Ah, the smartphone. How did we ever get by without it? Many kids can't imagine how it would feel.

They've never known life without the constant lure of the internet and the instant gratification of messaging,

but national test scores are down and mental health struggles among teens are on the rise.

And much of the blame points to the distraction and skewed reality of

social media that lives in the palm of our hands. Today there's a growing call to

take phones away from kids at least while they're in the classroom. Eight states have taken action and many

more are considering it. What are the pros and cons to this debate? What seems to work and

what doesn't? That's the topic of this month's Kid News Convos.

I'm Tori.

It's a complicated issue and I wanted to talk with an expert who could share with us various viewpoints.

So I reached out to Julie Jargan, who is who could share with us various viewpoints.

So I reached out to Julie Jargan, who is the family and tech columnist of the Wall Street Journal.

She's done a lot of research and written many excellent articles on this topic,

and I'm so glad to speak with you.

Thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you for having me. A recent poll shows 97% of 11 to

17 year olds use their phones during school time for an average of 43 minutes.

That's almost a whole school period. So when did this issue first get on your

radar? Well when students returned to in-person class after the pandemic, I began hearing about how attached they had

become to their phones and how it was causing more disruption and distraction in

school. Certainly kids had phones even pre-pandemic but it was really after kids returned and had

been spending so much time on their devices during the pandemic that it

seemed like this issue became more of a problem at schools.

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