“When the historians find us, we’ll be in our homes plugged into our hubs, skin and bones. A frozen smile on every face as the stories replay – this must have been a wonderful place.” – Father John Misty

Many of you reading this can probably remember hollering at your kids to turn off the television, the video game or the computer. You probably said something to the effect of, “That device is rotting your brain!”

Those of my generation probably can remember both having that phrase yelled at them and now yelling the same phrases to our own offspring who seem to have their cell phones soldered to their hands and scrolling ever downward on various social media feeds.

Turns out all of us old fogeys – a status of which I am trying to ease into somewhat gracefully – were right all along. Multiple studies show excessive screen time negatively impacts child development.

For example, a 2023 article published in the medical science journal “Cureus” flatly states too much time looking at a screen can negatively affect a child’s social and emotional growth, language development, and mental and physical health.

Government is now trying to get involved in limiting kids’ screen time since the problem looks to be here to stay.

Gov. Kay Ivey has thrown her support behind identical bills in the Alabama House and Senate to ban cell phones in schools and require schools to provide social media training to students.

These bills prohibit students from having any wireless communication device on their person during instructional hours of the school day unless it is under the supervision of a school employee.

Each local board of education would be responsible for creating its own wireless communication policy, and its own policy for Internet use to ensure students only access age-appropriate websites and are prevented from accessing social media platforms. Schools that do not meet the policy requirements could see their funding cut.

Interestingly, as the bill is currently written, policy compliance would be monitored by responses to anonymous surveys of school employees asking how well their schools perform in meeting the requirements of the policy. The bill does not say what would be considered noncompliant.

This bill also requires the Alabama Department of Education to develop a digital course to make students aware of safe practices and possible negative consequences associated with social media use. Schools would have to deliver the course to students before they enter the 8^th grade.

Making this into a full class would be overkill, but a few virtual video lessons with maybe a quiz at the end should suffice, so I hope that is the thinking here.

Overall, the bill seems to be a good idea and provides some leeway for local school systems to create a policy that would work best for them. Whether or not schools provide specialized lockers or pouches to hold student cell phones could lead to a minor extra expense for school systems, but this should not be a terrible burden.

There are also several more bills dealing with social media outside of a school setting.

One House bill would ban the use of social media by anyone under 16 years of age; another bill carries a more complex set of rules and notifications for any social media providers to apply to users under age 18; still another bill requires age verification and parental consent for anyone under 18 attempting to download an application to a device.

The main issue for these bills is finding a way for social media providers to verify users’ ages. Many people would be uneasy about providing government identification to a private company, especially sending it online.

A secondary issue is determining what a social media site is. Australia recently passed a sweeping set of laws dealing with limiting social media access to minors but is facing heat from multiple social media giants when the country ruled YouTube was not a social media platform.

Therefore, YouTube does not have to comply with the law’s conditions despite having several aspects similar to typical social media platforms.

While these three bills have good intentions, there are likely more details to be worked out before they could be effective and fair laws.

Nowadays I see a lot of old fogeys themselves with a phone in their hands and checking their social media accounts. Based on some of the posts I see on social media, I think it may not be just the kids who are suffering mentally and emotionally from excessive screen time. Maybe government could pass a law restricting grown-up screen time, as well. I could benefit from someone slapping the phone out of my hand two or three times a day.