SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers on Monday introduced a bill that would ban cellphones during school hours in Utah schools as early as the 2025-26 school year. The bill is expected to be considered in the upcoming Utah legislative session.

According to the bill, which was presented to KSL TV, lawmakers want to “prohibit students from using cell phones, smart watches or new technologies during class time,” but want to give individual school districts the ability to “create exceptions to this ban.”

Lawmakers and other advocates met at Granger High School on Monday to introduce the bill.

“We maintain local control, but recognize that since the ubiquity of cell phones, and particularly smartphones, in schools, we have learned so much about their impact on students and the learning process that we need a reset,” said Republican Senator Lincoln Fillmore. “We must ban cell phones in schools except under specific circumstances that teachers, school boards, school districts, students and parents can jointly determine.”

The bill also provides for a grant program for schools to provide storage facilities.

Phones, smartwatches, “new technologies” banned

The proposal defines a mobile phone as a smartphone, a feature phone, a mobile phone, a satellite phone or a “personal digital assistant with similar functions to a smartphone”.

It also bans smartwatches, i.e. portable computing devices that are worn like watches and “can function instead of a mobile phone or as an extension of it”.

Also prohibited are “new technologies”, that is, any other device that can replace or act as an extension of a person’s mobile phone.

Watches that merely display the time or monitor health status are not prohibited.

Districts can opt out

The bill would require school districts to adopt policies that specify when cell phones can be used. Currently, the opposite applies in Utah schools: Individual districts can adopt policies that prohibit cell phones if they so choose.

The bill says this could be done in response to an imminent threat or to a person’s health or safety, if their Individualized Education Plan (IEP) requires it, or to address medical needs. Additional guidelines could also be created that would establish “reasonable exceptions” to when a student may use a device during the school day.

Contribute: Mary Culbertson, KSL TV