Students look at their smartphones at a school in Germany. There is a debate in Germany about age limits for social media and possible stricter rules on cell phone use in schools.

On Wednesday, California’s school phone ban goes into effect. Can you hear the cheers from teachers’ lounges? 

Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Phone-Free Schools Act, a piece of legislation with a great title — and a big loophole. School districts need “a policy to limit or prohibit the use by its pupils of smartphones,” no matter how marginal or unenforced that limitation is.

Currently, the San Francisco Unified School District has a phone “ban” that purports to bar students from using their smartphones throughout the day.

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This is a silly fiction, and the district, alongside 92% of the staff, knows it, according to a survey.

While Lick-Wilmerding High School, Everett Middle School and a few other schools physically lock phones away from students, the policy more broadly is a dead letter. From what I have observed as a teacher at Galileo High, and from what my colleagues at other district schools tell me, phones are policed only to the extent that teachers police them. In hallways, during passing periods — not at all. 

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The 646 days between signing and enactment of the law were evidently not enough for district staff to complete “significant stakeholder participation.” Two school board members told me they reached out to Superintendent Maria Su and the central office to demand that process, and yet the district failed to create an engagement plan and draft policy in time for the July 1 deadline.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve watched childhood and adolescence shrivel into a joyless, screen-addicted malaise because Big Tech decided that sucking the lives of kids through........

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