What Teens Say About Phones In Schools
How much should students' ideas influence the discussion?
Since the first iPhone was introduced in 2007, smartphones have become ubiquitous and have changed adolescence dramatically.
One of the places this change has shown up most clearly is in schools, where phone use has become a major area of contention. Teachers complain about how distracting phones are and how much they interfere with learning, and news reports say that phones are making fights both more common and more vicious.
In 2024, I shared what I learned from teaching in a middle school while it was implementing a new phone policy in “California Wants To Ban Cell Phones In Schools. I Have Strong Feelings.”
The proposal I discussed in that post, the Phone-Free Schools Act (AB 3216), was eventually signed into law, and it required public and charter schools in California to adopt policies limiting or prohibiting student smartphone use by July 1, 2026.
The Tech/Life Balance newsletter explains the changes here:
“The Phone-Free Schools Act asked communities to decide what works locally and to involve students, educators, and families in shaping those decisions.
In other words, the policies students will experience this fall weren’t written by legislators. They were shaped in school board meetings, PTA conversations, principal offices, and student councils.
That shift may become one of California’s most important contributions to the broader movement distraction-free learning. The question is no longer whether or not schools should restrict phone usage on campus.
The question now is: How should communities design phone-free learning environments, and who should be involved in those decisions?
The California Partners Project also created this guide with specific suggestions for parents who want to make sure their school district has a clear plan and is going to actively implement it.
How To Get Youth Involved
Although this whole issue is about them, we often don’t hear that much about what young people think should be done. That’s why I was so intrigued to learn about the “Call Me Maybe” project from Young Futures.
Here’s how its Executive Director, Katya Hancock, explains the initiative:
In early 2025, as schools rushed to implement new policies before the start of the upcoming school year, we realized there was a small window to do something different. We accelerated our grantmaking process and launched a rapid response challenge, quickly funding organizations and school districts that weren’t just asking, “Should students have phones?” They were asking, “How do we build policies with young people instead of for them?”
Over the past school year, we’ve watched our grantees, four nonprofits and two school districts, take approaches that went far beyond simply restricting phones. They invited students into the policymaking process from the very beginning, helping them understand the “why” behind new rules and empowering them to become ambassadors for the changes. They paired phone policies with restorative justice circles to resolve conflicts before they escalated, and reimagined what students could do instead of scrolling by introducing music during lunch, opening outdoor spaces, and creating more opportunities for connection. In every case, the goal wasn’t just to reduce screen time. It was to build school cultures where young people felt ownership, trust, and belonging.
To tell this story as fully as possible, Young Futures partnered with documentary filmmaker Yoelle Gulko to capture these stories firsthand.
The first video in the “Call Me Maybe Storytelling Series” is out now. In it, Daniel Merrin from the School District of Philadelphia’s Office of Climate and Culture takes viewers inside two Philadelphia high schools. Students and educators talk about what changed when young people were invited to shape phone policy instead of simply following it.
Hancock encourages you to watch this 10-minute documentary with a young person in your life, or share it with educators and policy makers thinking about the future of phones in schools. Future videos will focus on schools in New York and California.
“My hope is that it helps expand the conversation beyond whether schools should have phone policies and toward how schools engage young people in shaping their communities. Phone policies are one opportunity, but the larger lesson is that when students are trusted with meaningful responsibility, schools see stronger buy-in, and young people develop the kinds of skills that help them thrive now and long after they leave school.”
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