Opinion: Can LAUSD help break kids’ cellphone addiction?

Good morning. I’m Kerry Cavanaugh, and it is Wednesday, June 19. Let’s look at the week so far in Opinion.

The Los Angeles Unified School District will join the growing number of schools across the country that want to ban students from using their smartphones on campus. It’s a recognition — albeit a little late — that carrying around a pocket-size entertainment center that constantly buzzes with alerts and enticements is not great for kids’ ability to focus and learn. (The same goes for adults, too.) Add in social media, which can fuel bullying, anxiety and depression — and should have warning labels, according to the surgeon general — and it’s a wonder that more schools haven’t banned cellphones already.

Actually, I know why they haven’t. Once you’ve given a child a cellphone, it’s extraordinarily difficult to pry the device from their little fingers. And it’s practically a requirement these days that preteens and teens have a phone. How many homes still have landlines? Smartphones are embedded into their lives. It’s how they communicate. My kids use their phones to submit class assignments. Their sports teams share practice and game information by text and social media chats. When I told my 15-year-old son about the LAUSD ban, he rolled his eyes and declared: “It will never happen.”

Which is why I give major kudos to LAUSD Board of Education Member Nick Melvoin for leading the effort, which was approved by the board Tuesday. The district will spend the next new months working with students, parents, teachers and administrators on the details, including how to enforce the ban. The board will vote again on the final policy and Melvoin hopes it can take effect in January, when students return from winter break.

It will not be easy, but schools are the best place to curb the overuse of cellphones and help break the addiction, writes columnist Robin Abcarian: “It’s very difficult to control our kids’ smartphone use outside school, but there’s no reason we can’t control their smartphone use during school.”

As AI is embraced, what happens to the artists whose work was stolen to build it? Open AI and other generative AI companies have refused to obtain creators’ consent before using their work to train artificial intelligence products, writes Mary Rasenberger, chief executive of the Authors Guild. “We cannot trust tech companies that swear their innovations are so important that they do not need to pay for one of the main ingredients — other people’s creative works. The ‘better future’ we are being sold by OpenAI and others is, in fact, a dystopia.”

L.A. can’t become an affordable, livable city by protecting single-family zoning. Los Angeles adopted one of California’s most ambitious housing plans in 2021, but now that it’s time to decide where new apartments and affordable housing can be built, the city has taken single-family zoned properties off the table under pressure from homeowners. “More than 76% of the land in affluent neighborhoods is zoned for single-family homes,” The Times’ editorial board writes. “Excluding those properties does not leave enough land available to build the number of affordable and mixed-income housing the city needs.”

James Lawson and the enduring lessons of nonviolence. A hero of the civil rights movement, Lawson was also an incredible teacher, writes Bonnie Boswell, who worked on Lawson’s cable TV talk show. “Instead of giving in to anger, he insisted, we must respect the inherent dignity and nobility of those with whom we disagree. We must listen. We must make connections rather than instigate separation, recognizing that violent thoughts, words and actions only incite more violence.”

A California crackdown on ‘diet weed’ could devastate patients who rely on CBD. Abcarian looks at a well-intentioned attempt to close a loophole in the state’s cannabis laws that has allowed unregulated, intoxicating, hemp-derived products to flood the market. But the bill should not pass, Abcarian writes, without accommodations for children and adults who use CBD to control seizures and ease other health problems.

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• Jackie Calmes: The Trump veep guessing game is silly
• LZ Granderson: One pillar of American racism is also propping up Fox News
• Jonah Goldberg: The Supreme Court’s role in our partisan polarization has been greatly exaggerated

From the Op-Ed desk

• Native Americans face huge healthcare disparities. Here’s a way to help close the gaps
• Surgeons give patients too many opioids. A few simple steps could curb excess prescribing
• You know what might cool off North Korea’s nuclear program? Balloons carrying K-pop

From the Editorial Board

• Of course politics influence the justice system. That doesn’t mean Trump, Biden verdicts were rigged
• Juneteenth isn’t a holiday just for Black people. Everyone should celebrate freedom

Letters to the Editor

• Vandalizing Cal State L.A. buildings isn’t peaceful campus protest
• L.A. has stopped wire theft before. Here’s how to do it for the 6th Street Viaduct
• The Supreme Court just made it easier to massacre Americans