School districts should act decisively and ban phones from classrooms.

This is a column you may not want your kids to see. If things go the way they ought to, they won’t be initially happy – not with you, not with me, not with their schools.

I’m glad I grew up before the smartphone was invented and was in my pocket all day long, before Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media was inhabiting my inner space, before the time when a 20-year-old “looksmaxxin”’ Clavicular could become a media phenom. How painful it would be to grow up following some other neighborhood kid’s ideal life, or face cyberbullying, or deal with even anonymous critics posting inane stuff about you. Most of us don’t have the maturity to manage all that. Neither do today’s kids.

The kids sitting in Monterey County classrooms right now are growing up virtually inside an addiction machine, and that technology is designed to mess with their hearts and minds, to support tech companies’ financial objectives. The least we can do is help the kids and turn off that noise for seven hours a day.

Monterey County’s 24 school districts must adopt a smartphone policy under California’s Phone-Free Schools Act by July 1, 2026. That deadline is a great opportunity. The law requires every district in the state to adopt a limiting policy. It doesn’t require our 24 local districts to act in isolation, producing 24 different policies leaving some kids phone-free while others surf through lunch.

The evidence is in. France banned phones in schools in 2018; students who had previously used their phones most heavily showed the greatest academic improvement. England followed in 2023; a London School of Economics study found test scores improved at schools with full bans, with the largest gains among the most disadvantaged students. In Florida – the first U.S. state to act – test scores and attendance both improved in the second year of the ban.

Closer to home, Salinas Union High School District is on the right track. On April 28, the SUHSD board approved updated Policy 5131.8 governing mobile communication devices, building on a program now operating at all four of its middle schools. Students secure their phones in pouches at the start of the school day and maintain possession of the pouch throughout the day. Phones are unlocked at dismissal through established checkout procedures.

The results, by the district’s own account, are positive: Teachers report improved student engagement, sharper focus during instruction, better peer interaction and fewer discipline issues tied to classroom phone use. An active Cell Phone Task Force is still evaluating the data, but the program is working. The question is why it stops at eighth grade, and why more districts in Monterey County have not followed SUHSD.

If you want to know how serious the problem is, look north. Bill Gates didn’t give his kids smartphones until age 14. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel limits his child to 90 minutes of screen time per week. Senior leaders from Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft send their children to the screen-free Waldorf School of the Peninsula. Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya told an audience at Stanford: “We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

The courts are catching up. In March, a California jury found Meta and Google liable for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a child, awarding $6 million in damages. Thirty-three state attorneys general have filed suit.

Monterey County’s 24 districts have the law, the research, and a jury verdict behind them. The California School Boards Association has already done part of the work – it publishes model policies that every district board can adopt and make their own. Every school board in this county should take the CSBA model, set the strongest standard it allows, and adopt it before July 1.

I suggest a simple plan: Make phones inaccessible during school hours – not just for the middle-schoolers in Salinas, but for every kid in Monterey County. Let’s try that for a year or two, measure academic performance, ask the kids how they like it and observe if social interaction goes up.

We can take a first local step without a national policy. The phones can wait until 3pm.

BRADLEY ZEVE is founder and CEO of Monterey County Weekly, Monterey County Now and Salinas Valley Now. Reach him at bradley@montereycountynow.com