Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday called for a statewide ban on the use of smartphones in California schools, joining a growing national effort to curb cyberbullying and classroom distractions by limiting access to the devices.
Mr. Newsom, who has four school-aged children, said he would work this summer with state lawmakers to dramatically limit phone use during the school day in the nation’s most populous state. His directive came hours before board members of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school district, voted to pursue their own smartphone ban that could begin in January.
“When children and teenagers go to school, they should be focused on their studies, not on their screens,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement.
The effort to limit the devices on campus has crossed political lines, with Republican-led states like Florida and Indiana already enacting their own restrictions. New York City has left it up to individual campuses to set their own policies after repealing a blanket cell phone ban in 2015, but Gov. Kathy Hochul said last month she would seek a statewide ban by 2025 .
The moves in California followed a call this week for warning labels on social media platforms by US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy, who argued they were fueling a mental health crisis among teenagers.
“Teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media face twice the risk of symptoms of anxiety and depression,” Dr. Murthy wrote Monday in an opinion piece for the New York Times. “And the average daily use in this age group, as of summer 2023, was 4.8 hours.”
Many school districts in California already have restrictions on cell phone use during the school day, but enforcement can be a challenge for teachers and administrators, and the policies are lenient enough that the devices can still disrupt daily activities.
In Los Angeles, for example, students are prohibited from using their phones during class, but are allowed to take them out during breaks. School board members said Tuesday they now want to ban the use of phones and social media platforms throughout the day.
Some parents in the past have opposed the bans because they fear losing access to their children in the event of a school shooting or other emergency. And teachers unions have been reluctant to take responsibility for enforcing the policies, although they have also welcomed efforts to prevent distractions.
Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, said he wanted the California Legislature to tighten existing classroom cell phone limits for the state’s more than 5.5 million public school students before the Legislature ends in August, a release first reported by Politico.
Mr. Newsom previously signed legislation in 2019 authorizing, but not requiring, districts to adopt cellphone bans. He signed an online safety law in 2022 that required websites and apps to install child protections, then last year urged California tech industry leaders to drop a lawsuit challenging the requirements.
Both laws passed with broad bipartisan support in a state legislature where such cooperation is rare and Democrats overwhelmingly control the agenda.
Last year, a study by Common Sense Media found that 97 percent of teenagers used cell phones during the school day. A study released in April by the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of U.S. middle school teachers and 33 percent of high school teachers said mobile distractions were a major problem in classrooms.
Mr. Newsom, whose two older children are teenagers, has personal experience with the difficulties of navigating a world where the use of social media and smartphones has proliferated.
Last month, at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, Mr Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, accused the tech industry of failing to address social media addiction and other mental health issues among young people that have worsened from technology. At one point, she said, she and her husband had pulled one of their daughters out of school because of cyberbullying by adults who were then imitated by the child’s classmates.
Smartphone use in schools, usually handled at the local level, has drawn increasing attention from officials in several states as teachers have complained about the academic cost of the distraction and experts have sounded the alarm about the impact of social media on adolescent mental health.
Last year, Florida passed a law requiring public schools to ban students from using cell phones during class, and some districts have banned cell phones for the entire school day. Indiana passed a similar law this spring that will require districts to ban portable wireless devices in classrooms starting next school year, with exceptions for emergencies.
Tuesday’s vote by the Los Angeles Unified School District board to begin banning smartphones will affect more than half a million students in more than 1,400 schools.
George McKenna, a longtime board member, voted against the motion. He argued that teachers already had difficulty enforcing existing restrictions and that parents needed to be able to reach their children during natural disasters and other emergencies. And, he predicted, it will only be a matter of time before students overturn the ban.
“Kids will be kids, no matter what age they live,” he said.
But Nick Melvoin, one of the board members who supported the proposal, said the district was helping lead a national movement.
“When the government put warning labels on cigarettes almost 60 years ago, 42 percent of adults in this country smoked. Now it’s about 11 percent,” he said. “I think we’re going to be at the forefront here, and the students and this whole city and the country are going to benefit as a result.”
Jonathan Wolff contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
