The damage caused by students using cellphones during school has become too costly, Middletown Township school board members announced last month during a public meeting — the latest district fed up with the vexing issue. It is fighting back with a proposed policy banning smartphone use in classrooms, bathrooms, locker rooms and most spaces outside of high school free periods.
“We should have done this years ago,” school board member Deborah Wright said after her colleagues introduced the new plan. “I think all of us have really been sort of asleep at the wheel.”
Middletown’s concern is emblematic of a nationwide effort to rein in cellphone use in schools, including several New Jersey districts now requiring students to lock phones in pouches during school hours.
The local pushback, coupled with dire warnings from the U.S. Surgeon General about the dangers of social media use, begs a larger question: Should New Jersey follow states like Florida and Virginia in imposing statewide restrictions or even a total ban on smartphone use during school?
“If you ask the average high school teacher, many, many, many of them — perhaps the majority — would say that they would be in favor of banning cellphones,” said Betsy Ginsburg, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, an organization that represents about 100 districts. “They would also be in favor of the ban either being a district-initiated ban or possibly state-initiated.”
Gov. Phil Murphy’s office wouldn’t rule out taking statewide action after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order last week demanding a “phone free” education in the state’s schools. Murphy is a “champion of youth mental health” and will “always explore options to support students and bolster positive school climates,” spokeswoman Maggie Garbarino said.
The phone crackdown is “a generational issue” more than a political one, so it wouldn’t be unthinkable for Murphy, a Democrat, to hold the same position as a Republican like Youngkin, said Ben Dworkin, a political analyst and director of the Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University.
But a larger obstacle is New Jersey’s home rule act and long history of prioritizing local control for school policies, which makes any statewide ban unlikely, according to Dworkin.
It’s also clear that any proposed ban — state or local — will fuel opposition from parents eager to track and communicate with their children in the age of school shootings and other threats. That’s not to mention logistical questions from educators already struggling with existing policies to keep students off their devices.
“There’s a lot of nuanced things that are going to be really hard to enforce,” Middletown Superintendent Jessica Alfone warned board members as they discussed their proposed policy.
Schools have been trying to stop students from using distracting devices since the days of the beeper. But the dialogue seems to have reached a turning point amid heightened awareness of online bullying and bipartisan distress about technology’s role in the teen mental health crisis.
Students frequently checking their devices leads to lower grades and a lasting impact on their ability to focus, according to studies Youngkin’s executive order cited. He called a cellphone-free environment “essential” for healthy students.
The Pennsylvania Senate recently passed a bill encouraging districts to effectively ban cellphone use in schools by utilizing state grants to buy lockable phone storage bags.
“It’s something that every school board and probably every administrative team in New Jersey, if not the nation, has discussed,” said Ginsburg, whose organization has no formal position on banning smartphones. “They’re very aware of other states that have either tried to do those initiatives to ban cellphones or have done it …
“It’s on everyone’s minds.”
Alarming problems
After 50 years in Trenton, Richard Codey still had one more problem to solve.
Phones in school.
“Put it in the locker. It’s pretty easy,” Codey (D-Essex) said, summarizing one of the final bills he introduced before retiring in January. “Anything that distracts kids during the school day is not good.”
But the former governor’s proposal to restrict cellphone use statewide was not assigned to a committee, and talks at the state level have dissipated. Districts were left to tackle the issue on their own as they have for years.
Almost three quarters of the nation’s high school teachers call cellphone distraction a major problem, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. And many parents and schools are adamant that smartphone use remains a pressing issue, despite existing policies that have become outdated or too difficult to enforce.
Some elementary school parents are banding together and pledging to delay their children’s cellphone use until high school, believing that if many students don’t have phones through middle school, they will stop using the argument that “everyone else has one.”
“We don’t want to be “anti-tech. We don’t want to shame people,” said Laura Carney, a mother of three in Maplewood. “But hey, if you are looking for a way to keep kids off cellphones, join us.”
The Chatham, Watchung Hills and Matawan-Aberdeen Regional school districts have sued social media companies over the alleged damage done to their students’ mental health. And school leaders in Sparta are looking for a better way to counter threats made via text and social media, inappropriate content shared between students and the recording of students and staff without their permission, Superintendent Matthew Beck told the school board last month.
“None of this comes as breaking news and shocking news, right?” Beck said. “We all acknowledge that cellphone use has become an issue, especially with our children and with our students.”
