Prepared remarks: The Challenges of Managing Smartphones in Schools (Sept. 20, 2024)

We live in a challenging time for young people. Notably, we are experiencing what the Surgeon General has called a youth mental health crisis.[1] He highlighted that there is growing evidence this crisis is driven by social media use that is not just distracting, but also dangerous.[2] For teachers and school administrators, the youth mental health crisis directly impacts our students’ learning environment. That learning environment can also be undermined by the use of smartphones in our classrooms, which I will discuss today.

As a parent of a teenager, I can attest that managing smartphone use is a daily challenge.  That means, for the nearly 95% of American teenagers with access to a smartphone,^[3] the question is whether it interferes with their learning experience. For some students, the constant stream of notifications and text messages creates significant distractions, even leading to struggles with academic performance and long-term knowledge retention.[4] For teachers, the challenge is how to compete with students’ devices for attention.[5] For administrators and those seeking to foster an engaging school environment, the challenge is that students may be more inclined to retreat into their devices (often, on social media platforms) instead of forming meaningful relationships with their peers and potential mentors in the hallways, at lunchtime, at recesses, school assemblies, and other occasions.

The connection between worsening youth mental health and smartphones is evident from our Safe2Tell reports. This past July, for example, we received 38 reports of cyberbullying—the second highest tip after reports of planned suicides. From a national perspective, “hundreds of school leaders polled in [a] survey said they believe phones are having negative impacts on student mental health, making kids tired and distracted, and amplifying conflict and bullying in school communities.”[6]

One of the challenges for schools in developing policies for the use of smartphones is that there are legitimate and even valuable uses of phones in schools. For parents, for example, they value the ability to contact their children when needed, especially in the event of an emergency. For students with health conditions, they may use their devices for medical reasons, such as tracking blood glucose levels to manage diabetes. And, as for Safe2Tell reporting, most reports are made using a cell phone.[7]

Developing an effective smartphone policy is a real challenge for school leaders. In some cases, they have not developed any policy. In other cases, policies exist on paper, but are not enforced. And in yet other cases, policies are vague, such as “trusting students to make sound decisions.” There is thus an opportunity for us in Colorado to work together and have more thoughtful, research-informed conversations about the appropriate use of smartphones by students in schools. To that end, we have a new funding opportunity for school districts and other local education providers to experiment with smartphone policies and develop strategies for preventing smartphones from interfering with the learning environment.

During the first phase of this smartphone challenge program, our department will solicit survey responses and reach out to school districts to learn about their current policies, challenges, and needs related to students’ smartphone usage. Using that information, we will identify school districts that are in different stages of adopting or implementing smartphone policies and award discretionary grants of up to $50,000 for a handful of districts in support of a variety of different strategies around promising smartphone interventions. This funding will be open to school districts and other local education providers from across the state and of varying sizes.

Our goal for these awards is to enable pilot programs to test different approaches, identifying the most effective and promising options. When selecting funding recipients, we will prioritize those that have engaged with community, parents, and youth to develop their existing or proposed smartphone policy, and those that have “shovel ready” ideas that can be put into place right away. To ensure that we can learn from this experiment, all funding recipients will be required to provide data to our office about the effectiveness of their chosen intervention on a variety of fronts, including changes in disciplinary action related to smartphones, student engagement, academic performance, and teacher experience.

In the spirit of experimentation and innovation, we encourage interested local education leaders to consider a range of possibilities for what might work for them—from the use of specially-designed phone storage devices to technologies that block certain smartphone features, to educational curricula about the uses of smartphones, and more. In Mesa County Valley School District 51, for example, leaders have partnered with the Colorado Forum—a group of civic leaders from around the state—to convene student and teacher advisory groups and consult with the community to develop a new smartphone policy that they are rolling out this school year. Under the new policy, younger students will not be allowed to have smartphones at all; older students, by contrast, will be allowed to use their devices only during breaks and not during class time. Impressively, District 51 also partnered with the Western Colorado Community Foundation to raise money to pilot several interventions in their schools to restrict access to smartphones.

Colorado’s culture of governance respects local control and experimentation. This means we are not expecting or suggesting a one-size-fits-all approach.  Rather, we are committed to raising awareness, encouraging testing of different approaches, and sharing information on best practices. To that end, we will be sharing information on pilots like the use of specialized pouches or containers that limit students’ access to their phones while remaining in possession of them or developing social norms and habits that involve responsible and restrictive use of smartphones so as not to interfere with the learning environment.

***

Our department is committed to doing all we can to encourage innovative strategies to support young people and help them thrive during this challenging time. To that end, we are planning a $20 million grant solicitation for school-community partnerships that will promote youth wellbeing by increasing protective factors, including building more trusted relationships.[8] This effort to encourage responsive, tailored, and effective smartphone policies fits hand-in-glove with that other $20 million competitive grant opportunity.

Smartphones in school is just one of many challenges that students and teachers are facing today. By engaging in this conversation, seeking to support leading experiments, and sharing best practices, we look forward to making progress on this issue in a collaborative and thoughtful way. The right smartphone policies, accompanied by effective implementation, can have a positive impact on school culture and the learning environment. Thank you all for your commitment to this important work.

 

 

[1] U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Services, Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory (2023), https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf.

[2] U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Services, Surgeon General Issues New Advisory About Effects Social Media Use Has on Youth Mental Health (May 23, 2023), https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/23/surgeon-general-issues-new-advisory-about-effects-social-media-use-has-youth-mental-health.html.

[3] Pew Research Center, Teens and Internet, Device Access Fact Sheet (Jan.5, 2024), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/teens-and-internet-device-access-fact-sheet/.

[4] See, e.g., Arnold L. Glass & Mengxue Kang, Dividing Attention in the Classroom Reduces Exam Performance, Educ. Psych., 39(3), 395–408 (2018), available at https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2018.1489046; Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff & Scott Titsworth, The Impact of Mobile Phone Usage on Student Learning, Commc’n Educ., 62(3), 233–252 (2013), available at https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2013.767917.

[5] Jenn Hatfield, 72% of U.S. high school teachers say cellphone distraction is a major problem in the classroom (June 12, 2024), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/06/12/72-percent-of-us-high-school-teachers-say-cellphone-distraction-is-a-major-problem-in-the-classroom/.

[6] NBC New York, Generation Text: See the full NBC survey results as principals reveal concern about phones in schools, https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/generation-text-see-the-full-nbc-survey-results-as-principals-reveal-concern-about-phones-in-schools/5645963/.

[7] See Safe2Tell Colorado Interactive Data Dashboard, https://safe2tell.org/data/.

[8] Attorney General’s $20 million initiative aims to boost school-community partnerships to promote youth mental health and wellness statewide (June 4, 2024), https://coag.gov/2024/attorney-generals-20-million-initiative-aims-to-boost-school-community-partnerships-to-promote-youth-mental-health-and-wellness-statewide/.