As the new school year has started, school districts in Santa Cruz County, in California and throughout the United States have been attempting to manage cell phones in classrooms.
Teachers consistently complain they are having to deal with students watching TikTok videos and messaging friends during class. In many schools, students have also used phones to threaten or bully their classmates. As a result, at least eight states have adopted measures this year to limit cell phones in schools.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for stricter policies through a statewide limitation or ban on cell phones in classrooms. But many area and regional schools remain split on the proposal.
The California School Boards Association has said while it encourages school districts to consider the potential dangers posed by phone and social media use on campus, district leaders should be in charge of deciding whether to implement restrictions.
Newsom previously approved legislation in 2019 authorizing school districts to limit or prohibit students' use of cellphones at school. Earlier this summer, he said he plans to build on that law — AB 272 — to further restrict students' cellphone use at school, but did not offer specific plans.
The announcement came after the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms to advise that social media use can harm teenagers' mental health.
And despite schools' best efforts to keep cell phones out of classrooms, after years of horrific school shootings across the U.S., many parents have demanded that mobile phones remain in their children's backpacks for safety's sake.
In addition, many kids from lower-income households don't own laptops, which have also become ubiquitous in higher-grade-level classrooms, and instead use mobile phones for school work.
Moreover, while some schools report cell phone bans have led to increased student engagement and fewer incidents of phone-related fights and social media bullying, research is just not there whether the bans actually improve students' academic outcomes.
But limiting or banning cell phone use may miss an even greater issue: School safeguards against technology/digital abuses are probably lagging far behind usage and youthful expertise. As school districts have been debating cell phones, the threat of artificial intelligence has moved up.
In early 2023, some districts rushed to block A.I.-powered chatbots on school-issued student laptops and school Wi-Fi. Administrators feared that chatbots like ChatGPT, which can generate realistic book reports and schoolwork, could enable mass cheating. While schools seem more aware, at least, of the potential of A.I. cheating, few have developed specific policies or rules around A.I. image abuse.
Then, according to news reports, many schools were stunned to discover during the last year, that a few male students were using other A.I. tools to create fake sexually explicit images of their female classmates. According to a recent New York Times report, in one New Jersey high school, administrators announced over the school intercom the names of girls who had been subjected to the faked images. In a Seattle-area high school, boys shared A.I.-generated nude images of ninth-grade girls in the lunchroom. But school administrators did not report the incident to the authorities until a police detective informed them they were required to do so.
What are a few potential solutions to the A.I. threat? First, many school districts have begun training both educators and students how to use chatbots as tools for teaching and learning. This training needs to be emphasized and made more specific.
In addition, lawmakers should push for safeguards to be installed by social media platforms, A.I. startups and other technology developers that will protect young people from abuses and bullying — and school districts from rampant cheating.
©2024 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
