{"id":281095,"date":"2026-04-22T23:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T23:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281095\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T23:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T23:57:13","slug":"california-students-author-new-digital-wellness-bill-say-school-cellphone-bans-fall-short-the-mendocino-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/281095\/","title":{"rendered":"California students author new \u2018digital wellness\u2019 bill, say school cellphone bans fall short \u2022 The Mendocino Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was written by staff at the nonprofit newsroom EdSource. It was republished by The Mendocino Voice in partnership with EdSource to bring relevant education news to Mendocino County readers. Learn more about EdSource here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SACRAMENTO, CA., 4\/22\/26 \u2014 After taking a break from social media, Orange County student Elise Choi helped write a bill that would mandate California schools teach digital wellness \u2014 a response to growing concerns about how technology is affecting students\u2019 mental health.<\/p>\n

Assembly Bill 2071 would require California schools to include digital wellness in health classes, teaching students how social media and AI affect their mental health and behavior. Supporters say the bill focuses not on limiting access, but on teaching students how to use technology responsibly.<\/p>\n

Elise, a junior at the Orange County School of the Arts and a member of the student coalition, GenUp, said a bill that serves students \u2014 not simply alleviates parent anxieties \u2014 has been long overdue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s powerful to have students at the center of policy change when it comes to education legislation,\u201d Elise said. \u201cIt\u2019s important because we are the ultimate stakeholders, and these issues affect us and our future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill follows landmark court verdicts that found social media companies Meta and Google liable for designing \u201caddictive\u201d features and endangering children online. Elise said it also responds to what experts describe as a growing youth mental health crisis, fueled in part by concerns about social media use.<\/p>\n

If the bill is passed, the California Department of Education must develop by January 2028 a plan to teach students about topics such as healthy screen habits, algorithms and AI and safe interactions on social media. The proposal passed a committee hearing last week and is expected to pass in the Legislature with bipartisan support.<\/p>\n

State Assemblymember Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, who introduced the bill in the Legislature, said the idea of digital wellness instruction was born out of student pushback against the Phone Free Schools Act, which would require all public school districts to create policies to ban or prohibit mobile phone use starting in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, students are realizing how much the screen time and the social media use really does impact their well-being,\u201d Hoover said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re actually getting excited about making changes and helping their peers actually improve their health as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where cellphone bans fall short<\/p>\n

For many digital wellness advocates like Kelly Mendoza, a senior education leader at Media Education Lab who served as an expert consultant on the bill, digital wellness education picks up where California schools\u2019 cellphone bans fall short.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhone-free schools can reduce screen time or potentially reduce behavioral issues that can happen at school, but that doesn\u2019t teach students healthy media use, decision-making and self-regulation,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cStudents are still not offered the opportunity to learn these skills in school in a structured and valuable way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mendoza said she regularly sees students who are cyberbullied, experience depression and suicidal thoughts, are unhealthily attached to social media or struggle with loneliness in her work at a phone-free high school. A digital wellness course, she said, would teach students that they have control over their relationship to their phones.<\/p>\n

Students would learn practical skills such as adjusting account settings, disabling notifications and managing algorithms to limit harmful or addictive content. They would also work through scenarios such as cyberbullying, body image pressure and misinformation to develop healthier behaviors online.<\/p>\n

Elise said she would like the curriculum to include families, particularly those from low-income and under-resourced communities. She recently attended a digital wellness workshop at a private school in San Diego, where parents and students learned to create a screen time agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cDigital wellness instruction is very inconsistent, and it depends a lot on the resources of the school,\u201d Elise said. \u201cI also envision digital wellness to be an equitable subject that hopefully all students can have access to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social media can be \u2018good\u2019 but \u2018inescapable\u2019<\/p>\n

Elise said social media also served as an essential \u201ctool\u201d for building connections after she switched to a different high school. She met students online who had launched social impact clubs and helped her sister recruit volunteers to teach dance classes for people with disabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not anti-tech,\u201d Elise said. \u201cWe\u2019re for education, and we have to be balanced with technology, because it can be good and also inescapable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elise said she met with representatives from Google last week, who she said generally supported \u201cthe course of safety (for) children and youth online\u201d and expressed support for the bill.<\/p>\n

Hoover, however, emphasized that the bill is not meant to shield social media companies from regulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot count on these companies to police themselves when it comes to child safety, so it\u2019s important that we\u2019re educating students, but also putting the right rules and regulations in place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hoover has introduced additional bills to regulate children\u2019s use of social media, including one that would prohibit children under 16 from creating social media accounts \u2014 similar to Australia\u2019s blanket ban \u2014 and another that would establish an e-safety commission to enforce age compliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cTech companies have a responsibility to be regulated to make sure that they\u2019re not entrapping kids into a very addictive technology,\u201d Hoover said.<\/p>\n

Mendoza, a parent of a teenager, said her daughter uses social media to share and receive feedback on her art, where she has connected with a community of artists. She said the course could also teach students how to reap the \u201crewards and opportunities\u201d of social media.<\/p>\n

The course would examine \u201cWhat are the healthy communities that you connect to that are really fostering your growth and your development as a person? And how can you change your algorithm to connect more with those things?\u201d Mendoza said.<\/p>\n

Before she got her first phone, Elise said she spent her time solving Rubik\u2019s cubes, baking and reading. She said she is now spending time on those hobbies when she gets home from school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cellphone ban only gets us halfway \u2014 it doesn\u2019t change our relationship with our devices,\u201d Elise said. \u201cWe need to teach kids and give us skills for what happens when we get our phones back at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article first appeared in EdSource here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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