Restricting student cellphone use during school hours doesn’t appear to lift academic achievement, improve student attention, or boost attendance, at least in the short term, according to the first broad national study of phone bans by researchers at four universities.
The study examined schools that require students to place their phones in a Yondr pouch during the school day, one of the most restrictive ways to limit student cellphone use, according to Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University and one of the authors of the report.
Dee collaborated with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, and the University of Michigan in the analysis.
They compared outcomes at 4,600 schools using Yondr pouches to other schools across the country on a variety of metrics, including student and teacher surveys, test scores, and disciplinary data.
The researchers found “close to zero” impact on academic achievement from restricting student cellphone use by having kids put their phones in a Yondr pouch.
For high schoolers, researchers observed a small improvement in scores, particularly in math. The effect in middle schools was the opposite, a tiny negative impact.
Researchers also found “little evidence” that Yondr pouches had a meaningful impact on absenteeism or students’ perceptions of online bullying or their own ability to pay attention in class.
The study found that suspensions spiked by an average of 16% in the first year that schools began using Yondr pouches. But that bump was temporary. Disciplinary problems returned to typical levels after the first school year, researchers found.
At least 37 states and the District of Columbia require school districts to ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in schools, according to an Education Week tally. Some other states are either incentivizing or recommending local districts enact their own bans or restrictive policies.
Though the report’s big-picture takeaways don’t seem to support banning cellphones, policymakers and educators should take a closer look at the findings before ditching the restrictions, said Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.
“These early results are sobering, right? What we’re seeing is short-term disruption, disciplinary incidents go up, students’ subjective well-being declines. We’re not seeing any empirically appreciable effects overall on student test scores,” Dee said.
But that description doesn’t capture the whole picture, Dee added. “It would be easy to say ‘these aren’t working, we should move on.’ I think that would be a mistake, though.”
A meaningful understanding of the benefits of cellphone bans may take time to emerge
Data deeper in the report suggest that it is worthwhile to continue to study cellphone bans, particularly when it comes to the longer term impact, he said.
For instance, while student-reported well-being tended to dip in the first year the pouches are used, in subsequent years, it bounces back and even improves, Dee said.
Also notable: Schools that only recently implemented Yondr pouches saw slight increases in academic outcomes, Dee said.
That suggests the bans may be more effective as society increasingly focuses on the potential downsides of the overuse of cellphones—and technology in general.
“Everyone is more likely to see these phone bans as something that is very clearly in their self-interest,” Dee said.
What’s more, the pouches did lead to a significant decrease in student cellphone usage during class, the researchers found. The share of students using their phone in class for personal reasons plummeted from 61% to 13% after schools adopted Yondr pouches.
That’s evidence that “the Yondr program does precisely what we’ve designed it to do: limit student access to phones throughout the school day,” said a spokeswoman for the company in an email. “As the research continues, we expect the data to confirm the broader, long-term benefits of phone-free school environments.”
Dee sees lessons in the report for how educators should implement cellphone bans. For instance, schools should prepare for a potential uptick in suspensions the first year a policy is on the books, he said.
“My core concern is that casual readers will look at these results and say, ‘well, there was another thing we hoped would be helpful and wasn’t’ when, in fact, I see cause for persisting in trying to understand how to design and implement these reforms,” Dee said.
Educators see phone bans as beneficial, EdWeek Research Center survey finds
The study’s results largely contradict educators’ perceptions.
About two-thirds of district and school leaders and teachers reported that student cellphone restrictions had a positive impact on student learning, behavior, overall mental health and well-being, and engagement, according to an EdWeek Research Center nationally representative survey of 79 district leaders, 122 school leaders, and 395 teachers conducted in February and March.
Sterling Seemans, the principal of Springer Middle School in Wilmington, Del., said his school has seen significant improvements in school climate and discipline since deploying Yondr pouches last school year.
School leaders and teachers no longer have to spend their time policing student use of Snapchat or other social media sites or disciplining kids for taking an unauthorized photo of a classmate, he said.
There were a lot of “distractible behaviors that were going on due to cellphones that we now don’t have to waste our time investigating,” Seemans said. “Student conflict is down, and I know that teachers are thankful and often report positive improvements in classroom engagement and classroom environment.”
