By the time Principal Sidra Dudley banned cellphones at Marina Del Rey Middle School midway through the last school year, the devices had infiltrated every part of the outdoor campus lined with trees and blue lockers. Her 400 students, mostly Black and Latino, were hooked.
“As they were walking in, they were on their phone. When they're out at nutrition, they were on their phone. At lunch – not talking to one another – just scrolling on their phone,” she says. “It was a true addiction, I feel.”
Alexi, a seventh grader who only shared her first name, was one of those students. She says she’d reach for her phone, in class and at lunch, to scroll TikTok and Instagram, or to text friends sitting nearby.
At night, she’d lose sleep staring at her screen.
“I'd just be scrolling for hours and hours and hours until school came,” she says. “It would be entertaining, so that's why I wouldn't want to get off.”
In the classroom, students would hide their phones under the table while science teacher Aisha Nash competed for their attention.
“Kids weren't engaged in class at all,” she recalls.
Students of all genders would often go to a mirror in her closet to check their appearance. “You could tell how stressed they were to go viral, or to upload things, or to take pictures of each other and make a joke, or text each other,” she says.
Midway through the last school year, Principal Dudley decided she’d had enough.
“We really wanted to make a culture shift,” she says. “We wanted to increase our [test] scores. We wanted our students to reconnect to school, to each other.”
She banned cellphones at Marina Del Rey Middle School.
Principal Sidra Dudley banned cellphones at Marina Del Rey Middle School midway through the last school year. Photo by Robin Estrin.
Six months later, in June, the Los Angeles Unified School District followed suit. With a 5-2 majority, the school board passed a resolution forbidding cellphones in all public schools. The ban will roll out in January 2025.
This week, state lawmakers approved legislation that would require all public schools to come up with policies by July 2026 to prohibit or at least limit students’ use of cellphones during the school day. Governor Newsom is expected to sign the bill.
LAUSD School Board member Nick Melvoin, author of the LAUSD resolution, points out that the surgeon general of the United States has suggested warnings on social media because of its harmful effects on kids.
“We have a growing body of research that shows the deleterious effects of smartphone use for kids – on their academic achievement, on their mental health, with increases in anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation, [and] also on their physical health,” Melvoin continues. “It was important to me that we finally did something about this.”
LAUSD is the largest school district in the country to implement a cellphone ban. Meanwhile, several other states — like Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Indiana — have passed legislation limiting cellphone access during the school day.
In Los Angeles, Melvoin says local schools are considering “a menu of options” to implement and enforce the ban.
Marina Del Rey may serve as an example.
There, Principal Sidra Dudley requires students to power off their phones each morning, then enclose them in neoprene pouches secured by a magnetic lock, created for that purpose by a company called Yondr. The pouches stay locked throughout the day.
Principal Sidra Dudley demonstrates how to lock a phone inside a Yondr pouch. Photo by Robin Estrin.
When the school bell rings, an administrator brings out a cart decked out with two ping pong ball-sized magnets.
“As they leave for the day, they just tap their pouches on this magnet, and then it will unlock,” says Dudley, demonstrating the technology. “They keep their pouches with them and bring them back in the morning.”
At nearby Katherine Johnson STEM Academy, another middle school that has gone phone-free ahead of the district-wide ban, Melvoin says students are encouraged not to bring their phones to school. Those who do are required to secure it in a low-tech cellphone locker during the school day.
“There's also more advanced device lockers that we actually have at our schools for laptops, iPads, and tablets,” he says. “We're looking at procurement, potentially, for those.”
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told KCRW in August that the district is also considering “advanced technologies that basically block out the [phone’s] signal, much like what happens when you put your phone on airplane mode – disabling the ability of the phone to communicate via text or access to digital apps.”
At Marina Del Rey Middle School, Principal Dudley says she heard pushback from students who didn’t want to pouch their phones.
“My first thought was, ‘Do I really want to do that?’” says Alexi. “I mean, I like my phone. Why would I want to lock it up like a jail?”
Dudley says a few students tried to weasel around the ban.
Some students stuffed their Yondr pouches with burner phones. Another student got hold of a high-grade magnet. “That student was the popular kid for the day, because she was unlocking lots of pouches,” Dudley recalls.
Parents also reached out with safety concerns: What if there was an emergency, and they couldn’t reach their kid?
“We told the parents that in the event of a true emergency, it's really important that you hear from the school first, and not the kid, because the kid doesn't have the true perspective of what's happening,” Dudley says.
When an earthquake rattled LA on the first day of school, Dudley says she got a message out to parents within minutes.
Melvoin says if there were a school shooting, campuses would be safer when students are phone-free.
“A beep or a vibration can let an assailant know where somebody is,” he says. “If every kid is texting their parents, who are all calling 911, it can – and this actually has happened – overwhelm a 911 switchboard.” He adds, “If every kid is texting their parents different directions – ‘pick me up,’ ‘don't pick me up,’ ‘come to this gate,’ ‘come to the other gate’ – it really takes what is already a chaotic scene and makes it even more so.”
Six months after Principal Dudley implemented the cellphone ban, she says the entire school culture has changed. Bullying has decreased, and fewer kids are being referred to the office.
Dudley adds that students are improving academically. She says their scores on state standardized tests improved from the beginning of the last school year, before the ban was in place, to the end of the school year, when the campus was phone-free.
(LAUSD did not confirm this claim by providing data.)
Teacher Aisha Nash says she’s no longer using valuable class time to hound students about their phones. She says they’re even checking themselves out in the mirror less.
“It's beautiful,” she said. “I feel like the kids are actually engaged. … And they seem – this is crazy – but they seem a lot happier.”
Science teacher Aisha Nash says she has benefited from the campus cellphone ban, and she believes her students have too. Photo by Robin Estrin.
And Alexi, at first so reluctant to lock her device in cellphone “jail,” now agrees.
She says she’s less distracted in class and her grades have improved. Plus, she finds she’s using her phone less after school and getting better sleep.
Between bells on a recent afternoon, she and other Marina Del Rey Middle schoolers bustled from one class to the next, laughing, greeting each other with eye contact, hugs, high fives. Regular middle school stuff.
“I see everyone looking way happier,” she says, “just interacting with people more.”