Here. We. Go. Again.
I sat in horror and heartbreak watching the news of yet another mass school shooting unfold — this time in Georgia — where a 14 year-old student murdered two teachers and two students and injured nine others. A freshman boy, not even old enough to have a learner’s permit, will now be tried and sentenced as an adult mass murderer.
Here in Park City, an altogether different issue plagues the lives of 14 year-olds, where school administrators are busy ensuring freshmen have their smartphones rendered inactive each day while at school. It’s an initiative gaining momentum across the United States, from New York to Utah, where legislation banning cell phones in K-12 schools is expected to be introduced in the 2025 session by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore and Rep. Douglas Welton. I commend both lawmakers for what Fillmore has said will “create a more focused and productive learning environment.”
He’s not wrong.
Except, here is the thing. My senior daughter is a teacher’s assistant in a first period classroom at Park City High School: A classroom filled with ninth grade students from neighboring Treasure Mountain Junior High, where all eighth and ninth graders must now surrender their devices each day. She is tasked with locking phones into pouches first thing in the morning, rendering them useless until they are magnetically unlocked by staff at the end of each school day.
While still able to use her own phone between classes and at lunch, my daughter is distraught about this new rule. But not for the reasons you may think. Instead, she wonders:
“What if there is a school shooting? How will they unlock their pouches quickly?”
“How will kids call their parents? How will they say they need help?”
“How will they say I love you? How will they say good-bye?”
Not a day goes by that she doesn’t worry about being shot while at school. Imagine.
From a parental perspective, smartphones in the hands of teens are scary. We don’t truly understand the nuances of TikTok. Or Snapchat. We never will.
But from a child’s perspective, guns in the hands of teens are infinitely more scary.
Emily Bell McCormick of The Policy Project, the group advocating for anti-cell-phone-in-school legislation in Utah, says they “disrupt classroom environments.” Guess what? So do guns.
It seems fairly straightforward. If legislators can understand the need to remove one disruption, why not the other? They have the unique opportunity to tighten laws, ultimately eliminating the possibility that guns end up in the wrong hands. Saying good-bye to the threat of school gun violence ensures our children won’t need a smartphone in class to say good-bye to us.
Carrie Schwartz is a Park City-based interior designer who is passionate about public policy.
Carrie Schwartz is a Park City-based interior designer who is passionate about public policy. Along with her daughters, she co-founded The Adjacent Project, a national organization advocating for the modernization of sexual assault statutes at the state and federal levels to specifically include nonconsensual condom removal.
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