Last spring, principal Jon Cardwell met with some of his best teachers at Fairhope High School to discuss what he noticed was a lack of engagement and participation in many of their classes.

One of the reactions startled him.

“We’d been tossing around the idea of some sort of (cell phone) restriction, but when one of your teachers talks to you about leaving the profession from frustration and feeling like they aren’t making a difference, you act,” Cardwell said.

The result: Students at the South Alabama high school will walk into their classrooms next month, put their cell phones into “airplane mode,” and drop them into a holding box. At the end of class, they will collect the phone and the process will repeat itself as they go to the next class.

Students will be allowed to communicate with parents, work, and other people in between their classes. Seniors who are allowed to leave campus during lunch hours will be allowed access to their cell phones.

It’s a new policy but it is not a novel concept. School systems and state legislatures throughout the country are examining their electronic device policies, and considering how strict they should get toward banning cell phones amid a growing amount of data that illustrates how detrimental the devices have been to adolescent mental health.

“There are many districts across the country coming to the realization this is something that needs to be done,” said Mobile County School Board member Don Stringfellow.

Taking the lead

The efforts, so far, have resulted in some of the more consequential crackdowns on modern technology in recent years. They are also occurring first in some of the more conservative or right-leaning states like Alabama.

Florida became the first state to ban “wireless communication devices” during instructional time through legislation adopted in 2023. Lawmakers in Indiana and Ohio have also adopted restrictions. More recently, in Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order limiting or banning cell phone use statewide effective on Jan. 1, 2025.

It’s not just Republican areas. Leaders in the nation’s two largest school districts – New York City and Los Angeles – are pushing forward with policies to keep the cell phones out of the classrooms. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is also supportive of a statewide ban.

The recent efforts in Alabama, ahead of the start of 2024-2025 school year next month, comes about five months after the Alabama State Board of Education adopted a resolution encouraging local school districts to adopt policies banning cell phone use during school hours.

Some schools are already ahead of the others. Montgomery County Public Schools – the fourth largest in Alabama, with over 26,000 students — adopted a cell phone ban in the classrooms last June, and it has resulted in a drop in discipline rates. The ban is also popular among school staff members who, according to a survey released in December, overwhelming say it has led to a reduction in distractions toward learning and engagement.

Alabama State Superintendent Eric Mackey has repeatedly cited his concerns about cell phones and social media use at schools and is encouraging state lawmakers to consider proposals soon to further crack down on the matter.

“We need to talk about getting cell phones out of the schools and getting kids off social media,” Mackey said during the board’s June work session. “Every system that has been able to run the gauntlet and get cell phones out of the schools have been able to improve their discipline scores 35, 40 to 45 percent. It’s unbelievable how discipline changes by getting cell phones out of the schools.”

Do something

The improvement over student behavior is one of the reasons why Alabama’s largest school system – the Mobile County Public School System, with approximately 53,000 students – is looking at cell phone restrictions for the coming year.

Superintendent Chresal Threadgill, during the school board’s June 24 meeting, said there will be procedures established at individual schools on collecting phones and having them placed in a lockbox, a cell phone pouch, or to keep them inside a student’s vehicle.

“It’s time to do something,” Threadgill said. “We can’t sit back and do nothing.”

Mobile County already has some good feedback from a pilot program. Two middle schools – Hankins Middle School in Theodore and Chastang-Fournier K-8 School in Mobile – had a no cell phone policy last year, and Threadgill said there were no complaints, and no issues.

“It’s not like we’re jumping cold turkey into this,” he said. “We took the time to do it at two other schools to work out the kinks and they played a tremendous role in making this happen.”

School board member Johnny Hatcher said one of the schools saw a 37% drop in disciplinary action, and a bump up in academic performance.

Other school systems in Alabama are also looking at adopting stricter policies.

The Madison County School System decided not to allow students to continue connecting personal technology devices to MCSS-owned wireless networks starting on July 1. The policy applies to all 21,000-plus students, no matter what grades they are in.

“The move is designed to bolster the learning environment at MCSS by safeguarding our networks, reserving our limited bandwidth for educational purposes, and curbing distractions during instructional time,” said Carter Watkins, the school system’s spokesperson. “It mirrors a nationwide movement to limit student access to district-owned wireless networks, underscoring our unwavering dedication to a focused and productive learning atmosphere.”

Other schools have adopted policies to ban cell phones. In Dothan, the city school system adopted a code of conduct in June that included a cellphone ban for the district’s approximately 8,200 students.

