New Jersey · P.L.2025 c.195, in force since September
“Can I use my phone at lunch?”
No. And the law never said so.
The statute the Legislature passed never mentions lunch. What it says is that the guidelines must prohibit non-academic device use during the school days.2.b(2)
, and then it never defines what the school day is. The Department of Education defined it, in its own guidance, to include lunch.Key Terms
The obvious objection, first: lunch happens during the school day, so you might think the statute settles it. It would, if the statute said what the school day is. It does not. That single undefined phrase is the whole argument, and what one Commissioner defined, a Commissioner can define differently.
Every period on this page is the same kind of time.
None of them is instruction. Nobody is teaching, and nobody is being taught. The state permits a phone in one column and bans it in the other, and the thing that separates them is not whether class is happening.
Phone allowed
On the school bus
Yes. Unless the school district’s policy further restricts student access to internet-enabled devices, students may use internet-enabled devices on school buses.Q14
Lunch, off campus
When a student leaves school campus, whether for an open lunch period, internship, or other purpose, they should be permitted to use their personal internet-enabled devices.Q15
Before and after school
students are permitted to use their personal internet-enabled devices for after-school or before-school activities, before a sports practice, or at any other time outside of the regular school hoursQ2
Phone banned
Lunch, on campus
No. … Students may not access these devices during lunch on campus, study hall, time between classesQ8
Study hall
The bell-to-bell policy requires personal internet-enabled devices to be off and stored for the entirety of the school dayQ8
A club meeting at lunch
For extracurricular activities that occur during the school day … students are not permitted to use their internet-enabled devicesQ10
The line the state drew runs along where you are standing, not along whether teaching is happening. A student eating lunch on the lawn outside school may use a phone.Q15 The same student, eating in the cafeteria, may not.Q8
So we read the law
Search it yourself: the PDF is linkedThe guidelines shall, at a minimum … prohibit non-academic use of an internet-enabled device on school grounds during the school day…
Searched the full text for
- “lunch”0results
- “study hall”0results
- “passing time”0results
- “school day”2results
Four defined terms in the whole Act: board of education, internet-enabled device, non-internet-enabled device, public school. The school day is not among them.s.1
One phrase does all the work, and nobody defined it.
Everything contested comes from the Department’s own glossary, not the Act: that the rule covers lunch, that it covers the walk between classes, that it runs bell to bell.Q8
And one requirement the guidance did not meet
The same section orders the Commissioner to write age appropriate and grade-level differentiated guideliness.2.b(1)
. The floor that resulted is identical for a five-year-old and a seventeen-year-old; only the advice around it changes.Grade-Level Differentiated Guidelines
They have already done this once
For a period the law actually namedThe Legislature named school buses
…during regular school hours, on a school bus, or during school-sanctioned events…s.2.d
The Department decided not to restrict them
boards of education may wish to consider including provisions in their policy for limiting student use of internet enabled devices on school busesConsiderations
So phones are allowed on the bus
Yes. Unless the school district’s policy further restricts student access to internet-enabled devices, students may use internet-enabled devices on school buses.Q14
The Commissioner has already decided that not every period the law covers needs a ban.
Buses are named in the Act twice. Lunch is named none. The Department restricted the one it was told about and left the other to districts, so the reach of this rule is already a departmental judgement call, not a fixed line the Legislature drew.
When the Department drew up these rules it was required to consult five groups. Every one was an association of adults who work in schools.s.2.c
Most people already want this
National survey, not New Jersey68% of teens want phones put away during class and allowed the rest of the day.
That is not a fringe view and it is not a demand to scrap the rules. It is the most popular position among teens by a distance, and among their parents too. Only 8% of teens want the policy New Jersey adopted.Preferred rules
| Who was asked | Away all day | Away in class only | No rules |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teens (13–17) | 8% | 68% | 24% |
| Parents of teens | 33% | 60% | 7% |
| Parents, all school ages | 41% | 53% | 7% |
| Their school’s policy | Teens: too strict | Teens: just right | Parents: just right |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phones away all day | 64% | 31% | 75% |
| Phones allowed outside class | 34% | 54% | 75% |
Letting phones out at lunch nearly doubles how many students think the rules are fair, and costs nothing in parent approval.
Parents call the rules “just right” at exactly the same rate under both policies, 75% either way. The disagreement is not between students and their parents. It is between students and a rule written without asking them.Rules too lenient or too strict
What this is and is not. A national survey of 1,699 adults with a school-aged child and 364 teens aged 13–17, weighted to be nationally representative, fielded on USC’s Understanding America Study panel. It is not New Jersey data, and it does not tell you what students at your school think. That is why this site runs its own survey.Methodology
Responses so far
Add yours to the count.
The state’s own guidance tells districts to revisit this policy every year using feedback from students.Communicating Policy Three minutes, neutral questions, and we never ask for your name or your school.
34 New Jersey districts are tracked here, with the source document for every line.