For social studies teacher Kimberly Bleier, the return of noisy hallways between classes at Concord High School in New Hampshire this year has come as a relief.
“Students are talking to each other in the cafeteria, in the hallways. You wouldn’t think that would be a good thing, but we’re enjoying that they’re just more plugged into what’s going on around them and less focused on the screen,” Bleier said, since the state’s digital device ban took effect in the 2025-26 school year. “Social interactions are coming back to some extent.”
New Hampshire is one of 40 states since 2023 that have enacted limits on students’ use of cellphones and other digital devices during school time. Teachers in states with the bans say while the policies help, it takes a schoolwide culture shift to help students adapt to phone-free campuses.
Teachers at the National Education Association’s annual Representative Assembly in Denver last week discussed educators’ role in weaning students off cellphones. The nation’s largest teachers’ union supports cellphone bans, arguing they contribute to student behavioral and mental health problems.
The Education Commission of the States reports that cellphone and other digital bans have ramped up in the last legislative year, even among states that already had some in place. Some 20 states passed new restrictions or expanded grades, times, and devices affected. Indiana and Utah, for example, extended their cell phone bans so that they cover breaks and lunchtime as well as instructional time.
Aaron Chapin, a a 5th grade teacher in the Stroudsburg Area school district in Pennsylvania, said he has had little pushback from students on his district’s move to ban cellphones. (The state legislature is in final bipartisan negotiations on a statewide cellphone ban for schools.)
“A lot of students realize that these phones are causing problems, whether it’s violence or mental health or just distractions in general,” Chapin said.
Pennsylvania schools that restricted cellphones this year ahead of the state ban, he said, coupled the new rules with student discussions about peer pressure and potential mental health issues. “In the schools that have already done it on their own before this legislation, it’s remarkable just how much it turns the school community around,” he said. “By the middle point of the year, there’s just a much different vibe, a much more positive atmosphere.”
Formal bans can help students avoid peer pressure to engage with social media, said Megan Tuttle, the president of the New Hampshire Education Association, the state teachers’ union. But simply removing cell phones from schools won’t automatically reengage students and correct poor social behaviors caused by focusing on screens, the teacher said.
Coupling a cellphone ban with SEL supports can lead to better outcomes
In New Hampshire and Illinois, both of which recently passed cellphone restrictions, teachers said students need more social-emotional instruction and opportunities to engage with their classmates in real time.
Bleier’s sociology class, for example, involves extensive group discussion and problem-solving, but she had reached a point where students struggled in those situations, she said. “I’ve been teaching for 30 years and I’ve never had such a struggle with concepts like the basic rules of this group discussion, the basic rules of teamwork. That’s something that we’ve definitely had to take a step back and reteach those skills.”
New Hampshire’s law, which extends to all personal digital devices, not just cellphones, requires an implementation review each year with the opportunity to update the law as technology changes.
“The hard part is going to be finding that balance of helping students ... to get used to technology and using it responsibly,” said Tuttle of the New Hampshire Education Association.
Teachers may also need to rethink their lesson plans if phone bans reveal underlying gaps in classroom technology, according to Karl Goeke, a secondary Spanish teacher and the head of the Illinois Education Association.
A decade ago, relatively few students or teachers used internet-connected phones in the classroom, Goeke said, but today, most students’ phones and watches have faster and more powerful internet capability than their school-issued Chromebooks.
“The unintended consequence of that was an over-reliance on cellular devices,” he said. “My students would prefer if we were doing something online, instead of using their Chromebooks to just use their phones—and that opens up the student to a whole host of distractions.”
Teachers in states that are implementing the bans said it’s important to consider which lessons might need to be adjusted to account for more limited technology access, such as outdoor geo-caching assignments.
In the end, Goeke said, teachers can’t rely on technology rules to keep students engaged. “Even if we have filters in place on a laptop, the students can work around them,” he said. “It’s up to us as teachers, as shapers of society to discuss what it means to use tech responsibly.”
