Pennsylvania has become the first state to pilot a program that would see student’s cellphones locked away during the school day.
Republican Senator Ryan Aument, 47, of the Pennsylvania State Senate sponsored the bill while sharing concerns that smartphones are a big distraction for students when it comes to learning.
Aument also suggested the continued use of them may also be having a negative impact on pupil’s mental health.
The Pennsylvania Senate Education Committee has now agreed to a to pilot a grant program that will aimed see schools be provided with secure, lockable bags that would hold students’ cellphones until the end of the day.
The proposed initiative involves creating a grant program to supply schools with lockers for storing smartphones.
The proposal would then track academic achievement and students’ mental health over two years to see how effective the program is.
‘I can’t think of another issue I worked on in the 14 years I’ve been here that’s resonated quite like this has,’ Aument said this week, during a Senate Education Committee hearing.
‘I just think it’s critically important that we free our kids from these devices for six and a half hours during the school day and the response we’ve gotten from parents and the response we’ve gotten from educators has been overwhelmingly positive,’ he said.
‘There’s been compelling data and research that’s been done that points to the decline in student mental health and student academic performance, student physical health and a direct correlation and strong evidence of direct causation with the rise of smartphone access among adolescents and social media access to adolescents,’ Aument said.
According to the Pew Research Center, teens spent an average of 3.5 hours per day on social media in 2023.
One high school teacher, Justin Neideigh, said he has seen positive impacts when students’ cellphone use is limited.
‘Bullying, cyber bullying, sexting, all these TikTok trends, all of this stuff that was never in the classroom before, is now,’ Neideigh told WGAL.
The bill mandates that the School Safety and Security Committee of the Pennsylvania Crime and Delinquency Commission allocate funds to a selection of schools participating in the program.
Over a period of two-years the schools receiving the grant will then need to evaluate the impact on student’s behavior, mental health, and academic performance.
The committee will then review the findings and prepare a report for the governor and General Assembly, which will then make a decision on whether to expand the program further.
Once the legislation is reviewed by the full Senate, the fundings could be included in the 2024-25 state budget.
Last week, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H Murthy called for social media platforms to enforce an immediate warning label – similar to warnings on cigarette packs mandated by Congress in the 60s.
‘The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor,’ Murthy wrote in a New York Times op-ed Monday.