S1: They San Diego it's Andrew Bracken in for Jade Hindman. Today we learn about the efforts by the city of San Diego to improve city streets and fix potholes amid major budget challenges. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. As we learn more about the effects cell phones are having on kids health and wellbeing , schools across the country are trying to adapt. They're trying all kinds of policies , from full on cell phone bans to collection bins and even locked cell phone pouches here in San Diego County. Several districts are weighing their options as well. Joining me to give us the rundown is Katie Anastas. She's education reporter here at KPBS. Hey , Katie.
S2: Hi , Andrew.
S1: Thanks for being here. So , you know , in just a bit , we're going to talk more about this , this study on on cell phone bands in schools and what they've found.
S2: One is academic performance. And in fact , just this morning , new test score data came out from the education scorecard that's been measuring students academic recovery. And of course , we've heard a lot about the decline that happened during the pandemic. But one of the big takeaways from researchers this year is that scores actually started declining around 2013. And that's when a lot of young people started using social media. So of course , they say that's not the only factor. And that's not the only changes that were happening in 2013. But they say that's something to kind of take note of in that , in that timeline. Um , of course , another concern is mental health. You know , worries about anxiety , cyberbullying and kind of what cell phone use is doing and social media use is doing to. Friendships and relationships. Right.
S1: Right. And there's a lot into that. And we're going to talk more about , you know , this study and others like it. Um , that brings us to the Phone Free School Act. It requires California public school districts to limit or prohibit cell phone use by July of this year.
S2: And the phone's Free school Act actually mandated it. So lawmakers cited many of the reasons that we just talked about , you know , worries about mental health anxiety and worries about students being distracted in class. So , um , the law does say that students need to have access to their phones during emergencies. And if a teacher , you know , gives them permission to use it for a school activity , and it also requires districts to review their policies every five years.
S1: So what options are districts considering are already using to limit phones and schools , because there does seem to be. The last year or so has been sort of an experiment for a lot of school districts , it seems. Right.
S2: Right. I think a lot of districts are putting policies in place. Um , you know , even years before that statewide law went into effect , some schools are using lockable pouches , which I can talk more about. Some schools have said , you know , keep your phone in your backpack and off all day. Uh , some classrooms might have kind of a cubby or collection bin , like you mentioned , where students put their phone at the beginning of class and then take it out with them at the end of class. Um , one kind of sub policy within this that I'm interested in seeing if it evolves is policies around earbuds and smartwatches. That's kind of been a more recent development. Um , before this I was just looking at Poway Unified Policies and , uh , at Black Mountain Middle School phones and earbuds have to be put away all day , including breaks , lunch and on the bus. Uh , there's an elementary school in that district that also updated its policy because they've seen more kids using smartwatches , and this is an elementary school , and they had to come out with a law that a policy that says you can only use your smartwatch to tell time , you can't use it for social media or texting.
S1: But it just shows some of the challenges and some of the complexities with figuring this out. Santa unified it's the county's largest school district by quite a lot , actually. It's almost a year into their first foray into phone free school day policy.
S2: So there's kind of a blanket policy for all students. And then high schoolers get a little bit of more leeway. So their policy is that students have to have their phones off and out of sight during class , regardless of what grade level they can use them on buses before the first bell , after school dismissal , and then during extracurricular activities. Um. That's different than some other districts that do let kids use their phones on the bus. Um , but high schoolers in San Diego Unified can use their phones during lunch and passing periods. And of course , following the state law , students can use them during emergencies if they are a special education student and have an IEP that says they can use their phone , that's allowed to. Um , but yeah , that's kind of an overview of yeah.
S1: So they haven't implemented these pouches or some of these other , you know , options that you've outlined here. Um , but , you know , much of your reporting is focused on Coronado School District , and they will require middle schoolers to lock cell phones in pouches starting next year. Tell us more about how they came to that decision and what that will look like.
S2: Um , so this decision was really interesting to follow. Board members went into it. You know , deciding whether to use these lockable pouches just at middle school or to do this for both the middle school and high school. Um , the middle school's principal described what they've done so far and explained that it just hadn't been working. Their role had been. Keep your phone off , put it in your backpack all day. And she said that that was just too tempting for middle school students. So , um , I think what was interesting to me following this discussion was that I think , you know , in high school , it's kind of assumed that most , if not all kids have a cell phone. Middle school is an interesting age because it really varies depending on the family. You know , there are some parents that are not letting their kids have a phone until high school , and there are some that , you know , have given their kids phones even before they get to middle school and let them have free reign with it. So , um , an image that kind of stuck with my mind was the superintendent at one point described going to the middle school and seeing , you know , the few kids who had phones , being surrounded by the kids who don't have phones , and it kind of changing just the way the lunchroom looks and recess looks because , uh , he described it as , you know , the haves and have nots and that and that need to kind of have cohesion across the school.
