California public and charter schools will be required by July 1, 2026, to set policies limiting or banning students’ smartphones at schools, after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Phone Free Schools Act into law Sept. 23.
The issue was discussed on a recent episode of EpochTV’s California Insider before the governor approved AB 3216. During the roughly 45-minute episode, a social media safety expert, a principal of a school that banned smartphones on campus last year, and one of the authors of the bill sat down with host Siyamak Khorrami.
According to Marc Berkman, CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety, UCLA School of Education research now indicates fifth-graders, on average, spend up to five hours a day on smartphones accessing social media—and as many as 30 percent spend seven hours a day.
“The amount of time is really staggering, according to the research,” he said. “Basically, it’s a full-time job where they’re just scrolling through social media for hours.”
According to Berkman, so much smartphone use by students has created distraction in schools and displaced play, socializing, and learning. It also has led to an increase in anxiety, depression, self-harm, and eating disorders, prompting the U.S. surgeon general to issue a warning on excessive social media use.
“Activities like recess and playing, doing other things that children used to do, have now been replaced by swiping on your phone for hours a day,” he said.
Many students are merely scrolling through addicting algorithm-fed content of others they don’t know, in what he called an “empty experience,” or seeing videos or photos that have been overly edited or have filters that are distorting.
Research, he said, has shown that’s not beneficial.
“In fact, it is potentially very harmful,” he said. “That curation and that editing is really warping our teens’ sense of reality.”
He additionally pointed out extreme—but increasingly common—examples of youth overdosing on drugs purchased through social media; cases of children being cyber-bullied, including a Chicago-based 15-year-old who took his own life; or fights and attacks videoed and posted online for likes and shares.
“There’s thousands and thousands of these families [who] have suffered really tragic, tragic results because of social media use,” Berkman said. “Eighty percent of fifth-graders are seeing these types of explicit violence on videos on a regular basis.”
In terms of the new law, just limiting the hours of social media a child consumes will help, he said.
“Just by cutting down the use during the school day, we could see a significant … effect,” he said. “That’s going to make a big difference for educational achievement and learning as well.”
Currently, he said, some schools have bans or limits, but they are loosely enforced from one classroom to the next even on the same campus. Consistency, including a statewide policy, is key, he said.
The Los Angeles Unified School District in June approved a ban on cellphones that will take effect in January. Another school in California—the K-8 SOAR Charter Academy in San Bernardino—is also ahead of most schools in the Golden State, having banned smartphones from campus last year.
According to Executive Director Trisha Lancaster, the school took the action—without parent input—after teachers indicated smartphones were disruptive in the classroom and, as a result, only 50 percent said they felt effective in their job.
A year later with the policy, that number has risen to nearly 70 percent, she said.
“It was for the benefit of our students and the teachers,” Lancaster said. “We needed something different on our campus.”
The students’ phones must be off and stored in a lockbox, pocket, or backpack, the last two options being most preferred.
For a first and second offense, students have their phones taken away for the day. If there is a third offense, parents are summoned to campus to pick up the phone. By the sixth offense, a student’s extracurricular activities—like sports, dances, and non-educational field trips—are taken away and the student and parents are summoned before the school board.
“We did … [have] two students who traveled all the way to the sixth offense by November and December of the last school year,” Lancaster said. “And after that board meeting, they did not have another offense. So the parents kind of got the point.”
Last year, there were 83 students—out of 450—who received first offense infractions including 30 the first month of school. So far this still-young school year, Lancaster said, there have been only eight.
This is just “training our kids … that this is just a new habit. A new way of doing things,” she said. “When you walk on our campus now, kids are being kids again.”
Parents—some of whom were once getting in touch via text with their children in the middle of the school day—are also getting used to the policy, she said. In case of an emergency, there would still be access to phones for students if appropriate, and, she said, there’s always the good old-fashioned landline for parents to call.
She said research has shown that having smartphones in a school emergency can spread misinformation and children often are not as quick to act or follow safety protocols if using phones in such situations.
Now, with the policy, she said, “We’ve had drills on our campus and students aren’t pulling out their phones and they’re paying attention to staff and directions given.”
She said after a year, there’s more interaction, fewer distractions in the classroom and more engagement. Kids are playing basketball, four-square or kickball again during recess, and aren’t hunched over in groups staring at someone’s iPhone.
“They’re creating new friendships and relationships,” she said.
Teachers are also happier, she said, saying they feel they have more control in the classroom and fewer disruptions. She pointed to research that indicated each time a cellphone rings or buzzes in a classroom, it takes a student and peers 23 minutes to refocus.
“The students seem very present on campus and with each other and staff,” she said. “Everyone feels [the policy] has made their jobs easier.”
California Assemblyman Josh Hoover, who represents parts of Sacramento County and is one of the authors of AB 3216, said he believes that other states will take notice and follow California.
“I think the research has just become so incredibly powerful,” he said. “In fact, some other states are already starting to explore policies like this one.”
Some that have already taken such legislative action include Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and South Carolina, according to Campus Safety, a website for school, university and healthcare professionals.
Ohio has also limited cellphone usage in classrooms, according to the website. Alabama and Connecticut have encouraged school districts to do the same, and Minnesota, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas are requiring district plans for cellphone policies or are engaged in pilot programs where students’ phones will be stored in pouches each school day.
Hoover reiterated that research showing the harmful effects of excessive smartphone use by children helped the bill receive bipartisan support in both chambers of the Legislature.
But he said children—including his own—don’t love it. However, he said as the bill worked its way through the Legislature, some students came around.
“Some of them have actually expressed gratitude for this policy because these smartphones are so addicting and … a social contagion. … I think we are really giving students some relief here by taking everyone off their cellphones,” he said.
And for those California schools that have already limited or banned smartphone use, principals—particularly of middle and high schools—are all reporting an increase in social interaction.
“So when you’re at lunch, instead of being on their phone, they’re actually engaging with one another. They’re having conversations. They’re building relationships and there’s been reports of fewer mental health referrals,” he said.
