School districts across the country are tightening their rules on cell phone use in the classroom, and Centre County is no exception.
Several states have passed or considered passing bills that would ban cellphones in classrooms in a growing movement to curb cell phone use in schools. In July, the Pennsylvania state legislature signed Senate Bill 700, which provides funding for schools to purchase lockable cell phone bags as part of the School Safety & Mental Health grant program.
While the bags are not in use at Penns Valley Area School District, officials have instituted a new policy in 2023 that bans cellphones in the middle school and high school during school days. High school students and students at the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology will only be allowed to use phones during CPI classes and during lunch.
This fall, Bald Eagle Area followed suit and tightened its existing cell phone policy. The district posted a reminder on its Facebook page that students are not allowed to use phones during class. Instead, they are required to turn them in at the front door of their classroom before each period. BEA Superintendent Chris Santini said limiting cell phone use allows students to better focus on the material.
“I think some parents welcome the forced break from the phone that this policy creates,” Santini said. “And the teachers like it because they don’t have to compete with the phone for the kids’ attention during the 45 minutes of instruction when they have the child in the classroom.”
According to school principal Brian Griffith, the stricter cell phone policy has been a huge success for Penns Valley’s high schools.
“I was concerned that we would get a lot of pushback from our students and all of our families, but overall we had broad support from our parents and from our students,” Griffith said. “And many of our students reported that they felt free not to have their cell phones with them.”
Santini said the school district discussed several options, including locked smartphone cases, but ultimately opted for a hanging phone storage basket at the front of each classroom.
“We weren’t happy with the idea of the locked bags, especially because we believe that if there was an emergency, they should have access to their phones,” he said.
Santini said he hopes the policy will also help limit cyberbullying, or online conflict between students during the school day. He believes increased phone use is hurting students’ mental health and anxiety levels, and while districts can’t control what students do outside the building, they can work to limit those effects during the hours they’re in school.
“We see kids being bullied through apps on their phones,” Santini said. “We see that if we have a couple hundred kids sitting in the cafeteria during lunch with free time on their phones, especially middle school age kids, they’re sending unkind things to each other and then we get things that happen after lunch as a result of that.”
There is a long history of high screen time and social media use having negative effects on the mental health of young people. A 2020 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that smartphone and social media use can increase mental distress, self-harm behaviors, and suicidality, especially among girls.
Santini believes that unfiltered access to social media and the internet can be detrimental to the mental and emotional health of students, especially at a younger age.
“I’m just not sure that it’s developmentally appropriate to put a smartphone that gives you access to all the good and also all the bad things of the internet in the hands of a 7-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 12-year-old or even a 14-year-old,” Santini said.
