Interview with Marc Berkman, CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety.

Siyamak Khorrami: There’s a trend in California that they want to ban phones in schools. LA Unified did that already, and this trend may go across the country. You guys have been involved with this. Can you tell us what’s going on with this? What’s this trend about?

Kids are using their phones to kind of socialize but not really socializing

Marc Berkman: Sure. Well, first, the amount of time is really staggering. According to the research, we conduct research with UCLA School of Education, and we’re finding that, on average, about four to five hours a day, students from fifth grade and up are spending on social media. That’s just the average. When we get into about 20-30% of the students, we’re seeing over seven hours a day. So, basically, a full-time job where they’re just scrolling through social media for hours, and that is displacing really important activities that children used to engage in. That includes at school, on campus, during lunch. Instead of talking to each other directly, students are staring at their screens. So, they’re not practicing direct socializing. Instead of reading, doing homework, engaging in physical activity during recess periods or immediately after school or extracurricular activities, they’re staring at their phones. That displacement of activities is really concerning, and we believe it’s driving a lot of negative mental health outcomes.

Siyamak Khorrami: Are they doing that in class as well?

Marc Berkman: We have certainly seen it in schools across the country and heard from teachers and other school staff that, instead of participating in their lessons, students are on their phones, scrolling through social media. So, it’s really having an impact on direct learning there as well.

Siyamak Khorrami: So, kids are using their phones to kind of socialize but not really socializing. They’re looking at material on social media, but they’re not really socializing, and that was kind of the purpose of going to school, to learn how to socialize, right?

Marc Berkman: That’s a really important point. And the question is, if I am interacting with someone on social media, am I really socializing? Am I getting the type of interaction that I need as a developing child, as a tween, as a teen, to feel fulfilled and happy, or is it somewhat of an empty experience when I’m doing it through social media? But I wouldn’t even say a lot of it is direct interaction through social media. A lot of it’s scrolling through other people’s content that you don’t even know—people that you do not necessarily know in real life. And is that just empty time, causing problems and displacing other beneficial activities?

Siyamak Khorrami: So, essentially, you’re watching user-generated content for seven hours a day. 

Marc Berkman: on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, you’re just scrolling through other user-generated content delivered to you via the platform’s algorithm, where the platform is choosing what they think is going to keep you engaged and using their platform because that’s how they make their money—with our children’s time. And so, it’s designed just to keep our children on and watching. And is that beneficial? The research seems to suggest it’s really not. In fact, it is very, potentially, very harmful.

Surgeon General’s warning and cyberbullying 

Siyamak Khorrami: You mentioned “potentially harmful.” Can you give us examples of how it could be harmful besides the time, the fact that they’re not socializing, they’re just watching this content?

Marc Berkman: So, I would put this in two buckets. There are the potential mental health consequences. In May 2023, the Surgeon General issued a warning over his concerns with excessive social media use and its association with adverse mental health outcomes, like anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorders—a long list backed by some very good research included in that Surgeon General’s warning. So, there’s the mental health bucket that we’re concerned with, and I'll get to that in a second. And then, there’s other, more immediate, acute harm. We’re seeing about 40% of fifth graders on up self-report being cyberbullied over social media. That triples a child’s risk of suicide as well. It’s a very serious threat. The FBI has reported a surge in what we call sextortion—essentially, predators blackmailing children and adults as well over social media for sexually explicit content or conduct. That is a surging harm that we’re seeing perpetrated through social media. Human trafficking is now significantly connected to social media use. Drug trafficking, substance use—all of those are connected through social media now. Fraud. There’s really a long list of harms that we’re seeing either caused or exacerbated through social media use.

