Because the push to manage expertise in faculties grows nationwide, Massachusetts Lawyer Basic Andrea Campbell has launched a toolkit for college districts to tell cellular phone and social media insurance policies throughout the Commonwealth.
“Schools across Massachusetts are grappling with the pervasive effects of cell phone and social media use among students,” Campbell mentioned. “This toolkit will serve as a vital resource to help schools create a distraction free environment where students can also thrive socially.”
The AG launched the “Cell Phones and Social Media in Schools Toolkit,” developed in collaboration with the Shah Household Basis, within the mid-Winter assembly of the Massachusetts Affiliation of Faculty Superintendents final week.
She’s scheduled to current the toolkit to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Schooling on Tuesday.
The toolkit doesn’t embody any mandates for districts, however fashions insurance policies together with a “bell-to-bell” ban on private digital gadgets through the faculty day. The AG’s initiative additionally contains suggestions for group norms for expertise use in faculties and curriculum tips for educating digital media literacy.
The discharge of Campbell’s plan final week coincided with a proposal by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to ban cellular phone utilization in faculties by subsequent fall. New York would be part of at the least eight states throughout partisan strains which have legislated statewide cellular phone bans or restrictions: California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia.
In 2023, Massachusetts state training officers introduced a pilot program distributing about $800,000 in federal funding to high school districts trying to enact insurance policies to deal with the usage of digital gadgets in center and excessive faculties.
The toolkit isn’t Campbell’s solely current swing at cellular phone use in faculties. Days earlier than, the AG’s workplace, together with state Sen. Julian Cyr, Reps. Alice Hanlon Peisch and Kate Lipper-Garabedian launched laws referred to as the STUDY Act, which might ban the usage of cell telephones and private digital gadgets throughout faculty hours statewide. The invoice would additionally suggest requirements for social media corporations for “safe and responsible use.”
The three cellular phone insurance policies included within the toolkit are a complete “bell-to-bell” ban wherein telephones are confiscated through the faculty day, an “off and away” coverage wherein telephones are anticipated to be saved and never used, and a “limited use” coverage wherein college students might use solely throughout designated instances like lunch.
The AG’s workplace recommends the full bans for all age teams — which the toolkit notes “tend to be most effective” — whereas “off and away” is really useful for center and highschool and “limited use” is really useful for highschool solely.
The doc contains faculty districts at the moment utilizing every coverage together with Brookline’s implementation of “off and away” practices and Worcester’s “limited use” coverage. Thirty-one faculties in Boston, together with the Eliot faculty, have enacted or are within the strategy of implementing “bell-to-bell” insurance policies, utilizing strategies like locking telephones in pouches at first of the day.
Nationwide, 76% of faculties say they prohibit the non-academic use of cell telephones or smartphones, in line with the Nationwide Heart for Schooling Statistics.
As state officers started to fulfill with superintendents and stakeholders on cellular phone and social media insurance policies, mentioned Ross Wilson, Shah Household Basis govt director, it grew to become clear the insurance policies had been “inconsistent” throughout the state.
“What was very clear was each district really was grappling with this issue on their own, and there wasn’t necessarily a resource for them to turn to help create these policies,” mentioned Wilson. “There wasn’t one policy that was one that everybody should adopt, but rather, everybody was in a slightly different place.”
The toolkit develops a “common baseline” for the districts, Wilson mentioned.
The doc notes practically all youngsters have smartphones, and as much as 95% of youngsters ages 13-17 report utilizing social media, “with over one-third reporting that they use it ‘almost constantly,’” citing Pew Research data.
The toolkit, available online through the Attorney General’s web site, additionally contains digital literacy curriculum examples and group norms tips, like educating the right way to perceive the chance of social media and when to hunt assist from an grownup with content material on-line.
“Massachusetts superintendents have reported that implementing phone locking pouches and other bell-to-bell policies have led to marked improvements, including increased student attention, improved peer relationships, and reductions in cyberbullying,” the toolkit doc states.
