Smartphones in schools are having an increasingly negative impact on the academic and social development of American children. They distract students from learning, prevent healthy social behavior, and undermine student discipline in the classroom and on campus. Teachers are frustrated, students are suffering, and parents are battling two powerful forces: curated algorithms designed to give their children constant dopamine hits and the age-old peer pressure of teenage behavior.
Many schools and communities have recognized that cell phones interfere with learning and discipline and have banned them during class. This is a step in the right direction, but classroom rules alone are not enough. They burden teachers with enforcing the rules and result in many students still accessing cell phones and becoming distracted despite the classroom rules.
Even when school bans are in place, students can still access their cell phones during lunch or between classes. This can be an academic distraction because students are still thinking about what they saw on their phones just minutes earlier, and it is clearly detrimental to real-world socialization. When a cell phone ban was being debated in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), school board president Jackie Goldberg visited a school during lunch and was surprised by what she saw. She sat down with students hoping to talk to them, but said, “Everyone pulled out their phones” only to text each other. Partly because of this experience, LAUSD’s proposed ban on cell phones from schools for the entire day looks to be a more comprehensive and effective measure.
What’s more, studies in the UK and Norway have found that schools with door-to-door cell phone bans enjoyed far greater benefits than schools with less stringent policies. In the UK, schools with door-to-door cell phone bans performed one to two grades higher on the country’s national test, the GCSE. And in Norway, girls’ grade point averages and test scores improved the most at schools where cell phones were banned entirely or handed in at the start of the day. The Norwegian study also found massive benefits for girls’ mental health, including a 60% drop in the number of visits to specialists for mental health symptoms and illnesses, and a 29% drop in the number of visits to doctors for problems such as mental health symptoms and illnesses.
Cell phone bans in schools work, but for maximum effectiveness, schools should take the following steps, as outlined in a new EPPC memo released last week: 1) create distance between the phone and the student, 2) enforce consequences for violations, and 3) get parental understanding and support.
Schools try to keep students off their phones in a variety of ways. For example, they require that phones stay at home, be turned in to the office at the start of the day, or be locked in bags or lockers. When these approaches aren’t logistically possible, the next best option is a “never used, seen, or heard” policy, where students are allowed to keep their phones in their backpacks on the condition that they aren’t allowed to take them out at all during the school day, even between classes or during lunch. But ideally, phones should be not only out of sight but also out of students’ possession. A 2017 study from the University of Chicago found that “the mere presence of a smartphone can lead to ‘brain drain,’ as limited-capacity attention resources are used to prevent automatic attention to the phone and are thus unavailable for the task at hand.” This is consistent with real-world data from the UK and Norway, which showed much greater academic gains in schools with comprehensive bans.
Second, bans must be enforced diligently, ideally by school administrators rather than individual teachers. Aside from being less distracting, having students physically keep their phones away from them makes the ban easier because it takes the burden off individual teachers. Teachers can focus on teaching and students can focus on learning. In addition, violations must have consequences. In Orange County, Florida, the penalty for a first offense is confiscation, but repeat violations can result in detention or even suspension. When Timber Lake High School in Orange County first implemented a ban, there were hundreds of confiscations in the first few days and weeks, according to Principal Mark Wasko, but once students realized the rule was being enforced, confiscations dropped because students stopped pulling out their phones.
Third, schools should seek parental understanding when making changes to phone policies. Parents often fear that banning phones will prevent them from communicating with their child when they need to, such as to coordinate a pick-up or in an emergency. Schools can reassure parents that there are phones in classrooms that the office can call if a parent needs to contact a child, and that if a child needs to contact a parent, they can go to the office. As for emergencies, phones can make such situations even more unsafe by emitting lights or sounds to give away a location, or by serving as a distraction from running, hiding, or listening for emergency responders.
States are beginning to understand how destructive cell phones can be in schools and are taking action to remove them. Three states have now enacted bans on cell phone use during class time: Florida was the first state to pass such a law in 2023, and Indiana and Ohio followed in 2024. Most recently, the governor of Virginia issued an executive order directing executive branch officials to issue guidance on cell phone-free education policies for school districts to adopt. Some states have gone a step further. This summer, Louisiana and South Carolina announced bell-to-bell cell phone bans, banning cell phones from the entire school day. Governors Gavin Newsom (California) and Kathy Hochul (New York) have also expressed interest in enforcing bell-to-bell bans in the coming months.
There are a variety of ways states can enforce a ban and get creative with their policies. Florida, for example, also banned TikTok on school Wi-Fi and devices, South Carolina conditioned state funding on a ban on cell phones, and California’s bill leaves the details up to districts as long as they restrict or ban cell phone use. It’s also worth noting that the coalition to ban cell phones from schools is broad and bipartisan. Politicians as diverse as Governors Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom agree this is a big problem and are taking action, and bills to ban cell phones face minimal opposition in state legislatures. Banning cell phones from schools is popular, bipartisan, and the right thing to do.
In summary, states and school districts should take action to ban cell phones not just from class time but from the entire school day. A policy should physically keep students away from their cell phones as much as possible during the school day through bags or lockers and provide significant and consistent consequences for violations, enforced not only by individual teachers but also by school administrators. Finally, schools should explain the policy change and the reasons behind it to parents to secure their support and demonstrate how communication needs can be met without children using their cell phones. Districts and states should seek to establish school days as oases of learning and healthy socialization in an increasingly technology-saturated childhood.
Read more in our full EPPC memo here.
Matthew Malec is a research fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His work has appeared in National review, The Federalist, City Journaland other sales outlets.
