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Do you support barring students from accessing their phones during the school day?
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- No
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Among New York parents of school-age children, 77-percent support barring cell phone use in schools during the day, a Mount Sinai South Nassau “Truth in Medicine” poll found.
Most parents, 72-percent, said they still want their child to have their phone on them in case of an emergency, the poll found.
The poll was conducted by 600 parents with at least one child under the age of 18 in New York City and on Long Island.
An increasingly hot-button issue among parents and teachers, student cell phone use has risen to the upper echelon of state government in recent months.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed banning internet access on students’ cell phones in classrooms, while Republican Assemblyman Keith Brown introduced a bill prohibiting students from possessing their phones during classroom instruction.
Concerns over adolescent phone usage persist outside of the classroom, too. On Tuesday, Sept. 17, Instagram unveiled several new security features for teenage users aimed at combating bullying, sensitive content, and screen addiction.
In June, Hochul signed the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) For Kids Act, requiring social media companies to display content chronologically for users under 18 unless they get parental consent allowing them to show content that is selected algorithmically instead.
Content that is algorithmically curated relies on a user’s behavior and past interactions – like comments, shares, and number or duration of views – to create a personalized, and thus more addictive, feed.
The legislation also bars social media platforms from sending app notifications to minors between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. without parental consent.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has also weighed in on the issue. Earlier this month, she was among a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general who sent a letter to Congress, urging lawmakers to approve US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's request for warnings on sites like TikTok and Instagram about potential adverse mental health effects for minors.
Murthy made the request in June, citing new research showing that adolescents who spend more than three hours per day on social media face an increased risk for conditions like depression and anxiety.
Other key findings of the “Truth in Medicine” poll include:
- 85-percent of parents support state laws limiting social media feeds for minors
- 82-percent agreed that social media companies should do more to limit children’s use of their apps
- A plurality of parents whose kids had a phone said they use all of the social media apps listed, with YouTube being the most used
- 68-percent of parents believe parental controls for their children’s social media use are effective
- 34-percent of respondents said their children spend between three and four hours on social media per day, while 23-percent were not sure
Click here to view the complete findings from Mount Sinai South Nassau’s “Truth in Medicine” poll.
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