LB 140, a bill that would ban the use of cell phones on high school campuses and on field trips in the state of Nebraska, advanced on March 3. The bill would allow only a few exceptions to the policy.
According to the Nebraska Examiner, those exceptions include the need specified in a special education plan, when authorized during class for educational purposes, during emergencies, when needed to monitor healthcare or otherwise determined to be appropriate by the local school board.
Reading through the current state of the bill myself, I’m left wondering what this bill really does aside from requiring school boards to adopt a policy relating to cell phones.
There isn’t really any detail on how to enforce such a thing, and the exceptions leave the bill mostly skeletal. Students aren’t allowed to have phones unless specified during an instruction. This implies that students already have their phones in class and just aren’t allowed to use them. Students aren’t allowed to have phones unless it is specified by their Individualized Education Program or there is an emergency.
If the goal is to limit the use of phones, this bill doesn’t necessarily achieve that.
When I was in high school, we were not allowed to have phones in class. I, for one, usually left my phone off and in my locker until lunch.
This begs the question: Is it productive to limit the use of phones in class?
While it would be helpful to have limits on the use of phones during class, there are certain instances that would necessitate having a phone on hand. There are students who need to know if they will have a ride from school or if they will need to pick up siblings. There are times when students are keeping an eye on their phones to await news of the health of a family member.
This bill, while well-intentioned, leaves a lot of uncertainty, especially in an era where school shootings are terrifyingly common.
It is hard for school boards to enforce a policy like this when there are a lot of exceptions. Don’t get me wrong, exceptions are good, especially when talking about kids from all sorts of backgrounds. However, when school boards are given the duty of enacting policies with a very narrow lane of doing so, it leaves people wondering why the bill is being advanced in the first place.
It would be good to limit the amount of screen time students are getting, but we shouldn’t shut them down completely.
