NJ kids need more than ban on phones to handle a digital world
By: Kimberley Markus
Your Turn
Guest columnist
..... As New Jersey's school boards finalize new cell phone polices this sumer, [2026] ahead of the 2026-2027 school year deadline set by the bell-to-bell law Governor Phil Murphy signed in January, [2026] I have one message for every superintendent, principal and board member in he state: Don't treat this only as a compliance exercise.
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I understand the instinct. The law is clear, and the easiest path is to write a policy that satisfies the mandate, put phones away and move on before the first bell rings in September. [2026] But if that is all New Jersey schools do this fall, [2026] we will have missed a much larger opportunity and neglected our real job as educators: preparing students not simply to succeed in school, but to navigate the world beyond it.
..... I spent more than three decades in public education, as a teacher, school leader, and New Jersey's commissioner of education, and I understand the concerns about phones in schools. A growing body of research links heavy smartphone and classic media use to youth anxiety, depression and distraction, serious enough that the U.S. surgeon general has warned of a "profound risk of harm" to young people.
..... But I don't need a study to tell me how disruptive, a phone can be in a classroom. I have seen it firsthand: the lesson that stalls while a teacher redirects a student, the hallway conversation that no longer happen because every head is down. Legislators were right to recognize the problem. But how districts respond maters.
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Approaching the mandate as a ban, without other behavioral support mechanisms,, is unlikely to result in the lasting outcomes we want for our students. A ban can produce compliance. It does not, by itself, produce the judgment agency or wisdom we want them to possess. Nor will a ban ensure an improvement in academic outcomes or how students engage with devices. The largest study to date, published this May [2026] by researchers at Stanford, Duke, Penn and Michigan, found that while bell-to-bell bans sharply cut in-calls phone use, there wasn't evidence yet that bans improved academic achievement or behavior or changed students' relationship with their devices once they left school.
..... Our student are not growing up in a world were smartphones are a passing trend. They will carry devices into college, careers, relationships and civic life. If the goal is only to keep phones away from them for seven hours a day, we will have solved a scheduling problem, not an educational one.
.... Our job is to help students learn how to live, learn, work, connect and lead in a digital world that will not disappear at dismissal. That requires more than a rule and a consequence for breaking it. It requires education,. It requires helping stunts build self-regulation and sound judgment. and critically, it requires student voice by engaging young people in understanding the challenges, shaping solutions and taking increasing township of their relationship with technology.
..... We cannot teach responsibility without giving students meaningful opportunists to practice it. The good news is that innovative districts are treating new state mandates as an opportunity, not just an obligation, restricting personal device sue during the school day while equipping students with the knowledge and skills to thrive in a world of screens. Districts also do not have to build these solutions alone: New tools and approaches are emerging that can help leaders implement thoughtful device polices without placing yet another burden on already overtaxed teachers.
..... New Jersey's own guidelines make room for exactly this kind of ambition. The mandate is a floor, not a ceiling. It requires districts to restrict non-prevent schools from paring those boundaries with digital literacy, making and authentic student voice, Districts that use that room, rather than defaulting to the narrowest interpretation of the law, are doing the harder, and more important, work our student deserve.
..... None of this means districts should do less than the law requires. Boundaries matter. Focus matters. Cereating learning environments where students can engage deeply with teaches, peers and ideas matter. Restricting devices during the school day may be a meaningful part of creating those environments.
..... But restrictions should be a starting point, not the destination.
..... The measure of success cannot simply be whether students complied with a phone policy at school. It must also be whether they leave us better able to make thoughtful choices when no teacher, administrator, parent, policy or locked pouch is making those choices for them.
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As boards finalize polices this summer, [2026] the questioning worth siting with isn't "How do we get phones out of schools by September?" [2026] It's "How do we help students build the judgment, agency and responsibility to navigate world where technology is alway within reach?"
..... And as board members the subjects plate the answer, they need to engage their students.
..... They are
not simply the subjects of these policies. They are the young people we are preparing to inherit this digital world. Their experiences, insights, challenges and ideas belong in the conversation about how we help them navigate it.
..... The law gave New Jersey a deadline. We have an opportunity to give our students something far more enduring.
..... Kimberly Markus is a former New Jersey commissioner of education.