Schools don't want kids on cellphones. Is banning them the solution?

In Flint, Michigan, students will return to class after winter break with a new rule in place: Their cellphones (and hoodies) will be banned from school, largely in the name of safety.

“When we think about our scores, when we think about all of the things that are surrounding the hurt and the pain that our scholars are feeling, cellphones are a big deal,” Superintendent Kevelin Jones II said ahead of the Flint school board’s vote Dec. 13. “It’s a big part of the bullying. It's a big part of the reason why our scholars are not on task in class.”

The move is part of a growing – and familiar – trend. Such bans, which have been around with fluctuating popularity since the devices first cropped up, are back in the United States and around the world. Guidance recommending a ban took effect in England in October after the establishment of similar policies in recent years in Finland and France. A rule in the Netherlands is set to take effect this month.

In many cases, the rules are stricter than ever, prohibiting the devices at all times and in all locations throughout the school day and accompanied by severe consequences for rulebreakers. In Florida, for example, after the adoption this past summer of a statewide ban on cellphones during instructional time, at least one district took the rule further: In Orange County in the center of the state, use of cellphones is prohibited during lunch and in between class periods.

Tweens and teens have mixed reviews of the new restrictions, as do their parents. Proponents cite the benefits of phone-free schools for young people’s academic achievement and social-emotional well-being. At time when hundreds of districts have sued or considered suing social media companies over accusations that the platforms damage kids’ mental health, some students acknowledge the positive effect the rules have had on school climate: Kids are talking face to face again. They’re playing on the playground instead of on their screens.

But it’s hard to design and enforce an effective policy when kids are so glued to their devices and learning is so dependent on technology – when parents are so concerned, rightfully so, about school safety. Are strict bans the best way to curb the potential damage caused by cellphones?

2023 saw the return of school cellphone bans

Rules about cellphones range from students having unrestricted access to their devices all day long to locking them in specialty pouches upon entering the school and unlocking them on the way out.

Bans on devices are hardly a new phenomenon: New York City public schools banned communication devices – then namely beepers – in 1988. Enforcement was, as it often is now, a patchwork, however. Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg responded by sending metal detectors to schools at random starting in 2006. Former Mayor Bill DeBlasio ended the ban in 2015.

In fact, according to federal data, about 90% of school districts banned cellphones in the 2009-10 school year, and that fell to 65% by 2015. It ticked up to about 78% during the first school year disrupted by the pandemic, with the return to in-person classes, complete with adolescents glued to their screens, leading to a wave of new restrictions.

Back in Michigan, Flint schools used to prohibit the devices but then opened up to them as technology and learning circumstances changed, officials noted at the December meeting. Many schools nationally had moved away from bans to avoid penalizing kids who rely on them for their school work. Then came the chronic distractions and fighting, threats and filming of violence.

Now, personal electronic devices will be prohibited on school property and school buses during the school day. Some worried the policy was Draconian and patronizing. Yet the harm that comes from rampant cellphone use, the Flint school board concluded, outweighs the harm of banning them from campus. The district did not respond to requests for comment during the holiday break.

Teens, advocates: Bans are impractical, unfair

Schools in the nation’s capital lack a universal rule on access to cellphones, according to the school district. That leads to inconsistent policies and punishment as far as who is disciplined and when, said Shahad Mohieldin, a program coordinator for the Young Women’s Project, which helps develop leadership skills in teens at 22 schools in Washington.

Schools may intend to target apps or curb recording of video at school, but for the teens Mohieldin works with, the phone is a necessity to communicate with a parent who needs them to pick up a younger sibling from school or has another pressing concern. “They’re not calling the main office,” she said.

“Phones are a part of everyday life,” said Mohieldin, who started a Change.org petition challenging a ban at several D.C. schools. “I understand they can be distracting,” but students use their phones as calculators, to play music to stay focused or even connect with a therapist during the school day.

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And the most restrictive policies, Mohieldin said she has observed, have been installed at schools where a large majority of students are Black or brown or from low-income families. One school has reversed its policy since her April petition.

The imbalances in discipline are a major driving force behind the nearly 1,000 petitions on Change.org by students and parents in protest of cellphone bans at their schools. The aggrieved teens also cite everything from studies showing music improves focus to possible family emergencies and school shootings.

Sophomore Brennan Stephens is among those who wants cellphones back on his campus. Barbe High School in Lake Charles, Louisiana, restricts cellphone use from 7:43 a.m. to 3:06 p.m., he said in an email. “If we are caught using them, it’s a major infraction.” That means in-school suspension or spending a day suspended from school altogether.

Stephens, 15, is adamant that access to his phone is a necessity for him and his classmates. “We need it because what if something happened at school? And what if we needed to be in direct contact with someone in case of medical emergencies?” He described a classmate whose mother has epilepsy and needs constant contact in case she experiences a seizure. What, Stephens wondered, is that kid supposed to do if that happens and they can’t be reached?

Active shooter situations are another concern that has come up frequently in debates over cellphone bans, though some experts say students aren't necessarily any safer with their devices on them.

More school districts consider suing social media companies

Proponents of bans say the inconvenient truth is that today’s teens may be ill-equipped to manage cellphone use on their own. A growing body of research frames young people’s usage of cellphones, and specifically social media, as addictive and psychologically deleterious, correlating with rising rates of depression and anxiety. Last year, the U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory warning of the effects of social media on mental health in young people.

