With concerns about teenagers spending too much time on their phones, educators and parents have pushed to keep them out of classrooms. Florida adopted the first U.S. school cellphone ban in May 2023. Over the past few years, nearly half of the country’s states have passed such “bell-to-bell” laws, which prohibit students from accessing their cellphones during the school day.

We spoke with Professor of Public Policy Paul Peterson, an expert in education policy who has served as senior editor of the journal Education Next, about why districts are adopting cellphone bans and what we have learned so far.

Q: Where does the push to ban cellphones from schools stand now?

So, 22 states and Washington D.C. have adopted “bell-to-bell” cellphone bans, which means that once the school day starts, there should be no usage of cellphones at school. That applies to elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools—so this is not a college ruling.

Another 19 states have more flexible laws that allow school districts to do this but don’t mandate it. This is a very widespread practice, and one that’s endorsed by school principals: 70% of school principals, and 81% of those who are responsible for middle and high schools, think that cellphone bans should be enacted because they have a positive impact on the climate of the school.

This is not a controversial issue along partisan lines. There is widespread consensus that this is something that should be done, given the decline in student performance in our educational system over the last 15 years or so. A lot of people have attributed that decline to cellphones, so it’s a pretty widespread feeling.

Q: And what are the main goals of these bans?

There’s a concern about the social and emotional problems that adolescents in particular are facing, and these are accentuated by the isolating effects of cellphone usage. Students spend all their time looking at their phones instead of at their friends, and as a result, they have fewer friends and less personal contact with others.

There’s also been rising absenteeism. School officials are asking why kids aren’t coming to school and thinking that cellphones probably have had something to do with that. 

There’s also a feeling that it’s having an adverse effect on learning. Scores have gone down on tests and students seem unable to keep up with the assignments expected by teachers.

Those are some of the main reasons, and the main goals of the ban are to reverse these trends.

Q: How does cellphone use tie into teenagers’ mental health? 

There’s been a rising sense that teenagers feel isolated. They’re reporting many more mental health events at school, and there’s a feeling that there’s a lot of depression among adolescents today. Maybe other factors are driving that as well, but certainly cellphones have been mentioned as a factor that contributes to these social trends.

Q: How have people responded to the bans so far? 

Well, students don’t like to have their cellphones taken away from them—at least that’s what they say if you ask them. Nobody wants to be told what to do, and they’re being told what to do here.

Among teachers, I don’t think there’s much opposition. Of course, there’s always a challenge for teachers because they have to enforce that rule, and that probably creates a demand on the teaching staff. 

“This is not a controversial issue along partisan lines. There is widespread consensus that this is something that should be done, given the decline in student performance in our educational system over the last 15 years or so.”
Paul Peterson

Among teachers, I don’t think there’s much opposition. Of course, there’s always a challenge for teachers because they have to enforce that rule, and that probably creates a demand on the teaching staff. 

They have these pouches now that students put their cellphones in at the beginning of the day, and they can get them back at the end of the day when the lock is released. There are a variety of ways to facilitate enforcement of the ban, so it’s hard to generalize implementation.

Q: A recent article in Education Next looks at evidence from the first U.S. school cellphone ban in Florida, which was adopted in May 2023. What have we learned from this study?

These bans are fairly recent, and there's always a passage of time between when something happens and when it can be studied. 

But in this case in Florida, a research team was able to assess what happens as a result of cellphone bans over a three-year period. The first year is before passage of the ban, the second period is the first year after, and the third is the second year after. So we’re really only looking at two years after the ban, but you have that three-year window.

What they found in the case of Florida is that the immediate effects are more complex, in the sense that learning improved—but so did suspension rates. Kids were getting suspended from school because they were disobeying. The suggestion is that students were not necessarily acquiescing to the requests of the teacher and were therefore being suspended.

That happened in the first year. But it doesn’t happen in the second year—suspension rates go back down to the same level they were before cellphones were banned, and learning continues to improve. So the story is: the benefits persist into the second year, whereas the negative side fades out.

Q: Have other researchers explored this same issue? 

There’s another recent study that’s not covered in the Ed Next article and is a nationwide study. There are some differences between the two, but they overlap a lot. They both find this immediate negative effect on suspension rates, and both find some positive benefits in the second year. 

We’re seeing bigger benefits in the Florida example than nationwide. I think that’s mainly because, in that Florida district, you’re probably getting more uniform implementation of the policy, whereas the nationwide study draws from around 5,000 schools scattered across the country, and who knows how it was implemented or whether people actually did what they said they were doing.

So, I would say the two studies probably point in the same direction: there are some learning benefits over the long run, some benefits for absenteeism rates over the long run—but not in the initial period. And as for the social-emotional side, we know less about that because we can’t observe it as easily through the data we have at present.

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Photo by Bertrand Guay / AFP via Getty Images

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