus, and students aren't pulling out their phones and they're paying attention to staff and the directions given. So I'm hoping, but we won't know until we actually have that situation again. What about your teachers? How did this experience impact them? I actually just asked them what they felt after our first full year of no cell phones on our campus, what the biggest impact on our campus has been, and I had responses from not only our teaching staff, but our playground staff and our instructional aides, and there's not one person on our campus that doesn't feel that this has added value to our campus. They see the same things that I've already talked about. There's more interaction, there's less distractions in the classroom, there's more engagement, there seems to be more problem solving with our kids. We started doing a lot of restorative practices on our campus, so there's a lot of conversations going on, and kids are actually creating relationships, not only with each other, but with staff, which we feel is very important. The students seem very present on campus with each other and with staff, like I was telling you, you see kids being kids again. Everyone feels that this has made their jobs easier, so I'm hoping at the end of the year when I push out that survey again, that level of effectiveness is going to go up again. Our teachers also expressed that having the policy on our campus, that any confrontations that they do have with a student over a cell phone, they have backup now because we have a policy they can stand on instead of just saying, it's my classroom rule to not have your cell phone out. They feel like they have backup from admin and the policy, and we feel like there's just new habits and mindsets being developed all around campus, so I think the impact has been very, very strong and positive so far. I'm sure we're going to have hiccups along the way, and I'm sure we're going to have parents along the way that have something else to say, but right now, it's the right thing for our school. You mentioned that kids were not socializing. Do you think there is a long-term impact of this on the society if we continue having an environment where kids go to school, but they're on their phone all the time? Oh, I absolutely do think this is a long-term, whether we do this or not do this as a state, I think individual schools need to look at what's right for them, and I honestly think that when all is said and done, our students are going to be better people for our society, have better leadership skills because they will be able to socially interact better than they have been with that phone. And showing respect to someone in a conversation, not having your phone, there's a lot of adult skills that we're trying to teach our students, so I think long-term effects are going to be a positive one if we can actually get our students and our families to understand the benefits behind, and there's plenty of ways for our families to get a hold of our students and us. So, I mean, old school ways still work. There's still a landline to our school. You can still call the front office, we'll get your kid immediately, and if you need to talk with them or get a message to them, just like you did back before cell phones were around. I hope that our students are valuing or will value what we're doing for them in the long run. What's nice about SOAR is our alumni come back every year, and so we'll have a chance to talk with them. We have a party for it, so when they leave us as eighth graders at the end of their high school career, and we know they're getting ready to graduate, we invite them back to SOAR to celebrate that accomplishment and tell us, how's it been for the last four years and where are you going next? And so we'll have the opportunity to ask them after a few years of what kind of impact us doing this cell phone ban on our campus has had on them, and maybe they've created their own personal habits based on what we try to create for them at school. Tricia Lancaster, Principal at SOAR, it was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. Josh, welcome back. It's great to have you on. Thanks for having me again. You're Assemblyman in California, and we have been talking to schools, we have been talking to advocate groups that are looking at social media and phones, and you guys are putting a law together to allow schools to ban phones. Can you tell us more about what you guys are doing about it? So at the beginning of this year, I introduced the Phone Free Schools Act, which is AB 3216. And it's a pretty simple piece of legislation, it basically requires school districts across our state to take action on limiting the use of smartphones during the school day. And a lot of this motivation, I actually pushed for a similar policy when I was serving on my local school board, but a lot of this motivation is behind all of the new research that has come out in recent years, that really tells us that when kids have access to smartphones in the classroom, they're more distracted. They get worse academic results, worse academic performance, they have, there's actually an increase in bullying on school campuses, there's an increase in mental health concerns. And we think it's really important as a state that we do more to limit access to these devices during the school day. How would this work? Is there any structure to it, or the school district is going to decide on their own? So we've provided a lot of local control within the bill to allow districts to have these conversations in their communities on how best to implement this policy. There are going to be requirements that by, I believe it's July 1st, 2026, that you have to have a policy in place at your school to limit smartphones during the school day. But we're not overly prescriptive in how schools need to do that. I think for some schools, they may invest in yonder pouches, where the student actually places a phone into a pouch for the entirety of the school day and doesn't have access to it. Other schools may decide that they just want to require their students to have their phones often in their backpack. There are a number of different ways to implement it, but I think the important part is that we do this statewide. And do you think other states would follow California? I do. I think the research has just become so incredibly powerful. In fact, some other states are already starting to explore policies like this one. And when you look at the people that authored this legislation, myself, my joint authors, there's strong bipartisan support for this. We're Republicans, we're Democrats, but we all have one thing in common. We're all parents of kids that are currently being affected by the challenges that are created by smartphones. And we all feel very strongly that if our kids are going to succeed in school, then our state and our schools need to take action to limit these devices. And what about your kids? You guys are proposing this legislature and what's the reaction from your kids to it? Kids don't always love it, right? The kids do not always love it. I've gotten some complaints from my own kids, but they actually attend the school that already does not allow them to have access to their phone during the school day. So they've kind of become used to this policy, even though they don't like it. In the conversations that I've had with students, you know, some of them have actually expressed gratitude for this policy because these smartphones are so addicting and they really are kind of it's a social contagion issue where if one person's on it, you all want to be on it. And I think we're really giving students some relief here by taking everyone off their phones. There's no longer that that social pressure for everyone to have a phone or to be on their phone or to be on social media at all times of the day. And now, have you seen any benefits from your your kids that they they are not having access? My kids personally and also some of the the principals that I've talked with that have implemented it at their schools, particularly at the middle and the high school level. Everyone is reporting this incredible increase in social interaction amongst their peers. So when you when you're at lunch, you know, instead of everyone being on their phone, they're actually engaging with each other one on one. They're having conversations, they're building relationships. There's been reports of fewer mental health referrals. There's been reports of better academic performance. We've actually seen this in other countries when they've implemented this policy as well. And so the you know, the the possibilities and the benefits are really endless in terms of what we can see in our kids improvement and improving in that regard. And and just getting them off of these screens, at least for this part of the day. Josh, do you have any other thoughts for our audience? Well, I just you know, I'm really grateful for my colleagues in the legislature and for the governor for coming out and expressing strong support for this in concept. You know, I think when you look at all of the research, in fact, there was a book written recently called The Anxious Generation, which really dives into the harms of smartphone use, particularly on young developing brains. When you look at it, it's really hard to deny that the most important thing we can do for our kids to help them academically, to help them with their mental health, particularly coming out of the pandemic, is to limit access to their smartphones during the school day. And I'm grateful for the strong bipartisan support that we've received for implementing this policy statewide. I look forward to the governor hopefully signing it in the next few weeks here. Assemblyman Josh Hoover, it was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you.