Lawyer William Shinoff has lined up hundreds of school districts – about 820 and counting from school systems in 32 states – that are interested in suing social media companies over their effects on students. The companies have often cited federal law stating they are not responsible for the content on their platforms, but Shinoff highlighted a separate lawsuit brought by more than 40 states against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, accusing the company of purposefully engineering its platforms to be addictive. The school district suits seek greater parental controls and better response when content about a student that can cause harm is posted.

Shinoff also hopes the litigation forces social media companies to change. “What you’ll hear from these companies is: ‘Blame the parents. Take their cellphones away, or iPads,’” he said. “Everyone’s realistic: Social media’s going nowhere. We want to make sure it’s safe for the children.”

But change through litigation takes time. For many districts, banning cellphones is more immediate means of restricting social media usage in the interest of students’ mental health.

Do cellphones interfere with learning?

Also fueling the 2023 trend toward cellphone restrictions is evidence of its harmful effects on academics. The latest results of an international standardized assessment point to significant rates of students worldwide being distracted by their own or their peers’ devices, and find that students are less likely to report distractions when there are bans.

Even turned off but in a student’s pocket or backpack, cellphones can be detrimental, said Kathleen McNutt, the head of Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, Virginia, where student access to their devices is restricted. “They feel that beep and their attention span is shot,” McNutt said. She has counseled the staff to put their phones away, too.

“Let’s not be walking through the hallways and texting. We are not Jesus for one another if we’re looking at our phone.”

One recent Common Sense Media analysis of a small group of adolescents found they received nearly 240 cellphone notifications over the course of the day, a fourth of them during school.

And those distractions take up so much of students’ time and mental energy that they often stall learning. A body of research backs this up. A 2016 study of schools in England, for example, showed banning cellphones can have academic benefits, particularly for students who struggle in school. The body of research has grown since then, with much of the literature suggesting such policies correlate with improved student achievement.

“There’s almost a consensus that mobile phones are hurtful” to children’s learning, said Louis-Philippe Beland, an economics professor at Canada’s Carleton University who co-wrote the study.

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High-achieving students tend to do well in school no matter what, Beland said. But lower-achieving ones are more likely to get distracted, which makes them more susceptible to the detrimental effects of cellphones in the classroom.

A host of other studies, including from Belgium, Spain and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, also show that banning mobile phones from schools improves academic performance, especially for low-performing students.

Against that backdrop, a United Nations report from last July concluded by recommending a global ban on cellphones in schools. Around the world, almost 1 in 4 countries have introduced such bans in laws or policies. Specifically, 13% of countries have laws and 14% have policies that ban mobile phones.

How to discipline kids over cellphone use

Yet the international data came with caveats. Across countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 30% of students in schools with cellphone bans report using their phones several times a day. The lack of consistent enforcement may then fuel unhealthy phone habits outside the school day. “Students in schools with cell phone bans might not have adequate opportunities to develop self-directed strategies for using cell phones,” an OECD report notes.

Todd Chandler has noticed improvements in his students’ mental health and social interactions since implementing a strict cellphone ban this school year at Luxemburg-Casco Middle School near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Students have to keep their devices in their lockers from first to last bell.

Today’s middle schoolers, he noted, were born sometime between 2009 and 2011, around the same time smartphones were cropping up and exploding in popularity. “The students we serve right now have spent their entire lives with the ability to have that kind of personal technology,” Chandler said.

The school has experimented with different cellphone policies over the years, including a red zone, green zone model in which kids can use their devices in certain campus locations. The bathrooms and locker rooms were obvious red zones, and teachers could also designate their classrooms as such if they chose.

But the lack of consistency made it difficult to enforce and apply in an effective way, Chandler said, and the increase in cellphone problems in recent years made it clear for the school community that a stricter rule was needed. The strict rules, however, are matched with education and reasonable expectations, he said.

Luxemburg-Casco takes a five-step approach to disciplining kids over cellphone infractions, for example, starting with a visit to the school office, followed by a chat with the family and ending, after repeated offenses, with regular check-ins with the office. Students get lessons in P.E. class on the mental health and academic consequences of being glued to screens and social media. That includes watching “Screenagers,” the documentary that helped convince him of the need for a more restrictive policy and that spearheads the “Away for the Day” campaign.

‘People are talking a lot more’

The early results have been promising, he said. Not only do students seem more engaged and connected with one another, they also seem to have acclimated to the rule. On Day 1, the school had to confiscate 10 or so devices, according to Chandler; by Day 2, it had gone down to six devices. And ever since, the daily numbers have been nominal if not zero.

“It seems as though the kids are feeling some of the positive effects of it,” he said. “And they seem to be communicating with each other more directly in places like the cafeteria during lunchtime.”

Parents have also embraced the change: About 80% have supported it in surveys. One of families’ most common concerns was safety – what happens in, for example, an active shooter situation?

This was one of Chandler’s biggest question marks, too. But after consulting with local law enforcement, the school concluded allowing students to have cellphones on them wouldn’t necessarily make them safer. Too many cellphone calls can clog up lines in an emergency situation; kids can become distracted and less alert. Classrooms also come equipped with their own phones, and teachers are allowed to keep their devices with them as well.

“It’s a big change for people,” said Owen Mears, 14, an eighth grader. He said it hasn’t affected him much, but “some people struggle with it.”

Fellow eighth grader Grant Seering, also 14, said he has found the school climate is much friendlier without classmates glued to their phones.

“People are talking a lot more, even with teachers. (It’s) a more fun atmosphere here,” he said. “You have to do other things, like actually talk to your friends.”

Contact Alia Wong at (202) 507-2256 or [email protected]. Follow her on X at @aliaemily.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No cellphones in school: Is a ban the answer to keeping kids focused?