Smaller school systems are also considering additional restrictions. At Geneva County schools in the Wiregrass, cell phones will no longer be allowed at all on campus during the day. Previously, the school system allowed students to use cell phones during breaks and lunch.

Safety concerns

Some schools have seen public pushback. A Facebook post in February announcing a cell phone ban at Barbour County High School was met with backlash from parents out of a concern over student safety.

At least one leading expert on school safety says the presence of cell phones in schools creates “very specific challenges to school safety, especially in an emergency situation.”

Kenneth Trump, president of the Ohio-based National School Safety and Security Services and a leading expert on pre-K to 12 safety, said that during an emergency at a school, a cell phone can actually “detract from school safety.” Among the examples he has cited include using phones instead of running, hiding, and listening to directions from first responders; and the sound of a phone can alert assailants to hiding places.

Safety had been cited as the main reason to allow cell phones inside the schools to begin with less than a decade ago. NEA Today, the publication of the National Education Association, reported in 2016 that 70% of districts across the country that had once banned student phones reversed themselves and allowed them into the buildings.

School officials had little way to control the situation, largely because of parental desires to reach their children via cellphone during the school day to ensure their safety if something concerning arises.

“There are ways to keep kids safe without them,” said Yaron Litwin, digital safety expert and chief marketing officer at Canopy, a technology company that works to protect children from inappropriate content online. “Schools can use landlines for emergencies, and teachers and staff can be trained to handle urgent situations.”

Litwin said schools can also implement systems like emergency alert buttons and communication devices for staff whenever a problem arises. Another solution includes providing designated phones in common areas for emergency use that would ensure students can still call for help without having to use their personal cell phones.

“These solutions may be imperfect, and more research is required to keep our kids as physically safe as possible, while also ensuring that they are digitally safe as well.”

Mental health

The statistical benefits, meanwhile, favor moving toward cell phone bans or increased restrictions. A 2020 study of 210 middle and high school principals found that a vast majority them said cell phones used during school negatively impacted a student’s academic performance. A slightly higher percentage of middle school principals (89%) than high school principals (80%) had that belief.

Mental health aspects are also playing a role, and statistics are alarming. In the book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt reports that the share of U.S. undergraduates diagnosed with anxiety disorder increased by a whopping 134% between 2010 and 2020, while those with depression increased by 106%.

Suicide rates are also soaring among teens, while national test scores in math and reading have declined.

The experts say that curbing cell phone use and social media is needed. Haidt writes that kids should have little to no access to either until they turn 16. The American Psychological Association is also saying that social media platforms are “inherently unsafe for children.”

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called for warning labels on social media alerting users about its “significant mental health harms for adolescents.”

Cardwell, in Fairhope, said that students are so involved in social media that they have seemed to have lost “that human interaction facet that is so important to adolescent development.”

“Many students have more than five different social media accounts and that can be exhausting,” he said.

Alabama lawmakers, while introducing legislation curbing cell phone use in schools, haven’t passed anything yet. Rep. Ben Robbins, R-Sylacauga, told The Alabama Reflector last month that he was working on legislation related to social media use that could impose restrictions for people under 16. He did not return a call for comment on Friday.

Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, who chairs the Alabama House Education Policy Committee, said she would support a statewide ban on cell phone use during schools. She said she is hopeful that lawmakers will consider a similar approach to Montgomery County in requiring students to store their cell phones in pouches during the eight hours they are in school.

“Something like that statewide would be something I’d be supportive of,” Collins said. “I believe it would be expensive to do statewide, but the costs would be outweighed by the benefits.”

Mackey said he will continue to beat the drum for more restrictions as awareness grows over the dangers of cell phone availability to youths and the detrimental effects of social media.

“My real concern is access to social media and instant messaging platforms being accessible during the school day,” he said. “I think the active research and anecdotal data are making the image more and more clear that student concentration, academic endeavor and behavior improve when smart phones are removed from the classroom experience.”

Cardwell said he is hoping his school’s approach in keeping the phones out of the classrooms will lead to improving test scores as teachers reclaim their 50 minutes of engagement and interactions.

“It will help academic achievement and also aid us in better developing our students for the workforce going back to the good ole fashioned communication and social interaction,” Cardwell said. “We want them to get away from phones, air pods, etc. It boils down to a decision made for academic achievement and fostering employability skills in our kids.”

Reporter Trish Crain contributed to this report.