here was no discussion at all,” Tilton recalls. “The district didn't really want to get involved or even make any effort to get feedback from us about the impact of the devices. This had to be a teacher-led movement.”  Tilton, who is an at-large representative for the Santa Barbara Teachers Association (SBTA), stepped into the leadership void. She sent out a survey to members that asked about, among other topics, their views on cellphone use in schools.

Educators are deeply concerned about the impact social media has on students' mental health, and believe those negative effects are another reason to limit access to phones at school.  But, according to the NEA survey, the biggest concern about social media use in school

The new momentum behind regulations at the state and local level did not happen overnight, says Victor Pereira, a lecturer on education and co-chair of the Teaching and Technology Leadership Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. “This is really just the culmination of a decade and a half of schools trying to negotiate cellphone policies, trying to solve the problem of how much it distracts students from being engaged in learning.”

“It seems that everyone—including parents—agree that excessive phone use is detrimental to teenagers,” says Cassandra Dorn, a high school teacher in Red Bank, New Jersey. “We know about the negative effects on academic performance and mental health. Yet, as a society, we really haven’t had the collective will to address the problem.”