Calling time

On 23 September Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, signed a law that tells every public school in the nation’s largest state to decide what to do about the phone in the pocket. Assembly Bill 3216, the Phone-Free School Act, requires each school district, charter school and county office of education to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting student smartphone use by 1 July 2026.^{1Office of the Governor of CaliforniaGovernor Newsom signs legislation to limit the use of smartphones during school hours23 Sept 2024} It is the sort of measure that makes parents cheer and civil libertarians clear their throats. We think both reactions are slightly off.

Start with what the law is. It does not ban phones. It orders a policy, and leaves the content to the district. The bill was carried by a bipartisan quartet of Assembly members: Josh Hoover, David Alvarez, Josh Lowenthal and Al Muratsuchi.^{1Office of the Governor of CaliforniaGovernor Newsom signs legislation to limit the use of smartphones during school hours23 Sept 2024} Policies must still allow phones in emergencies, in response to a perceived threat of danger, or where a teacher, administrator, doctor or a student’s individualised education programme permits it.^{1Office of the Governor of CaliforniaGovernor Newsom signs legislation to limit the use of smartphones during school hours23 Sept 2024} The state has not repealed the pocket. It has asked each school to hold a view about it.

The evidence offered is the sort that gets quoted in press releases. The governor’s office points to a Pew Research Center survey in which 72% of high-school teachers and 33% of middle-school teachers called phone distraction a major problem, and to Common Sense Media research finding that 97% of students use their phones during the school day, for a median of 43 minutes.^{1Office of the Governor of CaliforniaGovernor Newsom signs legislation to limit the use of smartphones during school hours23 Sept 2024} Forty-three minutes is most of a lesson. It is also, to be fair, a median, and the survey says nothing about what the phone displaced or what the students would have done instead. Teenagers were not, before 2007, famed for relentless concentration.

Mr Newsom, for his part, leans on the Surgeon General. “As the Surgeon General affirmed, social media is harming the mental health of our youth,” he said in June, adding: “When children and teens are in school, they should be focused on their studies — not their screens.”^{2Office of the Governor of CaliforniaGovernor Newsom supports efforts to get smartphones out of schools18 Jun 2024} The causal claim is contested among researchers, and a school ban cannot settle it. It does not need to. A classroom is a place where one adult is trying to hold the attention of 30 people, and a device built by well-paid engineers to hold attention for longer is a poor colleague in that effort.

Here the market case is simple. Schools are not a free market for attention, but parents choose them, and teachers manage them. The sensible rule is the one any employer applies to a meeting: put it away unless the chair says otherwise. California already told districts they could do this. In 2019 it passed a law confirming that they had the authority to regulate phones during school hours, which the governor’s office calls a first step.^{1Office of the Governor of CaliforniaGovernor Newsom signs legislation to limit the use of smartphones during school hours23 Sept 2024} Few did so with much zeal. The new law turns a permission into a duty to think, which is a modest upgrade and a defensible one.

What it wisely avoids is dictating the answer. Florida took a lighter route in 2023, allowing teachers to “designate an area for wireless communications during instructional time” and requiring schools to teach pupils about the effects of social media.^{3The Florida SenateHB 379 (2023), Florida Senate bill page9 May 2023} Between that and a locked pouch for every child lies a range of local choices, and a rural district with long bus rides and a San Francisco high school will not want the same one. Policies written with students, parents and teachers, as the governor’s office says California’s will be, may even be obeyed.^{1Office of the Governor of CaliforniaGovernor Newsom signs legislation to limit the use of smartphones during school hours23 Sept 2024}

The strongest objection comes from parents, who want to reach a child in a crisis, and from older students who are, or soon will be, running things. A teenager who builds an app, a newsletter or a small business at 16 does so on a phone. Both points are fair, and the exemptions answer the first. The second is a reason to teach the phone as a tool, not to wave it through the lesson. Founders also need what the ban is trying to protect, which is the ability to sit with a hard problem for an hour without checking anything.

The danger lies elsewhere: in a state that, having tasted success in the classroom, decides to regulate the app, the age check and the family sitting room next. Schools can set rules for schools. Everything beyond the gate belongs to parents and to competition among products, including ones that do not try to be addictive.

California has asked its schools to hang up. Its pupils, who will be hired for their focus, may yet thank it, once they have finished complaining.