Student looking at phone in class(nimito/Shutterstock)

So, those are the active, acute harms. The long-term mental health impacts—returning to that bucket—the reason, potentially, in theory, that we’re seeing those harms—three major dynamics of social media that we believe are driving that. First, as I mentioned, displacing other beneficial activities 

Siyamak Khorrami: Like recess and going out and playing with friends 

Marc Berkman: doing other things that children used to do, which have now been replaced by swiping on your phone for hours a day. That displacement is very concerning. The loss of direct socialization. Instead of being in a social situation, feeling a little awkward potentially as a teen just learning how to socialize, and sitting through that awkwardness and developing the skills, I was at a teen event the other day, and there were entire tables of children sitting there, instead of talking to each other, just scrolling because they felt a little awkward. They didn’t get to practice that skill of talking to someone else, which is really so important when it comes to feeling fulfilled and maintaining your social relationships. So, that swapping of activities and loss of direct socialization are reality distortion. Children are going onto social media platforms again for multiple hours a day, and they’re seeing videos and photos that are edited with filters to change how people look to move toward some ideal version of beauty. We are seeing children—and adults as well—only post that perfect moment. So, for our teens, it’s the home run they hit, the part in the play they landed, the A they got, the best five seconds at a boring party that no one showed up to. That curation and that editing is really warping our teens’ sense of reality. It’s impacting body image, how they view themselves, their beauty, and that’s having a really negative impact on self-esteem, confidence, and leading to things like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

California Jordan’s Law, and Jordan’s story 

Siyamak Khorrami: Now, Mark, you have your own personal story of how you got involved with this. Can you tell us why you got involved with this?

Marc Berkman: Sure. So, I was working as a staffer for the California State Assembly, and there was a 14-year-old named Jordan Peisner in our district. He was attacked while he was with some friends at a fast food restaurant after school on a Friday. He was attacked by another teen that he didn’t know. A teen walked up behind him, punched him in the head as hard as he could, while the attacker’s associates filmed the attack and later uploaded it to social media, where it went viral. This video went viral so quickly it actually reached my email inbox within about an hour or two of it happening. I later connected with Jordan’s father, Ed Peisner, and he was really resolved to ensure that this horrific ordeal that the Peisners went through did not impact another family. Jordan suffered some very serious injuries as a result of that attack, and Ed was resolved to make some positive change. So, we drafted legislation in California that came to be known as Jordan’s Law. It is first-in-the-nation legislation to deter what we now call social media-motivated violence, or attacks committed for the purpose of filming and posting on social media to get those likes, shares, and views, or what our teens now call “clout” on social media. And we found in my office that starting around 2006, the birth of social media as we know it today, incidences of social media-motivated violence were doubling every year. This was in 2016, where we could find thousands of these attacks all over the country. There were websites just dedicated to hosting these types of videos as well. It’s become a massive problem, quietly but in very much plain sight. If you fast-forward to today, we find about 80% of fifth graders are seeing these types of explicit violence videos on a regular basis. This is a huge issue. We drafted Jordan’s Law, and we passed that in California in less than a year. Jordan’s Law makes clear that anyone who conspires with an attacker to film a violent attack is held liable as an accomplice and subject to an enhanced or longer sentence. We did that to serve as a teaching tool to the students we work with across the country. Once they understand there’s a name for this social media-related harm, it really serves as a good deterrent to stop this behavior and instill in the students we work with the habit of thinking about what they’re posting and what they’re looking at on social media.

School and parent’s roles 

Siyamak Khorrami: You guys have been working on getting cell phones banned, and you’ve been working on social media safety. How has it been so far? Is there a challenge for schools to figure this out?

Marc Berkman: I think it’s a very important question. When we look at this, and we’re conducting research on this as well, we actually have three buckets. We have schools that allow phone use, schools that have banned phone use during the school day but do not really enforce it, and schools that have banned and enforced it. There are a lot of schools across the country that have a written policy about not allowing use either in class or on campus at all, and it’s really difficult to enforce that piecemeal. Some teachers on campus feel like, well, since no one else is enforcing it, it becomes really challenging for me as a staff member to ask children to put this, what is essentially an addictive device, away when no one else in the community is enforcing it. So, there’s a real disparity there, but our main point here is it needs to be everyone involved. A student can’t go to one class and have the ability to pull out their phone and then go to another and expect a prohibition to be effectively enforced. It puts the single teacher in a very challenging situation.

Siyamak Khorrami: How about parents? Are they supporting you guys?