S1: Yeah , that's really interesting. You're right. Middle school is such a we've heard of like wait until eighth movements. But there's such a range. And when kids , you know , have smartphones.
S2: Um , I think the debate was really whether they should do it at high school , too. Uh , one con was the cost. So yonder pouches would cost about $25,000 for just the middle school , and it would cost another $50,000 to put them at the high school. Uh , and in line with that cost concern , another argument against it was that students could find ways around the pouches. So in Los Angeles Unified , students have been using these yonder pouches , but they found ways to break the locks. They've put fake phones in there. There are ways that kids know to get around these things. Um , so the concern among the board was , do we want to spend this amount of money on something that high school students especially wouldn't know how to get around ? Interesting.
S1: Yeah. So , I mean , what are you following next ? We have about 30s left , but , I mean , there's still a lot happening here.
S2: Parents might be used to texting their kid when their pickup time is going to change , and now parents will have to maybe call the front office again and get that message relayed to their kid. Um , I've talked to students who hear about all of their sports practice schedules and game schedules through a team Instagram page. And that might be something that has to change , too. So I think , um , even though these rules are at the school level and focused on student use , I think to make it successful will require a bigger community shift. And I'm interested to see how that plays out.
S1: Very interesting. Yeah , I am as well. We'll be following for more. Looking for more of your reporting on that in the coming weeks and months ? I've been speaking with Katie Anastas. She's education reporter here at KPBS. Katie , thanks so much.
S2: Thanks , Andrew.
S1: Welcome back to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Andrew Bracken in for Jade Hindman. More than two thirds of states now have some restrictions over cell phone use in schools. But how effective are those policies when it comes to improving youth mental health and learning outcomes ? Last week , researchers published findings from the first major study on cell phone bans in schools. Joining me more to talk about it is Hunt Alcott. He's a professor of environmental social sciences at Stanford and one of the study's authors. Professor , welcome to Midday Edition.
S3: Thank you. It's great to be here.
S1: Great to have you.
S3:
S1: Your research focused specifically on using these pouches ? Right.
S3: Absolutely. So so we actually , among other things in our paper , we survey about 100,000 teachers nationwide to ask them what policies are being implemented in their schools. And exactly as you're saying , there are a range of policies that are out there from teachers kind of enforce things to , uh , stricter policies such as , you can't have your phone on campus at all , or these yonder pouches that we study in our paper. So , uh , what we did is we wanted to focus on the policies on the stricter end. And we were able to partner with yonder , which is the leading nationwide provider of these smartphone pouches. And they gave us data on which schools nationwide adopted their pouches and when and that wood became then the key to our statistical strategy.
S1: So yeah , let's let's dig into the findings here. Yeah. Tell us more about what you found.
S3: Well , so what we were able to do with the data from yonder is then we know that there are 4000 schools ish that adopted yonder pouches. We know what year they adopted. And then we can construct comparison groups from the remaining roughly 100,000 schools nationwide to to see , you know , trends in , in similar schools over time. And so that is our statistical strategy. Economists call it a difference in differences estimator. Um , so with that we then brought in a collection of student outcome data that includes test scores , uh , large scale surveys of student well-being done by a company called Panorama and suspension records , basically , how many students are being suspended. And so with all with all that , um , I'll tell you the first thing , which is when you impose a new rule , like you can't bring your smartphone to class , so disciplinary problems go up and it's some of that's mechanical. I think it's just you have a rule and then more people are going to break it. And some of that may be you get smartphones out of students hands and they are , you know , less uh , they basically have to find something to do with their time. And some of that involves breaking some other rule. So that's the first part of our study.
S1: Um , yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little bit more.
S3: So from there , we then went and looked at student self-reports , uh , on surveys of how they're doing in school. And , um , I can say that when you survey , even before doing this , doing this research , we had did a national , nationally representative survey of parents and students. And pretty much everybody thinks that banning smartphones in schools is going to improve test scores , improve student relationships , and improve mental health. Or it's not that everybody thinks that , but that's the sort of the bulk of public opinion. What we show , however , first with the student , um , surveys , is that students actually don't report being able to pay better attention in class , and they don't report any reduction in online bullying. Um , they do , perhaps after a couple of years report a potential improvement in what we call subjective well-being , basically how happy they are or how much less anxious and depressed they are. So that was the next set of results. Basically , limited out , limited effects on what students say is actually going on in the school , except for a possible improvement over time in , uh , subjective well-being. Interesting.
