Centre County schools join in on nationwide trend of stricter cellphone policies

School districts across the country are tightening regulations on cellphone use in classrooms, and Centre County is no exception.

Several states have passed bills or considered passing bills that would ban cellphones in classrooms in a growing movement to limit phone usage in schools. In July, the Pennsylvania state legislature signed Senate Bill 700, which provides funding for schools to purchase lockable cellphone bags as part of the School Safety & Mental Health grant program.

While the bags aren’t in use at Penns Valley Area School District, officials did institute a new policy in 2023 that banned cellphones at the middle school and high school during the school day. High school students and Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology students are allowed to use phones at CPI classes and during lunch hour only.

This fall, Bald Eagle Area has followed suit, tightening up its preexisting policy on phone usage. The district sent out a reminder on its Facebook page that students would not be allowed to use phones during class time. Instead, they have to check them in at the front of the classroom for each period. BEA Superintendent Chris Santini said limiting cellphone usage allows students to focus better on class material.

“I think some parents welcome the kind of forced break from the phone that this policy creates,” Santini said. “And the teachers like it because they’re not competing with the phone for the kids’ attention during the 45 minutes of instruction when they have the kid in class.”

For Penns Valley, the stricter policy on cellphones has been a major success at the middle and high school levels, superintendent Brian Griffith said.

“I was concerned that we would have a lot of pushback from our students and all our families, but generally we had broad support from our parents and from our students,” Griffith said. “And many of our students reported they felt free that they didn’t have their cellphone with them.”

Santini said the district discussed several options, including the locked smartphone bags, but settled on a hanging caddy that would hold phones at the front of each classroom.

“We didn’t like (the locked bags) idea mainly because if there would be an emergency situation, we do believe that they should be able to gain access to their phones if there would be a situation like that,” he said.

Santini said he hopes the policy will also help limit cyberbullying or online conflict between students throughout the school day. He believes the increased phone usage harms students’ mental health and anxiety levels, and while districts cannot control what students do outside the building, they can work to mitigate those effects for the hours they are in school.

“We see that kids are getting bullied through apps on their phones,” Santini said. “We see that when we have a couple hundred kids sitting at lunch in the cafeteria with free time with their phones, especially the middle school age, they’re sending unkind things to each other and then we get things happening after lunch as a result of that.”

There’s a long history of high screen time and social media usage having adverse effects on youth mental health. A 2020 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that smartphone and social media usage can increase mental distress, self-harm behaviors and suicidality, especially among girls.

Santini believes unfiltered access to social media and the internet can be harmful to students’ mental and emotional health, especially at younger ages.

“I’m just not so sure that it’s developmentally appropriate to put a smartphone that has access to all the good things, but also all the ill on the internet in the hands of a 7 year old, a 10 year old, a 12 year old, even a 14 year old,” Santini said.