Marc Berkman: There’s been a significant sea change in the percentage of parents critically looking at these policies and supporting the prohibition of smartphones on campus because they’re getting more acquainted with what the research is actually saying. When we do this work with districts or individual school sites, we are able to bring our full experience to bear our work directly with the students on that campus. We can show parents statistics on what’s actually happening on their campus. So, when parents see that their own students are averaging about five hours a day plus on social media, when they see about half of their students self-report being cyberbullied, and when they see other harms actively happening, that basically takes support near the 100% mark for parents who want to make a change, intervene and provide protection from what is active, ongoing harm. We find that’s really key to getting adoption.

Now, across the country, there is a percentage of parents that are concerned about the ability to access their children. We certainly acknowledge that there are different types of family situations or health situations that might require ongoing access between a child and the parent. We would say, in those cases, that the child does not necessarily need a smartphone. There are safe teen and tween phones where you can call a set number of contacts on the phone that do not give the child access to the wider internet or social media, which should directly address those concerns among parents.

Tragic stories across the country 

Siyamak Khorrami: Now, Mark, as you’ve been doing this work, have you come in touch with some stories that stood out to you?

Marc Berkman: Absolutely. We work with families that have suffered the most horrific tragedies. I’ll get into some of those examples, but it’s not just the tragedies, the worst-case scenarios. Parents need to realize that it’s a full spectrum of harm, from the tragedies to dealing with families where suddenly grades are slipping with the teen student, and we go work with the family and look, and that child is using eight, nine, and ten hours a day of social media use. They’re going to 3 or 4 in the morning on their device with social media, which is cutting into sleep, impacting health, and their ability to focus in school. We are dealing with families with children that have eating disorders and continue to get content on their phones glorifying eating disorders, dieting, and the so-called “thin” lifestyle. Families are suffering ongoing harassment and cyberbullying with their children. So, there’s really a full range of harms here. The worst-case scenarios are really heartbreaking, and they’re happening across the country.

We work with the Bronstein family, based in Chicago. Their 15-year-old son, Nate, was cyberbullied over social media until he tragically died by suicide. We work with the Berman Chapman family out here in Los Angeles. Their son, Sammy, 16 years old, was bored one day, connected with a drug dealer over the social media platform Snapchat. The drug dealer delivered drugs to Sammy while his parents were at home sleeping, just like ordering a pizza. Tragically, those drugs were poisoned with fentanyl, which Sammy ingested, and he died by overdose. These cases are happening all over the state, all over the country as well. Thousands and thousands of these families have suffered really tragic results because of social media use. We are really humbled and privileged to work with them to create some change, both in the state and across the country.

Siyamak Khorrami: Mark, some people are banning phones in schools, but the kids will still have these smartphones at home. How is that going to make an impact if they’re going to do the same thing at home?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JANUARY 31: In this photo illustration, a teenager uses her mobile phone to access social media on January 31, 2024 in New York City. Technology executives appeared at a Senate hearing to address accusations that their companies are endangering children's lives by not adequately policing predators and others who seek to harm and exploit young social media users. (Photo illustration by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Marc Berkman: Excellent question. At just the base minimum level in terms of impact here, for the schools currently allowing phone use, that’s hours a day adding to children’s time on social media. And in theory, It’s that amount of time that is exacerbating and making the negative outcomes. So, just by cutting down that use during the school day, we should see a significant protective effect. It’s true that for some of the other harms, when children go home, they’re still at risk, but I would emphasize at base level that taking out three to five hours a day of phone and social media use through a school-based policy alone is going to be very protective. For those using phones during instruction time, during class time, it’s going to make a big difference for educational achievement and learning as well. The research that the Surgeon General highlighted in his May 2023 advisory showed a significant correlation between time of use and adverse mental health outcomes.

Takeaway: Social media-related harms are real, NOT in theory 

Siyamak Khorrami: Do you have any other thoughts for our audience?

