MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Tuesday banning China-linked social app TikTok on public school devices and restricting students’ use of social media in classrooms, suggesting that social media “causes more harm than good” in education.
DeSantis signed five different bills Tuesday pertaining to education, including HB 379, which authorizes teachers to set rules on student cell phone use (including confiscating phones during class time), requires schools to block students from accessing social media websites from district-owned computers or servers, bans all use of TikTok on district-owned devices, and requires schools to teach about harmful effects of social media.
“Being normal kids, like kids were prior to social media, is important,” the governor said during a bill signing at a Miami charter school, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports. “The social media (causes) more problems than it solves, and I think it causes more harm than good. So, let’s have our education system be as much about traditional education as we can.”
“Teachers should walk into the classroom every day knowing that they are respected, and if they have to intervene, not be worried about their jobs to keep the safety of their kids,” added Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. “And also be able to comply with state laws without having a rogue school board or administration trying to get back at them.”
TikTok is currently the subject of bipartisan scrutiny over its Chinese parent company ByteDance’s links to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its military and surveillance operations, prompting ongoing national-security concerns over the Chinese government’s access to the personal data of TikTok’s American users.
Among the provisions of the other legislation DeSantis signed include a “Teachers’ Bill of Rights” which strengthens protections for teachers who intervene to break up fights or prevent assaults among students and gives them new means of reporting orders from school officials to violate the law; a law requiring instruction every September 11 on the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and amending teacher certification rules; a law shortening the time between school board elections from 12 years to 8 years; and the anticipated SB 256, which stops the automatic deduction of union dues from teachers’ paychecks and provides for new audits and investigations of teachers’ unions, among other reforms. DeSantis also approved more than $252 million in increased teacher pay.
“We have delivered another record boost to teacher pay and we have coupled salary increases with positive reforms,” he said. “For far too long, unions and rogue school boards have pushed around our teachers, misused government funds for political purposes, taken money from teachers’ pockets to steer it for purposes other than representation of teachers, and sheltered their true political goals from the educators they purport to represent. Today, I want to thank our legislative leaders and the many bill sponsors for working with us to empower our teachers and ushering in a new era of accountability to the people. No longer will politically motivated school boards and special interests wield their power over Florida’s teachers.”
The new measures are among the latest in DeSantis’s proactive conservative record which has generated substantial interest in him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. The governor has not yet announced his candidacy, but is expected to in the coming weeks, having just concluded an ambitious legislative session featuring conservative legislation on abortion, crime, transgenderism, and more, with purging “woke” ideology from the educational system a cornerstone.
Former President Donald Trump currently leads national polls for the GOP nomination by a substantial margin, though DeSantis enjoys a fundraising advantage and remains competitive in state polls. Both Trump and DeSantis currently lead Biden in national head-to-head matchups (DeSantis by a slightly wider margin), though a number of polls show Biden beating Trump but losing to DeSantis in swing states.