Author: Devika Bhushan, MD

These days, as young people all over the world start a new school year, phone-free school days are more common than ever and the call for a screen-aware existence is spreading rapidly. 

Even if this is not the norm (yet) in your school community, there are important steps you can take today to make your family’s or community’s relationships with screens healthier — for better health, connections, and learning.

Here’s the backdrop: US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, issued an advisory in 2023 about the impacts of social media on children and teens, and a more recent call in 2024 for warning labels on social media, given the known health harms and a dearth of data on longer-term impacts.

Research also shows that eliminating phones during times of focus, like during the school day, benefits both learning and health. For instance, in Norway, middle schools that banned cell phones had higher grades and a nearly 60% lower need for specialty care, including for mental health needs, in girls, and 40-50% less bullying reported for all kids, compared to schools that didn’t.

Many schools have since jumped on this bandwagon, requiring students to either leave phones in lockers or lock them in a Yondr pouch through the school day, with positive impacts. Florida, Utah, Indiana, and South Carolina have all restricted phone use for students in schools at a state-wide level, with California likely to, starting in 2026. 

And at the local level, this summer, Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest school district, became the largest district in the US to enact a district-wide phone use restriction, to start in January 2025. 

Nick Melvoin, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) School Board member who spearheaded this resolution, notes the zeitgeist really changed with the recent publication of the widely read book, The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt, about the dangers of a ‘phone-based childhood.’

“I do see a rare area of bipartisanship,” said Melvoin. “You see states like Florida and now states like California — those Governors agree about almost nothing — but this is one of them.”

The ultimate hope is to have students develop healthier habits “that will benefit them as they become adults — when they will have to have a healthy relationship with technology without policies that restrict their phone use,” shared Smita Malhotra, MD, Chief Medical Director for LAUSD. “We are hoping this policy will help create healthier learning environments for children and foster more meaningful in-person interactions that nurture their social-emotional development.” 

She noted that district-provided laptops and tablets will still be used, and schools will open up access to universal mental health screening and tools like therapy as needed.

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If you are a caregiver, student, or staff at a school where phones are still present in learning spaces, stay tuned — these changes may come to you sooner than you know. To advocate for these changes in your community, use these guidelines.

In the meantime, here are some rules of thumb you can apply as a family or school to help protect learning and health.

1) Create a collective norm around delaying smartphones and social media use in your community.

Collectively normalize delaying access to smartphones and to social media accounts in your caregiving and school communities. This makes it easier for youth to stick to these norms without feeling left out. For example, you might decide to delay smartphones until high school and start kids off instead with phones that can’t surf the Internet or have apps — and can only call and text.

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2) Parents and caregivers: intentionally model healthy tech behaviors. As a family, designate certain screen-free zones and activities, like meals and focus time. 

‍Research shows that young peoples’ screen time habits often mirror those of their caregivers. So any change a youth makes has to start with the adults in the family. 

A 2023 survey found that 9 in 10 (89%) Americans check our phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up, and nearly 6 in 10 (57%) consider ourselves “addicted” to phones.

“Technoference” — when devices distract caregivers from being present and responsive with kids — is an increasing issue these days. In one recent Canadian study, parents of preschoolers (ages 3-5) were distracted by devices an average 12-16 times per day. This was associated with children scoring lower on emotional self-regulation and higher on externalizing and internalizing mental health symptoms. A recent Pew survey found that nearly half of teens say their parent is at least sometimes distracted by a phone when trying to talk with them.

So it’s up to us adults to do the hard work of identifying and modifying our own relationships with screens in tandem with helping our kids do the same. 

‍Choose times to connect as a family free of devices. For example, you might make family meals or walks and any key focus times (like doing homework) screen-free zones to enable everyone to be maximally present. Invest in fun, real world alternatives to screens like regular time in nature, family dance parties, or game nights.

When designating phone-free zones, you’ll get the best results from leaving phones in another room. Just having a phone out on a table, even when powered off and not being used, siphons off our attentional resources, compared to leaving it another room — making it harder for us to pay full attention to an important conversation or our homework. (These effects are strongest for those of us most dependent on our phones.)

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3) Remove devices from bedrooms, or at least place them far from beds.

Along with mealtime use, bedtime screen use is associated with more problematic youth social media, video game, and mobile phone use overall, and also with sleep problems, including trouble falling or staying asleep and disturbances through the night. This is partially mediated by exposure to blue light from screens (and other artificial light sources) that signal to our brains that it’s daytime, suppressing the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and related functions.

For optimal sleep, set a goal to be off your device at least 1-2 hours before your desired bedtime. At bedtime, dim the lights, make the room cool, and consider wearing blue light-blocking glasses, which protect your brain from large doses of daytime-signaling blue light. These steps can help boost your natural drive to sleep by ensuring timely production of melatonin and related nighttime functions.

Once that phone is out of reach, I urge you to find alternative ways to wind down to boost sleep quality. Maybe it’s reading a book, journaling, doing stretches, smelling lavender, or mindful breathing — pick something soothing that you enjoy and can return to night after night to powerfully cue your brain to switch into unwinding and resting. 

For bonus points, rig up an old-school alarm clock (rather than one on your phone, even across the room) so you’re not looking at your device first thing in the morning, either.

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4) Make devices boring and less accessible.

‍Experiment with making your phone a less easy source of dopamine hits. Turn off notifications; turn your phone to grayscale; leave your phone on airplane mode — or at home — for an afternoon to see what this opens up.

(Simply switching a smartphone to grayscale reduced screen time by 18% in one study. Here are instructions for how to set that up.)

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5) Mindfully choose higher-quality content, and make it harder to consume low-quality or harmful content.

Not all screen content or practices around consumption are created equal. 

For example, in preschool-age children, co-viewing an educational show like Daniel Tiger with caregivers can actually improve social-emotional outcomes like emotional regulation, while lower-quality or age-inappropriate content can harm.

When we do use screens, intentionality about higher-quality use is the key. Identify the kinds of screen time that make each family member feel better (as opposed to worse) after consumption, and make time-bound goals for use.

Also have each member of the family delete the apps or activities that most steal focus off device(s), creating more friction around their use. You might designate limited times to engage them — from a computer instead of a phone.

For instance, I’ve deleted my work email and a key social media app from my phone, and I designate specific times in my day to check in and reply to any messages from a computer. This works well for me because I’m only on my computer during the work day, but have my phone on me at other times. So I’ve made social media and email a part of my working hours, and eliminated their presence from my downtime — an incredible upgrade.

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‍I wish your family and community all the best in your journey to reclaim screen-free presence in the real world and better health — it’s definitely not easy, and it’s definitely worth the ongoing effort.

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Devika Bhushan, MD, is Daybreak’s Health’s Chief Medical Officer. She is a pediatrician and public health leader with expertise in trauma-informed systems, health equity, mental health, and stress and resilience. She shares actionable insights for well-being at Ask Dr Devika B. 

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