On the week of Jan. 6, students in the Iowa City Community School District returned from winter break. Upon their arrival, students were met with a now familiar announcement at the start of class: “Please put your phones, headphones and earbuds into your backpack or purse for the remainder of the period.”
This announcement, heard across the district, marked a major change in school atmosphere. Over the break, the ICCSD introduced an updated phone policy that banned cell phones and recreational electronic devices during instructional time. Staff were instructed to confiscate students’ phones for the school day in the case of a policy violation. Within a week of implementation, 434 phones had been confiscated across ICCSD high schools.
An update in policy for Iowa City students might have been a surprise, but on a larger scale, ICCSD was one datapoint in a larger movement for cell phone restrictions in schools nationwide. States across the U.S. have introduced legislation to reduce cellphone usage in class, ranging from individual district requirements to statewide bans during the school day. Currently, 35 states have passed legislation to regulate cellphone use during the school day, while six states have pending legislation. Two states — Michigan and Wyoming — voted down cellphone restrictions for classrooms this year in their state legislatures. Michigan Democrats and Michigan Republicans each proposed a policy regulating cellphone use, but neither bill became law.
Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation” has influenced cellphone bans nationwide; at least nine states have cited Haidt’s work in cellphone policies, and many school districts, including the ICCSD, have too. Haidt advocates for limited internet access and full cellphone bans enforced by parents outside of school as a solution. To some, the dramatic measures found in the book are controversial. Critics of the book often suggest that, though the rise of social media in tandem with mental decline, one doesn’t necessarily cause the other…