The Long Beach Unified School District will begin enforcing a policy restricting cell phone use across all campuses on Monday.
The policy, adopted by the LBUSD board of trustees last September, requires students in transitional kindergarten through eighth grade to turn off cell phones and personal electronic devices all day. High schoolers will be prohibited from using phones during class. Phones are banned in restrooms, locker rooms and on field trips across all grades.
Some exceptions apply, and students can use phones during emergencies, when medically necessary and in accordance with individualized education programs or 504 plans.
Already, many schools have implemented the policy and reported widespread success, according to a spokesperson for the district.
Principal Eric Cabacungan piloted a no-phone policy his first year at Stephens Middle School. While supervising lunch, he noticed that students were physically present but barely interacting.
“If these students are on their phones all the time around their friends, then their presence is largely in the digital world,” Cabacungan said in a video released by the district. (The district’s media team declined to connect the Long Beach Post with principals to hear about their experience with the rollout of this policy.)
Cabacungan restricted phones during lunch and saw an immediate positive change in how students engaged with each other. Cabacungan shared these observations with parents, 84% of whom said in a survey that they would support a phone ban, which Stephens Middle School rolled out shortly after. Students were not happy at first, yet they’re seeing the benefits and starting to buy in, Cabacungan said.
Indeed, district administrators and school board members said they adopted and implemented the policy with the hope that limiting phones in schools would reclaim student attention, boost performance, reduce cyberbullying and increase overall well-being. In particular, the policy points to the addictive and harmful effects of social media, including anxiety, depression, unsafe online behaviors and stunted social-emotional development.
In August 2024, Superintendent Tony Thurmond called on schools to limit phones, doubling down on state legislation that went into effect six years ago and empowered school districts to adopt phone policies.
“Our responsibility to protect young people from harm includes establishing clear limits on their access to smartphones at school,” Thurmond said in a press release.
Districts are responding. The Los Angeles Unified School District adopted a “bell-to-bell” phone ban for all grades, which is harsher than LBUSD’s policy.
The district said that parents and students were reminded of the policy’s enforcement in emails and texts via the school messaging system, though the district declined to provide those communications to the Post.
Though some parents are hopeful about the policy, concerns surfaced, too. Laurel Cadiz said her daughter, a ninth grader at Millikan High School who has anxiety and ADHD, uses her phone to contact Cadiz when she is anxious or about to have a panic attack. Her IEP allows her to step out of class to take a break, but it doesn’t guarantee she can have her phone. Without that means of communication, Cadiz worries her daughter may just end up in the nurse’s office asking to go home. The ban “will definitely affect neurodivergent children way more,” she said.
Students themselves have taken a nuanced view, according to interviews compiled by The562.org. They realize phones can be a distraction, but they worry about being able to contact their parents and pointed out phones have been used by teachers in the classroom to let students “view instructional YouTube videos that are blocked on their school computers, or to listen to music while taking a test.”
Read what they had to say here.