The Senate Education Committee voted 4-1 to send  to the floor for consideration by the whole body, but not before softening the language to read “restrict” instead of the original “prohibit.” 

The measure comes amid a bipartisan trend of new limits on smartphone and social media use in schools. Nearly 20 states, including California, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Florida, have passed laws or enacted policies that either ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones or recommend local districts enact such policies. 

Sponsor Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, a retired teacher, said she was inspired to bring the bill by a common teacher complaint that policing phone use has become a classroom nightmare. She cited data on the harmful mental health effects of social media and the hours of screentime many teenagers experience. 

“When we talk about trying to do good things for our kids in education, I think this might be one of the most important things we can do for our students,” Schuler said. 

The bill zeroes in on restricting use just during “instructional time.”

Not everyone agreed, however, that it’s as simple as banning devices, and due to potential complexities around safety, health conditions and communication needs, lawmakers replaced the more stringent “prohibit” in the original version with “restrict.”

What they said

At least 18 of Wyoming’s 48 school districts — and likely more — do not have cellphone policies, according to data collected this fall by the Wyoming School Boards Association. The lack of district-wide policies hasn’t stopped some schools in those districts from adopting specific rules. Senate File 21 would force all districts to adopt policies restricting smartphone use

In states that already have such regulations, Schuler said, the results are promising. “They’re seeing better social interactions with kids with their peers, better focus in class, higher achievement.” 

Kirk Schmidt of Lander, a retired school administrator, warned lawmakers about passing a bill that would not be nimble enough to react to the ever-changing realities of technology. 

Schmidt also noted that some teachers use these devices for instructional purposes. “This takes all that away,” he said. 

Others wondered about enforcement, privacy concerns and timelines. 

Supporters, meanwhile, echoed that smartphones are correlated with declining academic performance and behavioral problems like bullying. 

“I can tell you that the phones in the schools are very difficult for the teachers and administrators,” said Cheyenne resident Deb Mutter Shamley, who has experienced it firsthand as a substitute teacher. 

Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder supports the bill, a spokesperson told lawmakers. Degenfelder and Gov. Mark Gordon penned a joint letter in September urging Wyoming schools to limit cellphones. 

Tweaks 

In order to allow districts more flexibility, committee members voted to amend the language. They also pushed out the timeline two months to give school districts until Sept. 1 to enact policies. 

Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Casper, said he thinks the measure can “make significant progress in improving the quality of instruction in public schools.”

Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, who cited concern about state government overreach, was the lone dissenting vote. 

The bill now heads to the Senate floor where it must pass three readings before it can advance to the House.

This was originally published on .

Girls, who have been shown to to the psychological harms of social media, spend even more time on the apps than boys (an average of 5.3 hours a day vs. 4.4 hours for boys) and the platforms consume more of teenagers’ lives as they move through high school: 4.1 hours a day on average for 13-year-olds compared to 5.8 hours for 17-year-olds. 

The data collected from 6,643 parents and 1,591 of their adolescent children between June and July also identified factors that can loosen social media’s grip: Teens who scored high on conscientiousness as it relates to self-control and regulation spent less time on the apps as did those living with parents who restricted their screen time. Those kids were on social media 1.8 hours less a day on average than their peers whose parents strongly disagreed with curtailing screen time. 

The survey was accompanied by a  by Gallup and the Institute for Family Studies looking more closely at how parenting and self-control can mediate the link between social media use and youth mental health. Both come some five months after the U.S. surgeon general warned that social media poses a profound risk to children and the same month that , saying it designed features to hook children and lied about its platforms’ safety.

Meta owns three of the seven social media apps examined in the Gallup survey — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. YouTube and TikTok were by far the most popular platforms surveyed, with teen girls spending nearly two hours a day watching TikTok videos and boys doing the same on YouTube for slightly more than that.

Â鶹ľ«Ć· spoke with Jonathan Rothwell, a principal economist at Gallup who authored the research, to alert parents and educators to five things they should know about social media’s impact on youth mental health.

1. There’s a direct link between parent involvement and teens’ social media use and mental health.

Though social media’s impact on teen mental health has been long explored, one notable and less-researched feature of this survey is the correlation between parental involvement and intervention in teen’s screen time and its impact on their mental health. Rothwell says not only is limiting social media usage beneficial, but any harm from the content absorbed also seems to be mitigated by a strong parent-child relationship.

The Gallup and Institute for Family Studies report explored the idea from other researchers that the issue of social media and declining mental health may be cyclical for young people, who are already experiencing poor mental health or have “low life satisfaction,” and turn to social media as a form of escapism. But teens who reported having a stronger and more loving relationship with their parents used social media less frequently and overall reported having better mental health.

2. Â鶹ľ«Ć·-centered social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube may pose a bigger threat to teens’ mental health than other social media apps.

Teens reported spending an average of 1.9 hours a day on YouTube and 1.5 hours on TikTok. Rothwell points to videos being their most obvious feature, one unlike that of other social media apps that have historically focused on text and photos. The distinction raises questions about their appeal and potential harm. Instagram and Facebook are now modeling their platforms after TikTok and YouTube with vertical video features, trying to capture some of the same audience allure.

Rothwell says it would require greater detailed analysis to determine whether it’s simply the never-ending loop design of these video-centered apps or whether it’s particular content in the videos themselves that is creating a large appeal among teens and having an impact on their mental health. 

3. Even with involved parents, teen body image issues persist.

The report found that teens who spend more than five hours a day on social media are nearly three times as likely to hold negative views of their appearance as those who spend less time online. These negative effects were only associated in the report with YouTube and TikTok, likely because of the higher frequency with which teens use those apps versus Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

“Even when we saw that that sort of strong parenting relationship mitigates and maybe even eliminates the overall mental health problems, we did find that this other measure related to the teens’ body image continued to be negative, even in the context of a loving relationship with their parents,” Rothwell said. “That makes me think that there could be something about these videos that makes people feel bad about who they are and what their body looks like.”

4. Reducing the quantity of time spent on social media versus the quality of time may be more beneficial.

Because there’s no way for parents to ensure what teens may come across online at all times, Rothwell believes that reducing the amount of time spent on social media rather than trying to curate content creators or types of posts is the safer strategy. And because apps have refined their platforms to prioritize showing users people they don’t follow, there’s an added risk of coming across content that may contribute to declining mental health.

“With any of these sites, there’s just no guarantee that unless you’re there with your kid, watching the videos together, that you’re going to be able to prevent exposure to harmful content.”

5. Parents and educators have the opportunity to foster a healthier relationship between teens and their social media use.

Rothwell says that much like the cultural norms that exist with teaching healthy lifestyle habits, such as not overeating, healthy social media practices should also be implemented at home and in school.

“Everyone who interacts with teenagers needs to do a better job of teaching them that it’s wasting their time and wasting their opportunities [and] to do something healthier, whether it’s education- or exercise-related or spending time with friends,” Rothwell said. “Even if the content was totally harmless, the probability that they’re going to be learning something useful from that content is very low.”