SALT LAKE CITY – During their upcoming 2025 general session, Utah lawmakers may decide whether to ban cell phone use in public school classrooms during school hours.
That would be the impact of a proposal – dubbed Devices in Public Schools — by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore (R-Salt Lake) and Rep. Douglas Welton (R-Payson) now pending in the Legislature, which aims to reduce the harmful effects of cell phone use on student’s mental health and classroom learning.
“The goal of this legislation is to empower school districts, teachers and students to create a more focused and productive learning environment,” according to Fillmore.
“Through this effort, teachers can focus more on teaching and less on being cell phone police.”
Smart phones have become a growing distraction in Utah schools, said Emily Bell McCormick, the founder and president of the non-profit Policy Project.
They disrupt classroom environments, decrease academic performance and contribute to bullying and social isolation, McCormick argues, adding that up to 97 percent of Utah school children use their phones during school hours, with teens receiving an average of 237 notifications on a daily basis.
Those alarming statistics are not lost on Gov. Spencer Cox. In a December 2023 press conference, Cox said that he would support a ban on cell phones in kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms provided there were exceptions in case of emergencies.
In January of 2024, Cox also sent an official letter to school districts, charter school leaders, school principals, school community council members and the State Board of Education sharing his concerns about the harmful effects social media has on our children and asking them to remove cell phones during class time.
With school districts now setting their own policies, cell phone use is the norm in Utah classrooms. Cox insists, however, that the evidence connecting learning loss to smart phone use is “overwhelming.”
But it now appears that a ban of cell phones in classrooms is an idea whose time has finally come.
The proposed Devices in Public School bill would reverse the existing standard by limiting smart phones, smart watches and other emerging technologies in classrooms by giving local education agencies the legal authority to reset their policies while creating exceptions for specific health or emergency considerations.
McCormick also explains that, through a public-private partnership between the Utah Legislature and philanthropic donors, funding will be available to help school districts implement new policies governing smart phones.
“Parents and families need support, students need guidance and teachers need assistance to respond to this growing epidemic (of smart phone use),” McCormick adds.
The Policy Project head emphasizes that state and school officials must take collective action to reset the norm to make smart phone use the exception rather than the rule in Utah classrooms.
The Policy Project is a non-profit, non-partisan group that promotes policy solutions that remove barriers to opportunity for women, children and those experiencing inter-generational poverty.
The 2025 general session of the Utah Legislature is scheduled to begin on Jan. 17, 2025.