When students in Virginia return to the classroom next year, they'll have to leave something behind – their smartphones.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has ordered public schools across the state to go cellphone-free. He says the goal is to "promote a healthier and more focused educational environment where every child is free to learn."
All schools in Virginia will need to implement cellphone-free policies by January 2025.
"I think it's a fantastic idea, and I hope we see more school districts across the country states follow suit," Melissa Henson of the Parents Television and Media Council tells CBN News.
Virginia is among the first states to implement a cellphone ban. Florida was the groundbreaker in banning smartphones from classrooms, followed by school restrictions in Indiana and Ohio. The city of Los Angeles also approved restrictions on cell phones in the classroom last month. And New York City is considering a similar policy.
Henson says it's a great idea to cut back the time kids are spending on smartphones overall.
"What we have seen is not only challenges confronting our kids' mental health, challenges because of their constant access to cellphones and social media throughout the day," she says, pointing to serious problems like cyberbullying, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among children.
She says downgrading or unplugging altogether would be a big benefit for many children.
"Flip phones are a better alternative because you don't see the same kind of anxiety and hyper-awareness of notifications and so forth that kids have when they have smartphones," Henson says.
"But better yet, when we were growing up our parents didn't have constant access to us. And Jonathan Haidt came out with this book a couple of months ago, The Anxious Generation, and he posits that it's this combination of being over-protected from the real world and under-protected online that is causing all these problems for our kids."
Henson says it's time for parents to step back from "helicopter parenting" and give them more freedom to navigate the real world.
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