S1: Interesting. And I mean , you know , your research kind of had a lot of surprising found , you know , parts of this.
S3: Um , and that was surprising to me because as an educator myself , you know , I teach undergrads and PhD students here at Stanford , and I definitely don't want my students using their smartphones in class. And similarly for myself , when I go to research seminars , I try to hide my smartphone because I know even for me , it's distracting. And I'm 45 years old. So I would have expected that when you take a smartphone out of kids hands in school , that they would feel like they're able to pay more attention in class. And when they take the tests at the end of the year , they do better on those tests , but we actually don't see that. So that was the biggest surprise to me.
S1: I mean , you mentioned yourself as as a teacher and kind of how technology is kind of , you know , affected your work connecting with students. Tell us about the impact it's had on teachers , because your study just did have some interesting findings there.
S3: We so I mentioned earlier that we had surveyed roughly 100,000 teachers now nationwide. And the teachers really like more strict cell phone bands. And in particular they like yonder pouches. So when you survey teachers and you ask them what were things like in your school before yonder versus after , they report that students are much less likely to be misusing their phones and like , distracting themselves in class. And overall , the teachers are much more satisfied with , um , their schools policy after adopting yonder. And so I think this to me is then an important piece of evidence that I bring to bear on how I interpret these results. I think in some sense you might think of our paper as being a negative result. Like we don't see that smartphone pouches improve test scores in a way that you might have hoped , but teachers really like it. And parents and even and parents tend to support , um , uh , you know , stringent bans as well. And so this to me is , you know , there's several different outcomes that we're tracking. And the fact that teachers think that things are better , I think is an important piece of evidence.
S1: I want to turn to some of your other research. I mean , for years you have studied technologies , impact on things like students. But , you know , last year you published some research looking into how quitting social media might affect well-being.
S3: So so the the paper I think you're referring to is a paper that we actually wrote in partnership with Meta Corporation and a series of researcher and a group of researchers at meta. Um , which of course is the owner of Facebook and Instagram. And they were interested in understanding the impacts of their apps on people's on outcomes and in particular around the 2020 presidential election. So , um , they paid a couple tens of thousands of users to quit Facebook or Instagram in the in the weeks before the 2020 election. And they then provided external researchers , including myself , with those data , and signed away all of the company's rights to control how we did the analysis or presented the results. So it's actually like a just as an aside , like a really interesting example of how a company can partner on a credible external. External evaluation that in some sense like people , reflects on their company. So with that background , we studied both effects on political outcomes like how people voted and political polarization. But also there were some questions which I think you're referring to on mental health or what we call emotional state or subjective well-being in particular , how happy , anxious and depressed people felt. And we found that quitting Facebook or Instagram generated , I'd say moderately sized but statistically detectable. Improvements in happiness and reductions. Anxiety and depression. If you were quitting Facebook or Instagram before the 2020 election. Interesting.
S1: Interesting. Um , so , you know , kind of coming back to this , cell phones in schools , I mean , this topic around young people , social media , smartphone , it's just such a defining issue for a whole generation of kids and their families. And I'm just wondering , as a researcher , we have about , you know , a minute left or so , how do you navigate that with all the emotion and opinions that can come into researching a topic like this ? Yeah.
S3: Well , you know , my job is to do credible research and then write it up clearly and then , you know , talk to folks like you so that I think people have a sense of how scientifically I interpret the results. And then , you know , some of that takes on a life of its own and is interpreted in different ways depending on people's initial views. But , you know , my own view. I'll tell you my own takeaway from all the research that we've done. Um , it feels very important for me as an individual to maintain my own mental attention and focus on the real world as opposed to focus on my smartphone. And so I do , uh , as much as I can to keep my head out of my smartphone and instead with my family and the people around me.
S1: I've been speaking with Hunt Alcott. He's a professor at Stanford University , and we'll have a link to his study on our website at pbs.org. Professor , thanks so much for your time today. Really , really appreciate it.
S4: Thank you.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm Andrew Bracken. KPBS Midday Edition airs on KPBS FM weekdays at noon , again at 8 p.m.. You can find past episodes at KPBS or wherever you listen. Thanks again for listening. Have a great day.
