School Cell Phone Bans: Listen to Researchers and Stakeholders 0 vpthomas October 14, 2025 In my few years of teaching, I saw more than enough evidence to support phones being banned in schools. My students were regularly sharing photos of completed homework with friends, playing phone games under their desk, and claiming that their “mom” was calling them every single class. I also spoke to many students who wanted to be present in class but were plagued by the ringing and lighting up of their screens. They expressed anxiety at not being able to check notifications, which distracted their thinking during lessons. Without a regulated phone policy at my school, my route was to build trust in the classroom environment and encourage students one on one to cut down on distractions. This was, frankly, a time-consuming and discouraging endeavor. I felt like I was constantly fighting the distractions—not just phones, but school devices too—with students who already found “buying in” to the material difficult. It’s safe to say that my attempts at getting middle schoolers away from their phones were not always successful. That teachers support school phone bans is not surprising. What’s more surprising is how sudden the nationwide focus toward phone banning policy occurred, and how parents are reacting to the change. Within the last year, school phone bans have exploded in state education policy. As of 2025, 26 states have implemented a complete, or bell-to-bell, ban on phones in schools and 4 more have mandated some regulation on their use.  This widespread trend began in 2023 with Florida's HB 379, which calls attention to how quickly this trend has found its way into most state’s laws. What makes this abrupt trend even more confounding is the time between the game-changing iPhone‘s release in 2007, and lawmakers’ choice to get involved: a gap of 16 years. This is time in which teachers, parents, and administrators were on their own to figure out how to navigate this new world of cell phone usage in schools. Banning phone use in schools has become remarkably popular with policymakers, but what do researchers and community members think? And what does initial implementation look like this school year given the speed of change?   What the Research on Bans Says Because these policies materialized so quickly, the first thing I’d like to discuss is what research could’ve supported the shift towards bans. Many of the state bills refer to cyberbullying, student focus and attention span, and student achievement as factors that justified their phone bans. But these claims may be unproven given the newness of this approach to phone regulation. Research studies on phone bans have produced a wide range of results: some found a positive effect with the above factors when they removed phones, and just as many reported negative or no effects from bans. This may be due in part to small samples, limited methodology, and lack of clarity on what type of ban is being studied. In a literature review published last year, Campbell et al (2024) screened 22 studies of phone bans to synthesize the findings on the impact of bans on mental health, cyberbullying, and academic outcomes.  They analyzed student achievement research first. Four studies from the screening claimed increased student achievement with phone bans (Campbell et al., 2024). Two of these studies’ samples “were restricted to low-achieving students from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds. That is, they found that high-achieving and economically advantaged students were less likely to benefit academically from mobile phones use in class, as compared to their disadvantaged peers” (Campbell et al., 2024, pg. 252). This may suggest that students labeled as low achieving are more susceptible to becoming distracted by their phones during the school day, and thus the researchers only wanted to represent them in the sample. Two other studies found an effect of the bans resulting in 0.6-0.8 years of learning in math but failed to distinguish between instructional time phone bans and complete phone bans (Campbell et al., 2024, pg. 252). Campbell et al. criticize the lack of consistency here in sampling and reporting on type of ban. Three other reviewed studies reported no difference in student achievement due to phone bans. Many state bans cite reducing cyberbullying as a primary goal. Yet the screened studies show that there may be a give and take to banning phones for this reason. Six studies found that bullying decreased with a phone ban, but two found that the ban facilitated further cyberbullying (Campbell et al. 2024, pg. 256). Surprised by the finding of higher rates of cyberbullying, the researchers offered a possible explanation: the phone bans could’ve been structured punitively for students and created a negative school climate, which is found to be related to higher cyberbullying rates. Given the variance in the current body of research tied to phone bans, Campbell et al. call for more rigorous studies in the field to get a more accurate picture of the relationship between factors like student achievement or cyberbullying and phones being banned in school. The relationship between phone use and attention span, like other factors studied, has produced mixed results. In a review of literature specific to attention span and screen time, Willingham (2025) argues that studies of attention span and technology are indeterminate because researchers are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking if students have the capability to focus, they should, he contends, be asking if they are instead choosing not to focus. According to him, “digital devices prompt students to more readily conclude they feel bored because all non-digital activities are unconsciously compared to entertainment on their phone” (Willingham 2025). To speak more simply, the studies do not show that students are losing the ability to focus because they aren’t losing that ability. They feel bored because in comparison to digital activities, the non-digital feels boring.  The irregularity of the research on phone bans suggests one should err on the side of caution when it comes to making broad claims of improved student performance, safety in schools, and attention span. But over half of U.S. states have already enacted a complete ban on cell phones, citing that they will address these problems.  Students Still Have Access to Technology To add to the nuance of this issue, there is a growing concern from researchers that even with a cell phone ban, students aren’t protected from the damage of technology use. According to NCES polling from the 2024-5 school year, 88% of schools have a 1:1 computing program, which means that all students have a computer or tablet that is assigned to them for the school year. In addition, 46% of those programs allow students to take these devices home. Such programs, largely a result of the COVID-19 pandemic's need for online learning, has remained a key facet of schooling because 77% of teachers are still assigning schoolwork online. The reality is that technology is readily available to students outside of their cellphones, inside and outside school, and this doesn’t seem to be leaving any time soon.  The Fordham Institute’s Henry Seton stated that: “banning cell phones is like locking the front door while leaving the back door open.” Because technological devices remain accessible to students regardless of phone bans, understanding the literature on general device use on students is essential.  