By Larry Marx, CEO

Published in the Democrat and Chronicle Op-Ed section Feb. 9, 2025

The Children’s Agenda considers limiting the use of smartphones during school time a worthy goal, one which will be especially helpful curtailing bullying and improving academics particularly for low-income students.

We applaud Governor Hochul’s decision to fund schools’ implementation of smartphone restrictions “from bell to bell” to ensure that schools won’t suffer any unintended consequences to their budgets by implementing these new restrictions.

While ideally facilitating connection between children and their family members, or facilitating social connections between students, the evidence increasingly shows that social media on internet connected devices is intentionally addictive and feeds social insecurities and bullying, while smartphones are also increasingly a source of distraction that undermines student learning in schools.

The Governor developed her groundbreaking initiative only after conversations with parents and teachers, so it’s also critically important that districts engage parents, guardians and students as much as possible – as well as staff – as they develop their written implementation policies for the broadest possible support. Those implementation policies must include sensible, effective methods for parents and guardians to contact their students during the school day, particularly when students’ health care, family emergencies, or translation services are at stake.

Also at stake is the possibility that implementation may undermine the entire purpose of this initiative, which is to promote effective use of students’ time in school. Consistent with that, district policies must prohibit cell phone use by itself from becoming an offense subject to suspending students from their classrooms and their schools.

In the 2023-2024 school year there were nearly 1 million days of lost instruction due to suspensions in New York’s public schools. We have a crisis of over-reliance on exclusionary discipline, where more than 135,000 students were suspended from schools in the 2021 – 2022 school year.

And suspensions are being inequitably applied: Black students were 5 – 6.4 times more likely to be suspended 20 or more days than white students across New York, and students with disabilities were 2.4 – 3.5 times more likely to be suspended. Overreliance on exclusionary discipline is at least as harmful to students academically – and ineffective at changing behavior — as overreliance on smartphone use is.

Finally, we commend the Governor for funding her ‘Unplug and Play’ initiative. Increasing access to playgrounds, recreational programming, afterschool and summer programs goes hand-in-hand with replacing overuse of social media.

We need to expand live, in-person social outlets and connections to add more hours of joy, love and support to children’s days, which can only happen through an expansive, universal system of afterschool and summer programming, especially for students whose families or communities lack the money or access to those programs.

Original story here: https://www.pressreader.com/usa/democrat-chronicle/20250209/282338275580036