A decade of research now confirms that “smart” phones have failed to make our children any smarter or healthier. Indeed, the opposite is true. In the words of Assembly Bill 3216 – unanimously voted for by California State Assemblymembers on May 23 – “use of smartphones by pupils at elementary and secondary schools during the school day interferes with the educational mission of the schools, lowers pupil performance, particularly among low-achieving pupils, promotes cyberbullying, and contributes to an increase in teenage anxiety, depression, and suicide.” Law enforcement officials recommend against using phones during rare, worst-case lockdown emergencies, because doing so actually increases the danger to students.

So it is not surprising that UNESCO recently called for a global ban on smartphones not only during class, but during the school day. It is not surprising that the U.S. Surgeon General wants warning labels attached to social media the way they are attached to tobacco, or that the Los Angeles Unified School District has banned phones, or that around 3,000 schools in the United States are already using a simple magnetic locking pouch to store students’ phones while they are at school. What is surprising, however, is that Davis Joint Unified School District has not yet joined them, and that as a community we might wait another year for the State Legislature to act on our behalf. Waiting another year for action means another year of learning loss, another year of distracted, stressed students struggling to fulfill their potential, another year of teachers whose jobs are made harder by technology that was supposed to make life easier. 

Therefore, we parents and teachers of students in Davis Schools call on district administrators to act immediately: to follow the best advice of education and health professionals and ban phones during school hours. Teachers cannot and should not bear the additional burden of enforcing this commonsense change, so the district should adopt the same simple, affordable, and effective tools (like magnetic security pouches) that schools around the country and world already have. Our children, our students, our teachers, our schools deserve nothing less.