Marc Berkman: I would highlight, and this is a takeaway whenever we talk, just how severe and pervasive social media-related harms really are. I went over the statistics, but that should be the takeaway. Despite the increased awareness among the public with concerns about social media and phone use, people really need to take away that we’re not talking about theory. When you look at the provable, acute, severe harms, there are a lot of them. Millions of children are suffering from these, and we have an urgent need to take action at the federal level, state level, local level—in terms of policy, in terms of education, and in terms of continuing to increase our technological ability to protect children on social media.

Marc Berkman, as CEO of the Organization for Social Media Safety, it was great to have you on California Insider.

Marc Berkman: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate our conversation and your focus on this issue.

Interview with Trisha Lancaster, Principal at SOAR Charter Academy

Siyamak Khorrami: Trisha, it’s great to have you on.

Trisha Lancaster: Thank you so much for having me.

Siyamak Khorrami: Today, we want to talk to you about cell phone bans, and there is a trend in California that schools are banning more cell phones across different schools. There’s a law that’s about to pass in California. Now, your school—you have implemented these bans for a couple of years now, right?

Trisha Lancaster: We started last year, correct.

Teacher Feedback on Classroom Effectiveness

Siyamak Khorrami: Can you tell us what’s your experience with this?

Trisha Lancaster: We started with a survey about a year and a half ago. I surveyed our teaching staff, and one of the questions I asked our teaching staff was, “How effective do you feel on our campus right now in your job?” A year ago, in May, there was about 50% of our teaching staff that felt effective. After a year’s worth of the cell phone ban, we have up to 68% of our staff feeling effective. So, their voices telling us how the cell phone was affecting them in the classroom led to this decision. It was for the benefit of our students and the teachers that we needed something different on our campus, especially to make a difference in our students after the pandemic and the learning loss we were experiencing.

Siyamak Khorrami: So, a bigger percentage of teachers are saying they feel more effective? 

Trisha Lancaster: Now that cell phones are not allowed in the classroom, they feel more effective.

The No-Device Policy: How It Works

Siyamak Khorrami: And for a lot of people, they might be wondering, how are you guys implementing this? How is this possible to implement on campus?

Trisha Lancaster: We chose to have a no-device policy—no personal device policy—on campus at all from the time they step onto campus to the time they leave at dismissal. They can have it on their person, but it has to be turned off and either stored in their backpack or we provide lockboxes in the classrooms where the students can put their phones in the box, and it can stay there all day, safe and protected. The students—it’s actually plexiglass, so they can see their phone all day and know that it’s safe. Most students do not take us up on the lockboxes, but they do turn them off and put them away during the day. They are not allowed to be seen or heard at all throughout the day, and everybody on our campus is to enforce this policy. There cannot be any weak links. There cannot be any adult who just says, “Oh, just put it away.” There are no warnings on our campus with the cell phone. We see it—that’s their first offense, or second offense, or whatever.

Siyamak Khorrami: So, what happens if they use the phone?

Trisha Lancaster: The first offense is basically like a warning, but the phone is taken away from the student and held until the end of the day. The parents or family are called at home, and then the student can pick up the phone from the admin or counselor at the end of the day. That goes until the third offense. By the third offense, the parent has to pick up the phone. By the time they travel to the sixth offense, they have lost extracurricular activities like sports, non-educational field trips, dances—the fun stuff. They start losing those things. Then by the sixth offense, if they still don’t get the idea of what we’re trying to do on our campus, they’re invited to our school board and have to answer in front of our board. The family does. So, the student and family members have to come to the board and answer why they’re not getting on board with this. They’re also reminded that SOAR is a choice. We are a charter school, so it is a choice school. There are plenty of schools out there right now that do not have a cell phone ban, so if parents are not on board, they can go back to their home school. We did find we had two students who traveled all the way to the sixth offense by November and December of last school year. They were invited to the board, and after that board meeting, they did not have another offense. The parents kind of got the point, and the students, too.

We started this school year with only eight offenses in the first month of school. Last year, during the first month of school, we had 30 offenses. So, we can tell that after a year of doing this, the kids are getting into the habit that cell phones are not okay on campus, and they just don’t do it anymore. They just don’t do it. I mean, they’re kids, so if they feel a buzz because they have it in their pocket, the natural instinct is to take it out. If they take it out and look at it, it’s an offense. If they get caught, then the consequences build from there.

