Inside the latest global research on school cellphone bans

“In the past decade, student achievement has stagnated or declined around the world as cellphones have become nearly ubiquitous Gen Z and Gen Alpha accessories. Educators from Florida to Sweden to Rio de Janeiro are responding with an increasingly popular tactic: restricting or banning cellphone use during the school day. But the first wave of rigorous research on those policies — including two major U.S. studies — do not point neatly in one direction. Some studies have found modest academic gains from cellphone restrictions. Others have found little to no effect on test scores, even when student phone use dropped sharply. Some studies suggest benefits for low-achieving students, others for girls, and still others for boys. In some places, attendance or student well-being improved. In others, they didn’t. The scientific process can be messy. Cultural differences may explain why the bans are more effective in some places than others. But almost any education reform will get different results in different places, even within a single country. And the current confusion may also stem from how difficult it is to study cellphone bans in the real world. Related: Cellphone bans can help kids learn — but Black students are suspended more as schools make the shift Ideally, researchers would randomly assign some students to surrender their phones while others kept them, and then measure the effect on academic performance — the equivalent of a clinical trial for an education policy. But those experiments are difficult to enforce in schools, and so far only one study , conducted among college students in India, has attempted a randomized controlled trial. It produced a notably strong improvement in course grades for lower achieving students. Instead, most studies rely on rougher real world comparisons that capture only partial effects of cellphone restrictions. A national study released this month by researchers at Stanford, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan analyzed more than 40,000 schools across the country using data from Yondr, a company that makes magnetic locking pouches for student cellphones. The researchers found that cellphone activity at schools dropped sharply after schools adopted the pouches. Cellphone “pings” from school grounds fell by 30 percent, and teachers reported far less nonacademic phone use in class. But the study found “close to zero” effects on test scores, attendance and online bullying, even three years after schools adopted the pouches. The researchers compared the Yondr schools to schools that had similar demographics and academic performance. At first glance, those findings appeared to conflict with a study of schools in Florida released last year, which found small academic gains a year after statewide cellphone restrictions took effect in 2023. The researchers behind that study, from the University of Rochester and RAND, compared schools where student cellphone use had historically been high with schools where phone use had already been relatively low before the statewide restrictions began. Their logic was that schools with heavier pre-ban cellphone use should experience a larger effect from the policy change. The national Yondr study, by contrast, largely compared schools using one particularly strict form of enforcement against schools that often already had softer cellphone restrictions in place. Some schools in the comparison group still required students to keep phones tucked away in backpacks or out of sight during class. In other words, the national study was largely comparing stricter restrictions against weaker ones while the Florida study was comparing schools with high versus low cellphone use before the ban. Related: IPads in kindergarten, YouTube videos at snack time: Parents are pushing back on screens in the early grades Even with the different methodologies and research questions, the researchers of both U.S. studies emphasized in interviews how similar their results actually were. The Florida study calculated that the academic gains, which materialized in the second year after the ban, were less than a percentile point, the equivalent of moving a student from the 50th percentile, dead in the middle, to the 51st percentile. In practical terms, the difference between a tiny gain and near-zero effects may not matter. Both studies also documented an initial increase in disciplinary incidents before behavior stabilized, and both found signs of nonacademic benefits, including improvements in school climate or student well-being. The broader international research, however, remains genuinely mixed. The first quantitative study of cellphone bans, published in England in 2016, found that cellphone restrictions improved exam scores primarily for low-achieving students. But a Swedish study in 2020 found no academic or behavioral benefits. The Swedish researchers speculated that their results might reflect the country’s long history of integrating computers into classrooms. In the 1970s, Sweden was an early European adopter of school technology, so students already relied heavily on laptops and other digital devices during lessons before the ubiquity of cellphones. A separate Swedish case study also found that students were often using phones between assignments rather than during instructional time. Related: Three lessons from rigorous research on education technology Since then, studies in Spain , Norway , Brazil and India have all found academic benefits from cellphone restrictions, though the gains varied widely. The randomized trial in India produced some of the largest academic gains in the literature. Researchers there randomly assigned college students by field of study to store their phones in wooden cubbies before class while others kept them. Unlike in many American universities, there weren’t many laptops or tablets in these Indian classrooms. Removing phones, in effect, may have removed all digital distractions from the classroom. One possible explanation for the disappointing U.S. results is that students are still surrounded by digital distractions even when phones are gone. David Figlio, the lead author of the Florida study, said students often shift to texting, gaming or social media on laptops and tablets that remain permitted in school. Another possibility is that the academic harms of modern technology aren’t primarily caused by classroom distraction itself. Smartphones may influence sleep, study habits, sustained attention and reading stamina outside school hours in ways that a seven-hour school day ban cannot easily reverse. “Cellphones still could be having a large effect on the diminishment of student achievement, even if cellphone bans are not turning this around by a tremendous amount,” Figlio said. “Students could be cutting corners on their studying, or staying up very late and getting less sleep.” Tom Dee, a Stanford education researcher who led the national study, said the “sobering” findings in this country should not discourage schools from continuing to experiment with cellphone policies. “We should just continue to iterate, which is something we do too infrequently in education policy,” Dee said. “Let’s not move on to the next fad or the next flavor of the day. This issue is too important for us not to stay in the fight to try to figure out how to manage our children’s use of digital devices responsibly.” Cellphone ban studies Location and link to paper Students Study design Outcome United States ( 2026 draft ) Middle and high school Compared changes in student outcomes at schools that required students to use locked pouches with similar schools that didn’t. Staggered timing of cellphone restrictions. Well-being went up in later years, but there were near zero improvements in test scores even after three years. High schoolers saw a slight improvement in test scores, but middle schoolers experienced negative academic effects. Florida school district ( 2025 draft ) Elementary, middle and high school Compared students at schools that had high cellphone usage against those that had low cellphone usage after Florida’s statewide restrictions went into effect in 2023. Measures the effects of the ban across schools with different starting amounts of cellphone use. Disciplinary incidents rose initially, then subsided. Test scores improved slightly in year two, especially for boys. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ( 2026 draft ) Middle school Compared schools that previously permitted cellphones against those that had strict cellphone restrictions after municipal ban on cellphones in school went into effect in 2023. Measures the effects of the ban across schools with different starting amounts of cellphone use. Small increase in test scores. India ( 2025 draft ) University Compared students who had been randomly assigned to relinquish their phones before each lectuInre with students that didn’t have restrictions. This randomized controlled trial was conducted at 10 different higher-education institutes (similar to universities) involving 17,000 students in Odisha, a large state in eastern India. Higher grades, particularly for lower performing students. Norway ( 2026 ) Middle school Compared student outcomes before and after schools decided to adopt cellphone bans. Staggered timing of bans. Only girls experienced improved grades and better mental health. Spain ( 2022 ) Middle school Compared changes in test scores in two regions that banned cellphones in school in 2015 with similar regions that didn’t ban phones. Higher test scores and reductions in bullying. Sweden ( 2020 ) High school Compared student performance in schools that restricted cellphones with those that didn’t. No benefits for students. England ( 2016 ) High school Compared student performance in schools that restricted cellphones with those that didn’t. Higher exam scores were concentrated among low-achieving students. No impact on high achievers. Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org . This story about whether school cellphone bans are effective was produced by The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters . The post Inside the latest global research on school cellphone bans appeared first on The Hechinger Report .

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