Jordan District’s cellphone policy, which prohibits students from having their phones out during class time, has been in place for about two months, but according to a growing group of parents and educators, it’s not enough to address the bigger problem.

“I'm happy with the steps that they are taking and I feel like they are heading in the right direction, but I do feel like those steps are baby steps and I think that there's a lot more that can be done,” Focus Beyond Phones founder Angela Sharp said.

Focus Beyond Phones began as a neighborhood parent group in August, to bring together parents concerned about the impact of cellphones on children’s academic, social and mental health. To promote a phone-free learning environment for all students, group members petitioned the Jordan District Board of Education, held a public town hall meeting and supported a rally at the State Capitol in support of cellphone legislation.

Is the new cellphone policy working?

In response to Gov. Spencer Cox’s January 2024 letter to school leaders and community councils asking schools to “remove cell phones from classrooms,” Jordan District conducted surveys, focus groups and discussions to draft a cellphone policy. It passed by a slight majority, because some who voted “no” were actually in favor of a more aggressive policy.

Jordan District’s cellphone policy banning phones all day in elementary schools and during class time at secondary schools went into effect Oct. 29. Just over two months in, teachers were already reporting improvements in students’ academic focus and social skills.

Herriman High School English teacher Erin Day said her students seem happier and are more engaged now that they are talking to each other in class instead of spending free time on their phones.

“They really are talking more, which is just so fun, and really what they need so much—it's been so lacking,” Day said. “They're more into the lectures as well. They're more willing to answer questions because they're not focused on what's going to beep in their pocket. I think they're realizing it's really not that big of a deal if they don't check Snapchat within 90 minutes, and so I do think it's been beneficial. I do think there's been way more engagement. So I'm a huge, huge fan.”

The call for a phone-free school

Educators have seen improvements during instruction time, but when students are between classes or at lunch break, the phones come out and the heads go down. Many parents are even more concerned about the impact access to cellphones during breaks and lunch have on their children's social and mental development, citing cyberbullying, social media and interruptions to developing social skills as continuing problems.

“When kids are on their phones, they're not talking to each other, they're not making eye contact, so they're not learning to engage face-to-face,” Sharp said. “And studies have also shown that that face-to-face socialization cannot be substituted by digital communication, or socializing digitally via text or social media, anything like that. It's not the same.”

 Sharp said research shows that even the brief time students spend on cellphones between classes can impact their focus once they get to class.

“So between classes, if these kids are trying to catch up on their phones to try to see what they missed during class, and then try to re-engage and pay attention in the next class, it's going to take 20 to 30 minutes of time before they can actually fully engage cognitively,” Sharp said. “So we're still not providing an environment where they are fully engaged, where they can meet their potential.”

Parents with Focus Beyond Phones want the district to implement a bell-to-bell ban, prohibiting phones for the entire school day, which was the policy approved for elementary schools.

Sunset Ridge Middle School teacher Erin Clelland is onboard for a bell-to-bell ban. Because of the improvements she’s seen in her classes’ social behaviors with the new policy, she believes a phone-free middle school would yield even greater benefits.

“An ideal situation would be a complete ban,” she said. “Let's get their noses out of the phone and have them talking in the hallways. Let's have them talking to each other at lunch.”

Jill Myler, a former educator and one of the founders of Focus Beyond Phones, said removing cellphones from schools is a public health issue. She has seen the effects of uncontrolled cellphone use on the young adult population she works with and has read studies showing that a break from cellphones during school hours reduces risks of bullying, anxiety, suicide and depression for young people.

“I feel like in order to really make a difference now—and especially for those kids who are in high school—it would be very much more beneficial if it were bell to bell,” she said. “And I know that's hard—I get it—but I'm not seeing another solution that is backed up by data that would be as impactful as bell to bell. I really think this is a solution that can be so beneficial across the board that I cannot see why we wouldn't implement it now.”

It requires community support

Sharp could see the problems with cellphones and so in order to protect her kids, she delayed giving them smartphones and then set limits once they had them. However, those decisions had detrimental social consequences.

“We set some parameters within our own family about cellphones,” she said. “The problem with that, with only one or two families in the neighborhood doing that, is that they are completely disconnected because everybody else is only sending invitations or information about things through social media, and so they get left out. And so that's hard.”

Sharp realized the only way for her children to not be left out was for all of the other kids to have the same boundaries around technology.

“That's why I've been more motivated in my community to try to establish some policies within our educational system, and awareness in general of how technology and smartphones in particular are affecting our youth,” she said.

While studies from around the world have validated her position, she said it has taken a while for other parents to get behind this issue because the research lagged behind what parents were experiencing and many of the studies were difficult to interpret.

Then in March of 2024, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” was published. The book was a hit, securing a longstanding spot on the New York Times bestseller list, named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024 and it continues to be on Amazon’s Top 10 list.

Sharp said it’s been such a successful book because it presents research in an accessible and digestible way. Readers also appreciate that the book provides solutions for the problems it reveals. The author identifies ‘collective action problems’ and encourages readers to collaborate as a community to normalize cellphone limits during childhood so kids can grow and develop in a consistently phone-free environment. He reasons that setting limits within your own family isn’t effective unless your children’s peers and their parents buy-in to the same limits so that no kid is getting left out.

