NEVADA VIEWS: Nevada students deserve bell-to-bell phone-free schools

Starting this school year, Nevada students are finally phone-free during class time. With the passage of Senate Bill 444, school districts must have policies in place limiting phone use during instruction. While a good first step, our students deserve distraction-free experiences in their hallways and lunchrooms, which will increase their well-being and strengthen school communities.

Students in neighboring Utah and Oregon enjoy this reality. In those states, students are prohibited from using devices for the entire school day — from bell to bell — not just during instructional time. Cafeterias are louder and students are engaging during passing time.

They are not alone. According to a national report card, 25 states have passed laws or enacted executive orders freeing students from their phones from the first bell to the last.

Why is a phone-free school day so important? Prohibiting devices between classes is one of the strongest ways we can help students succeed not just academically, but socially.

When phones are available during passing periods or lunch, students lose out on critical in-person time with one another. The temptation for a teenager to quickly scroll through social media or check text messages is incredibly overwhelming.

Jonathan Haidt, the author of “The Anxious Generation” and driving force behind the nationwide efforts to protect childhood from tech harms, wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “Get Phones Out of Schools Now.” Haidt explained that phones cause harms that go beyond students’ academics: “If you have any doubt that phones in school stunt social connections, just talk to students about what happens at lunch time. … It is often difficult to have real conversations because most of their fellow students keep their phones on the table and frequently break away to check or respond to notifications.”

The evidence is overwhelming that phone use is tied to mental health challenges including anxiety, sleep disruption and body image concerns — and that tech companies are designing apps to be as addictive as possible. These companies have even targeted school hours to increase engagement.

And we know too well this temptation can seep into the classroom, too, even in states with instructional use bans. With access to phones during passing periods, teachers are often burdened with enforcing classroom policies as students count down the minutes until they can scroll in the hallway.

We owe it to our teachers, who are widely supportive of bell-to-bell policies. When phones are off limits all day, teachers can spend less time policing student usage and more time teaching. More than 8 in 10 teachers nationwide support an all-day phone ban in schools, according to a National Education Association poll.

Bell-to-bell policies also improve student safety, according to the nonprofit National Association of School Resource Officers. During a normal school day, prohibiting access to phones limits students’ ability to cyberbully or plan out physical altercations — but “risks posed by phone access during school emergencies are even greater,” according to the nonprofit. During an emergency, phones can distract students, unverified information can confuse parents, personal use can hinder emergency communications, and phone sounds and light can even assist assailants.

As administrators, community leaders, parents and policymakers, it’s our responsibility to create the best environment for our students to thrive. Allowing students to check these highly addictive devices at any point during the school day does not meet that bar.

Schools should work to enact bell-to-bell policies that benefit Nevada students, educators and families and strengthen Nevada’s future. Keeping phones out of our school classrooms, hallways, lunchrooms, playgrounds and libraries will help set our children up for success.

Let’s give our students a Nevada experience from bell-to-bell free from addictive devices so lunchrooms and hallways can be loud again.

Steve Yeager, a Democrat, is the former speaker of the Nevada Assembly, where he represented District 9 from 2016-2026.