Siyamak Khorrami:  Why did you guys decide to do this ban?

Trisha Lancaster: Every May, we put out a teacher survey, and I was noticing that only about 50% of our teaching staff was saying they felt effective in their job. As an administrator, I can’t imagine feeling that way. Teachers pour a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into their daily job, and to know that at the end of the day, our staff was not feeling effective—it was a concern. We started having discussions about why, and cell phones came up. The fact that students felt they could pull out their phone at any time—it wasn’t just friends and social media that were distracting them. Their parents were contacting them on their phones in the middle of the day. So, when they would say, “Well, it’s my mom,” how do you go against that? A parent is trying to get a hold of their child in the middle of the day. Teachers had no standing to confront this, and so it constantly became a battle. They were feeling like this distraction was making it so they could not teach all these lessons they were planning. They were not getting through during the day because cell phone distractions were a major issue. I mean, you do have students who would listen to the teacher and put it away right away, and then you have other students who wouldn’t. So, a teacher had to decide what battles to fight, and if they took that on, it became a power struggle because, at that point, we didn’t have a policy. So, it came out of that teacher survey over a year ago that we needed to do something different.

We had 100% of our staff on board to try something new, and in 2019, Newsom actually made it possible for us to do it. So, we took advantage and put a no-personal-device policy in place.

Student Phone Use and Its Impact

Siyamak Khorrami: Now, when kids were using their phones, what would they do with them?

Trisha Lancaster: A lot of times, they were on social media. They were also texting each other, so we had a lot, especially in class. We also had a lot of middle schoolers in different rooms texting and meeting up in the bathroom because they had that way to communicate. We also had students who, if there was any hint of a physical fight about to break out on campus, spread the rumors quickly, and those cell phones were always ready. These kids were ready to videotape so they could push it up to social media and spread it. There was a lot of cyberbullying going on. Our students would take random, weird photos of each other and post them on these mean “burn” accounts, and it was just a lot of social-emotional drama going on on our campus, and we were trying to chase it when it was already out of hand.

High school students sit at a table holding multiple digital devices such as phones and tablets during a class lesson. (LBeddoe/Shutterstock)

Now, without cell phones, if we get any kind of knowledge that something’s going on, we can dig in before it spreads through the kids first. There was just a lot of lack of interaction between the students. They would be huddled around their phone watching something or just on their own phone. So, there was no playing on the playground. You wouldn’t see basketball games, four-square games, or kickball games going on. You would find just students in little groups or by themselves, hanging out around a phone. Whether they were watching or not, we didn’t always know what they were doing, because the moment an adult walked up, they would put it away. So, it always seemed like something that probably shouldn’t be happening was going on.

Social Fabric and Student Interaction Post-Ban

Siyamak Khorrami: So, the social kind of fabric was broken?

Trisha Lancaster: It was broken. I mean, especially after the pandemic, that just added another layer of non-interaction. Our students forgot how to problem-solve, how to socially interact with each other, how to developmentally learn how to create friendships. I mean, new students were lost because, when you’re a new student on campus, at least you have other students trying to bring you into the fold. With cell phones on campus, we weren’t having that either. After the pandemic, we were having social isolation, a lot of isolation on our campus. Even though we were having to do distancing and all that kind of stuff when we first came back, the feeling on campus was that we were not a family anymore. We were very disjointed and divided, and the relationship-building was almost non-existent. Teachers would try, and students were just not receiving that.

So, taking the cell phones away kind of forced people to talk again, have eye contact, play games together, and make friends.

Siyamak Khorrami: Did you see any pushback?

Trisha Lancaster: Not at the beginning. We actually made this decision without parent input. We chose to do it with just staff input because, at that point, we were doing this for the betterment of our students and our staff, not necessarily the families. We had a lot of communication before we started the school year last year, letting parents know this was a new policy on campus. I think because of the amount of communication we did, everyone was in the know, and they knew that we were not going to have any warnings. When they stepped on campus that first day, we were hitting the ground running, and all staff would be paying attention.