Getting the Law on their side

Focus Beyond Phones has grown beyond their original 50-member Daybreak charter club. They now partner with The Policy Project, a nonprofit organization with more connections and funding.

The Policy Project collaborated with Sen. Lincoln Fillmore and Rep. Douglas Welton to draft a bill for the upcoming 2025 legislative session which would require all Utah school districts to create a policy restricting the use of cellphones at school.

At a legislative open house held in West Jordan in September, Fillmore explained that the purpose of the bill is to make no cellphones the default in Utah schools. As a former teacher and administrator, Fillmore pointed out that cellphones were not initially a problem because they were just phones. He said students would never have been allowed to bring a TV or gaming system to school but that’s what has happened with the evolution of smartphones.

The bill would allow districts to customize their policy according to their needs and to allow for special exceptions.

If passed, the proposed bill would be effective for the 2025-26 school year, and would include funding for the purchase of equipment to secure phones, such as magnetic locking pouches, which is what Granger High School uses.

Jordan District has explored the use of pouches and similar products that would prevent students accessing their phones during school, but district board member Niki George said they may not be necessary. Based on the positive feedback she’s received, the majority of students have been compliant with the policy and have kept their phones out of sight or stored in classroom lockers.

In secondary schools, the consequence for a student caught with their phone during class is having their device taken away. On the first offense, they can pick it up in the main office at the end of the day. For subsequent offenses, a parent must pick up the phone from the office.

In the first two months of the new cellphone restrictions at Copper Hills High School, George said a little over 300 students had their phones taken away. However, only 24 of them committed a second offense.

“It seems like this has been pretty effective, and without spending millions locking phones up,” George said. “I'm hopeful!”

Resistance to a phone-free learning environment

A rally was held Nov. 20 at the State Capitol to show support for the proposed legislative bill. While Sharp felt the rally was successful, she was disappointed that more people didn’t show up.

“With as much attention as this has gotten, with the studies that have been shown, I'm just surprised that parents are not up in arms about this, and so I was expecting more people to be there,” she said.

As Sharp works to spread her message of the dangers of cellphones to youth, she has encountered many people who are resistant to restrictive policies. Some accuse her group of trying to move backwards.

“We’re not anti-tech,” Sharp said. “We realize our society is evolving, and we have to use this—it's just being aware of how it can benefit us and how it can hurt us. Even as adults, people are struggling with this. This isn't just something that only affects our youth, but it does affect their development. They have a short span of development in their time, and we're affecting their development in a way that can permanently change the direction of their life, which I don't think is fair to them.”

Others are put-off by the word “ban.”

“I don't even like to call it a ban because people cringe when they hear that, and really, it's not a ban on anything, it's just a phone-free learning environment,” Sharp said. “If you focus on the learning environment, then it makes sense. Why would we even have a phone in that environment for our kids?”

 However, Sharp has witnessed many parents—and even teenagers—who attend a public discussion ready to argue the topic but then become more open to the idea of a phone-free school once they see the data and realize the negative impact phones have on young peoples’ lives. Many don’t realize how much cellphones are shaping a child’s personality, development, mental health and symptoms of neurodivergence. Parents hear other parents talk about the same issues with their kids and assume it’s normal.

“But if they realize what could be without that influence of their phone, then I think they'd be more apt to want to make some change,” Sharp said. “Maybe you don't see anything that is glaring or dangerous or hard, but what you don't see is what could have been if your student did not have their phone attached to them all the time. You don't know what they could achieve or what they'd be interested in. You don't know what their social life would be like. You don't know how their personality might change.”

Education is key

Sharp encourages parents to educate themselves about the topic—she likes the data and resources found on anxiousgeneration.com and phonefreemovement.org.

“In talking with people and getting a lot of feedback, one thing that it has really shown to me is that parents don't know what they don't know,” she said. “With phones, there's no other generation of parents that have gone through this to help us navigate how to handle smartphones with our kids. This is brand new and so there's a lot that we don't know.”

Sharp encourages parents to talk with their kids about cellphone limits, showing compassion and framing it as a positive way to learn to manage their devices instead of as punishment.

“I think it's really important that they don't feel like we're blowing up their lives,” Sharp said. “They don't have any idea of what an existence without their phone would be like and it seems daunting and scary, rather than fun and adventurous and exciting and more meaningful. I think they don't know what they don't know.”

A call to action

Myler said the reports of the dangers of cellphones are no longer just anecdotal; hard evidence shows the detrimental nature of cellphones on developing brains. She has seen how it continues to impact today’s young adults.

“I think we've got data now that proves what has happened to that generation, and I think we can see what has happened, so I think it's just reached that tipping point of saying we've got to do something,” she said.

Myler equates the current attention to cellphones with the turning point in the war on tobacco, when the data on second-hand smoke came out and turned the tide of public opinion.

“They discovered second-hand smoke and were saying not only the people that are smoking but people that are just by smokers are being impacted,” she said. “And that's when it became truly a nationwide push and they said, ‘Okay, we've got to take on the behemoth tobacco companies and get this under control.’” λ