The district doesn’t want to ban phones, Beck said, but would rather find a way to minimize problems.
Yet the process of revising policies can be long and painstaking, pitting board members, administrators, teachers, parents and students against each other as details are ironed out.
Should phones be off? On silent mode? In lockers? What about using them between classes or in the bathroom? What happens in the case of an emergency?
Middletown’s proposed policy, drafted by school board members, would allow high school students to use phones during free periods. But if passed and adopted at a subsequent board meeting, it would ban them from using social media at any point during the school day.
The family of Jocelyn Walters, 14, recently sued the district after she died by suicide, alleging she was bullied over social media and threatened via text message while the school failed to prevent the behavior or respond to the bullying.
The first draft of the new cellphone policy says any student caught violating the proposed rules will have their device confiscated. Students could lose phone privileges for the rest of the semester or school year.
Alfone, the superintendent, told the board she supports the proposed policy’s intent. But she predicted students will find ways around it, and some high school parents will view it as too restrictive. The discussion at the board meeting sometimes spilled into administrators and school board members talking over each other.
These kinds of debates are likely why Youngkin used an executive order, requiring state officials to study and create relevant guidance and schools to adopt policies by Jan. 1, according to Ginsburg. It removed the debate — and the blame — from local school leaders.
But not everyone agrees there should be bans.
The majority of parents (56%) believe students should sometimes be allowed to use their cellphones in school during times like lunch or recess, at athletic events and in class for academic purposes approved by their teacher, according to a survey released earlier this year by the National Parent Union.
“I feel like parents absolutely need to have a way for children to get in contact with them if there’s an emergency within the school,” said Tafshier Cosby, the group’s senior director for its center for organizing and partnerships.
School office staff are overworked and should not be asked to manage calls home to parents, according to Cosby, who lives in Newark and has three grandchildren in school.
”It’s not just for active shooters, but if there’s mental health instability or high anxiety, students need to reach out to their parent and be able to get support and help,” Cosby said.
Kelly Golden, president of the Mercer County PTA, said it was a relief to know she could always reach her daughter, who graduated in 2020.
“While my daughter was in school, we had two family members in hospice, and I felt it was important to be able to get in touch with my daughter at any time,” said Golden, who was not speaking on behalf of the organization. “I felt more comfortable to have that connection.”
In New Jersey, decision makers need to weigh the positive and negative effects before taking any action, according to state Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth), who chairs the Senate Education Committee.
“Regardless, this is an important conversation and dialogue to have,” he said.
Do bans actually work?
Red Bank Regional High School made headlines last fall by requiring students to drop phones into a “cellphone hotel” during class.
Bridgeton, East Orange, Jersey City, Linden, New Brunswick, Pennsauken and Willingboro are among the districts that have turned to Yondr pouches, which lock phones until the end of the day.
“I can remember four or five students in particular that literally broke down crying because they couldn’t handle it,” Michael Walters, principal of Linden’s McManus Middle School, told NJ Advance Media in January.
Districts pursuing policy changes have pointed to research showing fewer distractions and better test scores. But there’s no guarantee students will actually store their phones as opposed to becoming more stealthy or that teachers won’t go mad trying to enforce stricter regulations.
Though most Linden High School students initially complied with the pouches, some gradually kept their phones in their backpacks and simply became more cautious about taking them out, according to Cristian Medeiros, who graduated in June.
Many students needed their phones for real-world responsibilities that didn’t stop during the school day, he said, like interacting with family members they are caring for or picking up shifts at their after school jobs.
He sensed enforcement becoming lax as time passed. By the end of the year, seniors were told to scan a QR code with their cellphones, he recalled, as they prepared for graduation practices — so much for the ban.
The new approach created a better atmosphere around cellphones, according to Medeiros. But he wonders if the district really needed to spend money on pouches.
“Or did we just need stricter rules and regulations around when they’re allowed to be taken out?” he said.
It’s likely that “the ship has sailed” on completely separating students from their phones during the school day, Ginsburg said. But she thinks “reasonable limitations on when phones can be used” are attainable.
The most effective policies will probably be shaped on the local level, according to Steve Baker, spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
He suggested schools work closely with parents, students and teachers to create policies designed to succeed at each grade level — with reasonable accommodations for times when cellphones might actually be incorporated into school.
“Cellphones are another example of a tool that can have a positive educational use and also a negative impact on education,” he said, “depending on how they’re used or misused.”
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