When we first started taking cell phones away last year, we would have some kids saying, “But you can’t! You can’t!” And we would just continue to show them the new policy, tell them what their options are, show them the offenses, and how the consequences grow. Educating our families really helped, so the pushback wasn’t that great. By the end of the year, we only had two kids who traveled all the way to the sixth offense. We had a total of around 80 students who had one offense only, and it just slowly dropped. Out of 450 students, 83 students had their first offense last year. Like I said, it’s already lower this year than it was last year.

Siyamak Khorrami: So, they were able to change the habit, essentially?

Trisha Lancaster: Yeah, and a couple of our parents that I’ve talked to since the beginning of this school year have said they feel this has done a lot for their child. One parent told me that she sees an engagement in her child, back with his academics, that she did not see before we took the cell phone away. A couple of our parents are also staff members, and they said their children now have a habit in place after a whole year. As soon as they approach campus, they throw their cell phone in their mom’s purse and go on their way without even a discussion. So, I think just training our kids that this is a new habit, a new way of doing things, has really helped. We haven’t had much pushback, but we are also a smaller school, so it’s easy to communicate with our entire population pretty fast.

Siyamak Khorrami: You mentioned that the kids were not interacting much with each other, right? The phone was at the center of what they were doing. Did things change after you guys banned them?

Trisha Lancaster: Oh, yes, absolutely. When you walk on our campus now, kids are being kids again. You see the basketball games, the kickball games, the four-square games. You see kids actually playing on the playground equipment. They’re interacting, they’re creating new friendships and relationships. The students in the classrooms are now engaged in the lessons more. The teachers are feeling their engagement more. We haven’t necessarily seen a difference in their academic performance after a year, but there’s a lot going on besides the cell phone issue. We hope that we’re going to start seeing academic performance increases. One piece of research shows that when a cell phone goes off in the classroom, it takes about 23 minutes to refocus. If you think about it, 23 minutes to refocus was a big deal for us. When we started telling our parents, “Our middle school classes are only 50 minutes long, and if it takes 23 minutes to refocus after a buzz or a ding, that’s a half a class period to refocus.” And that’s not just the person who has the phone, but the person sitting next to them. So, that alone—that piece of research—blew us away. We were feeling it, we were seeing it, but we didn’t know the data behind it.

Children play football at the 5 Star Soccer Academy, run by Honduran footballer Nahun Romero, in the Queens borough of New York City on May 20, 2024. Romero, a Honduran footballer who arrived in New York City penniless and undocumented, is living his American dream in the Big Apple where he leads a successful football school. Romero's academy, with its hundreds of hopeful kids, might have been unimaginable for the Honduran second flight player, who was in New York working construction full time by day and playing football full time by night. (Photo by Thomas URBAIN / AFP) (Photo by THOMAS URBAIN/AFP via Getty Images)

If you think about us as adults and the addiction we have to our own cell phones, and the lack of self-control we as adults have about putting the cell phone down and realizing we don’t need it at our side all day long, we have to teach our kids that there are boundaries. They can make it through a day without their cell phone being on them. I’m hoping that we’re training these students to have new habits that, personally, I struggle with. Cell phone addiction is a real thing, and I think that if we can help our students find those boundaries and that self-control, we’re doing everyone a favor.

How the School Manages Without Phones

Siyamak Khorrami: Some parents might be concerned that they may not be able to get a hold of their kids. Has that been the biggest concern that parents have?

Trisha Lancaster: Yes, and research is what we have given our parents to understand that, during emergencies, students having cell phones in school is actually doing us a disservice. There’s a lot of misinformation that gets put out there when students have a cell phone. The research shows that students don’t pay attention to protocol—safety protocols—and aren’t as quick to act when they have their cell phones in front of them. We went through the shooting in San Bernardino years ago, and that was when everyone did have cell phones. We have not been through another traumatic lockdown situation since we put our cell phone ban in place, so I don’t know what that’s going to look like when, or if, we have an emergency situation. Their phones are still accessible, so if there was a true emergency on our campus, our students would still have access. I don’t think we would want them out, though, just because of what the research says, until it’s an appropriate time for our families to get a hold of their students and our students to get a hold of their families.

