Gov. Gavin Newsom wants heavier restrictions on smartphones in California classrooms

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he wants to impose heavier limits on kids using smartphones in schools, citing U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s recent call to protect young people from the potential mental health harms of social media.

Murthy published a New York Times opinion piece on Monday, in which he urged Congress to require a tobacco-style warning label on social media platforms to “remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.”

In a statement to NBC News, Newsom echoed the surgeon general’s assertion that “social media is harming the mental health of our youth.” He cited a bill that he passed in 2019 that gave school districts in California the authority to limit or ban smartphone use during the school day, barring special circumstances and emergencies.

“Building on legislation I signed in 2019, I look forward to working with the Legislature to restrict the use of smartphones during the school day,” Newsom said. “When children and teens are in school, they should be focused on their studies — not their screens.”

The news was first reported by POLITICO.

Newsom’s office did not expand on what kind of restrictions he is planning to implement, but said the administration is looking at several proposals moving forward in the legislature this year.

The governor’s statement comes the same day that Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the country with more than 420,000 students, reportedly voted to ban cell phone and social media use in its schools.

A spokesperson for LAUSD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

In 2022, Newsom also signed a controversial bill that implemented some of the strictest privacy requirements for children in the country — requiring businesses that “develop and provide online services, products, or features that children are likely to access” to comply with specific safeguards protecting the data and privacy of users under 18.

The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which was slated to go into effect next month, was blocked by a federal judge last year after tech industry group NetChoice sued on the basis of the law allegedly violating the First Amendment. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has appealed the preliminary injunction as the lawsuit remains ongoing.

California is among a slew of states that in recent years have looked toward legislating restrictions on smartphone use in classrooms, as parents and teachers across the country express growing concern about distractions and potential harms posed by the devices.

Indiana passed a law in March requiring schools to adopt policies restricting cell phone use during instructional time, while Tennessee and Kansas failed to advance similar bills in recent months. Meanwhile, Oklahoma, Vermont and Virginia also introduced new legislation this year aimed at keeping phones out of schools.

Last year, Florida became the first in the nation to outright ban the use of cell phones during class time and to block access to social media on district wifi.

Even without mandates from the state or federal level, schools in dozens of states have already spent millions on sealed fabric pouches meant to lock up students’ phones during class.

In recent years, a growing body of research has sought to understand the impact of smartphones and screen time on young people, with many studies finding correlations to harmful behavioral and psychological effects. Last fall, a report from Common Sense Media found that children and teenagers get hundreds — or, for some, thousands — of phone notifications a day, most of them being social media alerts.

In his opinion essay Monday, Murthy wrote that he and his wife are already worrying about how they’ll approach social media use for their two young children.

“There is no seatbelt for parents to click, no helmet to snap in place, no assurance that trusted experts have investigated and ensured that these platforms are safe for our kids,” Murthy wrote. “There are just parents and their children, trying to figure it out on their own, pitted against some of the best product engineers and most well-resourced companies in the world.”

Angela Yang is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News.