What About the Research on Phone Use in General? It is important to acknowledge that despite the nuance in the research done on cell phone bans in schools, there is much less gray area about phone effects in general. A recent Q&A published by JHU asked two John Hopkins professors to share how psychological tolls impact the conversation on phone bans. Vidal and Anderson speak to the link between high social media use and rates of depression. Although not casual, this relationship does establish a concern that connects to policymakers’ claims of prioritizing mental health with phone bans. They then go on to discuss the similarities between social media addiction and substance addictions and highlight how severely users’ interactions can be altered by social media use (John Hopkins University, 2024). The learned patterns of absorption in the online world, like needing constant stimulation or avoiding in person socialization, can seep into students’ everyday interactions. Research has also shown that reading comprehension is another outcome devastated by device use. Research from Salmeron et al found a negative association with reading test scores and technology use in fourth and eighth graders. In addition to their overall finding, they also reported that fourth graders using technology were hit doubly hard in reading comprehension compared with eighth graders, suggesting that the older students may have had more time to assimilate to technology use effects, or were engaging with less “surface level” screen use than the younger students (Salmeron et al., 2022, pg. 191). This study is one among many that hark on the damage screen time and technology has on students’ reading comprehension and stamina. But we all know that research doesn't make up the whole picture. Weighing what the research says with what the community says can give us more insight on how to navigate next steps. Community Voice on Cell Phone Bans We’ve discussed the arguments of policymakers and researchers, but how do phone bans look to the stakeholders that are affected by them? Public opinion has been divided on the widespread mandates of phone bans in the last year.  Parents may support phones being taken away during class, but they do not support a complete ban. Pew Research Center’s polling found that 74% of parents support keeping phones off during class time, but only 46% support a complete bell-to-bell ban. Given the growing safety concerns of school shootings, this discrepancy may be a result of parents’ fear that they cannot reach their child easily. The National Parents Union polled parents at the beginning of the school year in 2024 to explain the lack of parent support in bans. They found that the primary reason that parents want their kids to have cell phones at school was for an emergency, but other reasons like “to find out where they are when needed” or to coordinate transportation were also common (National Parents Union, 2024).  Teachers have largely supported the idea of cell phone bans, but the mass rollout of mandates this school year shed light on how little planning was put into the policies for execution. The NEA reported in 2024 that 90% of its members supported bans during instructional time, and 83% supported bans for the entire school day. They cite social and emotional concerns, distractions, and cell phone addictions, all of which teachers witness every day. But, because almost all of the state bans were unfunded and brought on rather quickly, teachers have borne the brunt of the implementation so far this year. This creates additional tension for these bans, as teachers are required to secure their students’ personal devices and safely manage them while upholding their responsibilities in lesson planning, instructional time, and administrative duties. Speaking from personal experience, taking students’ phones is stressful and creates a strain between you and the students, since you’re the one that’s physically taking their phone away. Without funding for the bare necessities—a place to keep the phones—or creating procedural guides on how the devices are being collected, kept, and distributed, one can imagine how messy this rollout is for many schools across the country. We would be remiss to ignore students’ opinion on the cell phone bans. But even students see how distracting phones are to them during school. Most of U.S. students surveyed by the 2022 PISA questionnaire report that they get distracted by digital devices during their math lessons. So, while cell phone bans have been controversial in type and implementation, it seems that strong majorities of all stakeholder groups agree that devices during instructional time are hurting learning. How Can We Meet in the Middle? Because of the speed of ban rollouts and the less-than-conclusive results on their effects, we might expect communities to be wary of the change to fully banning phones. Finding middle ground between an all-out ban and an instructional ban may be tricky given these factors, but there are steps to take that would connect all stakeholders’ voices. We need more rigorous research on the effects of phone bans: not just on the factors already studied, but on mental health and social media usage. This research needs to consider the complicated relationship students have with their personal devices and their school devices to meaningfully support school environments’ implementation of phone bans. In fact, U.S. Representative Bruce Westerman from Arkansas has introduced legislation that calls for this type of research in the Focus on Learning Act earlier this year. This bill requires the Office of the Surgeon General to study and report on the use of phones in schools. This bill also calls for the Department of Education to get involved in assisting schools with funding for these bans.  This funding could meet some concerns from teachers, who feel that they are already spread too thin. The Act requires grants to be available for secure containers or lockers. This piece is essential to meeting the needs of teachers who are implementing the bans, but it could also appease parents’ concerns by using something like a Faraday or Yondr bag. These bags are small, portable, and block phone signals. In fact, schools in Michigan are already using faraday bags to implement a more “middle ground” approach to the phone ban. These bags reduce notification distractions, but stay with students throughout the day, so in the case of an emergency students can still access their phone easily.  Just this month, Phones in Focus released preliminary findings from a national survey that conveys teachers’ experience with phone bans. They plan to collect 100,000 responses by the end of this school year, which is no doubt something to look out for as well to hear what teachers have found to be helpful or hurtful. To care for and provide the best learning opportunities for our students, technology reliance needs to be on everyone’s radar. This is why working together to make a solution that researchers, teachers, parents, students, and policymakers agree with is important. Policy must reflect researched practices and community voices to function well. Issues Areas Early Childhood Education by Tiffany Broadbent School cell phone policy must reflect the research and views of stakeholders.

View Entire Post