We do not need an influx of what happened at the shooting in San Bernardino when we were on lockdown for six hours. We had so many parents flood the front office trying to check out their kids. We could not release their kids to them, so it created even more chaos for the office staff during that emergency situation. Students were getting a hold of their parents instead of letting us do the communication, and parents were rushing to school to check out their kids, but we couldn’t release them. So, we were having traffic on our campus with first responders around, and it just created more chaos. I don’t know what the next emergency will look like with our cell phone ban on campus, and I’m sure we’ll have parents having that conversation after the school shootings that have been going on. But so far, we’ve had drills on our campus, and students aren’t pulling out their phones, and they’re paying attention to staff and the directions given. I’m hopeful, but we won’t know until we actually have that situation again.

Teacher and Staff Support: Improved Classroom Focus

Siyamak Khorrami: What about your teachers? How did this experience impact them?

Trisha Lancaster: I actually just asked them what they felt after our first full year of no cell phones on our campus—what the biggest impact has been. I had responses from not only our teaching staff but also our playground staff and our instructional aides, and there’s not one person on our campus who doesn’t feel that this has added value. They see the same things I’ve already talked about. There’s more interaction, fewer distractions in the classroom, more engagement, and more problem-solving with our kids. We started doing a lot of restorative practices on our campus, so there are a lot of conversations going on, and kids are creating relationships not only with each other but with staff, which we feel is very important. The students seem very present on campus, with each other and with staff. Like I was telling you, you see kids being kids again. Everyone feels this has made their jobs easier. So, I’m hoping that at the end of the year, when I push out that survey again, the level of effectiveness is going to go up again.

Our teachers also expressed that, having this policy on campus, any confrontations they do have with students over cell phones—they have backup now because we have a policy they can stand on, instead of just saying, “It’s my classroom rule to not have your cell phone out.” They feel like they have backup from admin and the policy, and we feel like there’s just new habits and mindsets being developed all around campus. So, I think the impact has been very strong and positive so far. I’m sure we’re going to have hiccups along the way, and I’m sure we’ll have parents along the way who have something else to say. But right now, it’s the right thing for us.

Positive Change and Future Impact

View Through Doorway Of High School Tutor At Whiteboard Teaching Class

Siyamak Khorrami: You mentioned that kids were not socializing. Do you think there is a long-term impact of this on society if we continue having an environment where kids go to school, but they’re on their phone all the time?

Trisha Lancaster: Oh, I absolutely think there will be long-term effects whether we do this or not. As a state, I think individual schools need to look at what’s right for them. I honestly think that, when all is said and done, our students are going to be better people for our society, have better leadership skills because they will be able to socially interact better than they have been. Showing respect to someone when in a conversation—not having your phone out—there are a lot of adult skills we’re trying to teach our students. So, I think the long-term effects are going to be positive if we can actually get our students and families to understand the benefits behind this.

There are plenty of ways for families to get a hold of their students and us. I mean, old-school ways still work. There’s still a landline to our school. You can still call the front office, and we’ll get your kid immediately if you need to talk with them or get a message to them, just like you did before cell phones were around. I hope our students will value what we’re doing for them in the long run.

What’s nice about SOAR is that our alumni come back every year. We have a party for them when they leave us as eighth graders. At the end of their high school career, when they’re getting ready to graduate, we invite them back to SOAR to celebrate that accomplishment and to tell us how it’s been for the last four years and where they’re going next. So, we’ll have the opportunity to ask them, after a few years, what kind of impact this cell phone ban on our campus has had on them. Maybe they created their own personal habits based on what we tried to create for them at school.

Trisha Lancaster, Principal at SOAR Charter Academy, it was great to have you on California Insider.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it

Interview with Assemblyman Josh Hoover

Siyamak Khorrami: Josh, welcome back. It’s great to have you on.

Josh Hoover: Thanks for having me again.

