By Paige Albright
Boston University News Service
Students in classrooms across the state can expect to see many changes to their use of cellphones and social media based on a Massachusetts House-passed bill designed to strengthen regulations for social media and keep personal electronic devices out of the classroom.
Technology has allowed for innovation and changes to education, but experts say this has not come without drawbacks. In the last three years, at least 32 states have passed restrictions on the use of devices by students in schools, and now public schools prohibit students from using cell phones during class, according to research from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.
These policies come in response to Pew Research Center data reporting that high school teachers say students being distracted by phones is a major problem in their classrooms. High levels of cell phone and social media use in K-12 students have been linked to decreased academic achievement and increased mental health issues. With test scores across the commonwealth trending downward, policy reform has been a goal for many lawmakers.
A distraction
“I have heard from many parents and school officials that cell phones are distracting and disruptive to focus and learning,” said Rep. Dave Rogers, D-Cambridge, in emailed comments. “It is our hope that this legislation will help ensure students are fully engaged in the classroom while encouraging them to be present during non-instructional time. The bill also comes with appropriate exemptions for children who need them for medical monitoring or for special accommodations.”
Reps. Sean Garballey, D-Arlington, was unable to comment on the bill.
Under the measure, school districts in the state would be required to implement a policy banning student use of phones during the school day. It would also create a pilot program for 10 districts to try technology that would make “students’ personal electronic devices inoperable on school grounds during the school day.”
Arlington Public Schools did not respond to requests for comment.
“A vast majority of superintendents urged us to take the lead in restricting cell phone use from bell-to-bell in our schools,” said Rep. Kenneth Gordon, D-Bedford, House chair of the Legislature’s Committee on Education, in support of the bill. “This legislation will help ensure students stay focused in the classroom, are protected from bullying and other forms of distraction, while also encouraging them to engage with one another and be present during non-instructional time.”
The House bill would require all social media platforms to implement an age verification system for users and prohibit minors under the age of 14 from using social media. If the bill is made law by October, any users within the state under the age limit will have their accounts terminated.
“Massachusetts legislators and Gov. Maura Healey are protecting young people and creating positive learning environments in our public schools by advancing legislation that holds social media platforms accountable for how they engage young people and provides families with tools to monitor social media use by minors,” said Scott McLennan, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Teachers Association, in an emailed statement.
The House bill was quickly followed by a policy proposal from Healey to increase social media protections for teens. She described her proposal as “complementary” to the House bill. It would require social media platforms to implement age verification systems and apply automatic safety protections for users under 18.
Protections include disabling features like infinite scroll, autoplay, and algorithm-driven feeds, as well as turning off location tracking, limiting notifications, and restricting use during overnight hours and school time, with a daily cap of two hours. For users 15 and younger, only a parent or guardian can change these settings.
Questions of how these social media sites would handle age verification requirements to comply with the law have raised concerns. Many of the sites currently require users to be 13 years old; this bill goes further, but the legislation has not specifically laid out the process, which most commonly involves verification of age, biometrics, or government ID.
Efforts to impose age restrictions, while supported by many, are facing pushback from free speech and privacy groups. They see the trade-off with these restrictions as very risky to protecting personal information.
“We already know that the online ecosystem is porous, insecure, and routinely subject to data breaches,” Aaron Mackey, deputy legal director of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, told NBC News. “So why would we, then, in the name of protecting people, create a whole other legal mandate that requires the collection and storage of even more personally identifying information that would be subject to either data thieves or data breaches?”
State looking at tools to assist
Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office has said that user age verification tools is evolving and that it does not necessarily require the use of personal data like biometrics. Some companies are already practicing some of these approaches – like the use of third-party organizations to collect identifying information, age verification, and legal relationships for the guardians – without sharing this data with the media company or using artificial intelligence to estimate users’ age based on behavior.
“Recently, there have been successful court cases against Meta and Google for their unsafe social media practices,” said Rogers. “While there are some legitimate concerns about privacy issues and how companies will verify age, the bill specifies that the Attorney General will have the ability to create guidance on how the age verification system will work. I agree we want to be careful that social media companies will not be acting inappropriately with sensitive data, but the intent of the bill is to ensure kids are not growing up with addictive feeds that are damaging their mental health and social lives.”
The Massachusetts Senate voted last year to ban phones in schools, but it hasn’t been taken up by the House until now. These two bills must eventually be reconciled in committee before the final draft is voted on again to be made state law.
This article originally appeared in Your Arlington.
