“We know the excessive use of mobile phones, but we have the power to intervene. The new law will help students focus on their education, developing their social skills and on the world in front of them, not on screens, when they’re at school,” Newsom explained in a statement.
Thirteen other states in the US have banned or restricted cell phone use in schools so far this year, according to Education Week. Florida started in 2023, when it banned the use of cell phones in classrooms. In California – where nearly 5.9 million students attend public schools – state authorities followed the example of Los Angeles County, which in June banned its 429,000 students from using smartphones at school.
The California bill—passed 76 votes to none in the state House and 38 votes to one in the state Senate—requires school boards and other agencies to adopt regulations to restrict or ban use of smartphones in schools by students, until July 1, 2026. These regulatory rules will be updated every five years.
Four years ago Calvijn College in the Netherlands became one of the first schools in the Netherlands to ban cell phones in schools. More and more schools are now testing such restrictions, with France, Hungary, Italy and Greece asking students to leave cellphones at home.
WARNINGS
The United States’ chief medical officer, Vivek Murthy, has called for a warning label on social media, similar to the one on cigarette packages, stating that these platforms are linked to the emergence of serious mental disorders in teenagers. Murthy cited research from the medical journal JAMA, which showed that teenagers who spend more than three hours a day on social media face an increased risk of mental illness. He also cited a Gallup poll that found the average teenager spends 4.8 hours a day on social media.
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