Addressing Smartphone Use in Schools

Siyamak Khorrami: You’re an assemblyman in California, and we’ve been talking to schools and advocate groups that are looking at social media and phones. You guys are putting a lot together to allow schools to ban phones. Can you tell us more about what you’re doing?

Josh Hoover: At the beginning of this year, I introduced the Phone-Free Schools Act, which is AB 3216. It’s a pretty simple piece of legislation. It basically requires school districts across our state to take action on limiting the use of smartphones during the school day. A lot of this motivation—I actually pushed for a similar policy when I was serving on my local school board—but a lot of this motivation comes from all of the new research that has come out in recent years. It really tells us that when kids have access to smartphones in the classroom, they’re more distracted, they get worse academic results, worse academic performance. There’s actually an increase in bullying on school campuses, an increase in mental health concerns, and we think it’s really important as a state that we do more to limit access to these devices during the school day.

Siyamak Khorrami: How would this work? Is there any structure to it, or are the school districts going to decide on their own?

Josh Hoover: We’ve provided a lot of local control within the bill to allow districts to have these conversations in their communities on how best to implement this policy. There are requirements that by, I believe, July 1, 2026, you have to have a policy in place at your school to limit smartphones during the school day. But we’re not overly prescriptive in how schools need to do that. I think for some schools, they may invest in Yondr pouches, where the student places a phone into a pouch for the entirety of the school day and doesn’t have access to it. Other schools may decide they just want to require their students to have their phones off and in their backpacks. There are a number of different ways to implement it, but I think the important part is that we do this statewide.

Siyamak Khorrami: Do you think other states will follow California?

Josh Hoover: I do. I think the research has just become so incredibly powerful. In fact, some states are already starting to explore policies like this one. When you look at the people who authored this legislation—myself and my joint authors—there’s strong bipartisan support for this. We’re Republicans, we’re Democrats, but we all have one thing in common: we’re all parents of kids that are currently being affected by the challenges created by smartphones. We all feel very strongly that if our kids are going to succeed in school, then our state and our schools need to take action to limit these devices.

Reaction from Students and Families

Siyamak Khorrami: What about your kids? You’re proposing this legislation—what’s their reaction?

Josh Hoover: Kids don’t always love it, right? My kids don’t always love it. I’ve gotten some complaints from my own kids, but they actually attend a school that already doesn’t allow them to have access to their phones during the school day. So, they’ve kind of become used to this policy, even though they don’t like it. In the conversations I’ve had with students, some of them have actually expressed gratitude for this policy because these smartphones are so addicting. It’s a social contagion issue where if one person is on it, everyone wants to be on it. We’re really giving students some relief here by taking everyone off their phones. There’s no longer that social pressure for everyone to have a phone, be on their phone, or be on social media at all times of the day.

Siyamak Khorrami: Have you seen any benefits from your kids now that they don’t have access?

Josh Hoover: My kids personally, and also some of the principals I’ve talked with who have implemented it at their schools—particularly at the middle and high school levels—everyone is reporting an incredible increase in social interaction among peers. When you’re at lunch, instead of everyone being on their phones, they’re engaging with each other one-on-one, having conversations, and building relationships. There have been reports of fewer mental health referrals, better academic performance. We’ve actually seen this in other countries when they’ve implemented this policy as well. The possibilities and benefits are really endless in terms of what we can see in our kids improving in that regard, just by getting them off these screens, at least for this part of the day.

Siyamak Khorrami: Josh, do you have any other thoughts for our audience?

Josh Hoover: Well, I’m really grateful for my colleagues in the legislature and for the governor for coming out and expressing strong support for this concept. I think when you look at all the research—there was a book recently written called The Anxious Generation, which really dives into the harms of smartphone use, particularly on young, developing brains. When you look at it, it’s hard to deny that the most important thing we can do for our kids, to help them academically and with their mental health, particularly coming out of the pandemic, is to limit access to their smartphones during the school day. I’m grateful for the strong bipartisan support we’ve received for implementing this policy statewide, and I look forward to the governor hopefully signing it in the next few weeks.

Assemblyman Josh Hoover, it was great to have you on California Insider.

Josh Hoover: Thank you.