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Like their French counterparts, American students will have to, for some of them, abandon the idea of being able to use their smartphone again and connect to their social networks within their establishment. More and more states are passing laws to strictly ban smartphones in schools.
While a law, difficult to enforce, has banned the use of smartphones from kindergarten to middle school in France since 2018, a majority of students still continue to use their mobile phones inside their establishment. This is why a “digital break” has been inaugurated in several hundred colleges since the last school year. This involves leaving your phone in a box when you arrive at school in the morning and taking it back in the evening when you leave, at the end of classes.
It is not only in France that students’ relationship with their smartphones is worrying. In the United States, as many as 15 states have already passed laws aimed at restricting the use of cell phones by students while they are at school. Today it is California’s turn to tackle this, with a brand new law, called the “Phone-Free School Act”, promulgated by Governor Gavin Newsom. It now requires all schools in the state to implement rules limiting cell phone use by July 1, 2026, except in emergencies or exceptional circumstances. Other states, like New York, may soon follow. The law now stipulates that schools must update a policy every five years to limit or prohibit the use of smartphones by their students.
Authorities cite anxiety, depression and other mental health problems linked to excessive smartphone use. Social networks are obviously the first to be pointed out when it comes to talking about screen addiction among young people. Earlier this year, New York State passed a law giving parents more control over their teens’ social media feeds. The idea is to prohibit social networks from using algorithms and automatic feeds for accounts owned by minors without parental consent.
In 2023, Florida was the first state to pass a law prohibiting minors under the age of 14 from creating social media accounts without parental consent. The same year, Utah passed an even stronger law, requiring not only parental consent for the use of social media applications by minors, but also that they be able to have access to the account and to all messages, including private ones.