There has been a wave of new state laws restricting students’ cellphone use in school, and that trend doesn’t appear to be slowing anytime soon as more states are introducing cellphone bills this year.
So, what does the policy landscape look like today? A new analysis brings it into focus.
North Dakota and Rhode Island have among the most stringent statewide restrictions on student cellphone use in schools, while lawmakers in Montana and South Dakota have yet to even introduce a proposal for any restrictions. Many states fall somewhere in between those extremes.
The analysis was led by the Institute for Families and Technology, a nonprofit that promotes digital safety and less screen time for kids, in partnership with other organizations focused on limiting children’s tech use.
The analysis examined policy specifics, such as when students are not allowed to use cellphones during the school day and where students must store their cellphones, among other factors. It graded states based on how comprehensive their cellphone requirements are, with bell-to-bell bans that require students to store their cellphones in inaccessible locations earning states an A grade.
That specific combination of requirements, said Lina Nealon, the director of strategic partnerships at the Institute for Families and Technology, is particularly beneficial.
“It’s boosting academic performance, it’s improving mental and physical health,” she said. “The increased teacher satisfaction to me is so huge [as well as] protecting students’ safety and privacy.”
North Dakota and Rhode Island received that A grade.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia received a B grade for banning cellphones for the entire school day but still allowing “accessible storage,” meaning students keep their cellphones in places where they can get to them easily, such as their lockers or backpacks. The eight states that ban cellphones during instructional time, but allow use between classes, during lunch, and at other times, received a C grade.
The nine states that required schools to enact a cellphone policy but didn’t specify what those policies should include received a D. Meanwhile, four states received an F for failing to pass a cellphone ban bill and two states received a 0 for never introducing a bill. An additional eight states have legislation pending but no restrictions yet on the books; they were graded incomplete.
Number of states putting in place cellphone restrictions continues to grow
This year, more states are looking to restrict students’ cellphone access during school. Some state lawmakers are introducing legislation in the hopes of passing a first-time law, while others are aiming to strengthen existing laws. It’s a continuation of a trend to crack down on students’ cellphone use out of concern that the devices are harming students’ learning and mental health.
There is growing momentum behind more restrictive, bell-to-bell policies, said Nealon.
“I think as more states are passing the legislation and implementing it, as more districts have had more time to have bell-to-bell policies, the evidence is piling up,” she said.
But one of the challenges with bans that allow students to keep their phones accessible is that they put a heavy burden on teachers to enforce the policy, Nealon said.
“They become the enforcers,” she said. “They take up valuable class time trying to police the phones.”
Do cellphone bans work?
But do cellphone bans improve students’ academic and mental health outcomes? Some early research is showing promising findings on the academic front.
A study that has not yet gone through the peer review process found that in a large Florida school district, a cellphone ban improved students’ test scores and attendance rates in the second year of the measure. However, in the first year, school suspensions spiked, disproportionately affecting Black students, before mostly falling back to pre-ban levels in the second year.
Early findings from an ongoing, large-scale national survey project led by psychologist Angela Duckworth show that cellphone policies that require students to store their phones in locked pouches or in lockers are linked to students paying better attention in class, according to teachers. (Educators can take the Phones in Focus survey here.)
Additional studies using survey data from single schools and districts are also finding that cellphone bans improve teacher satisfaction with their jobs.
However, there is less evidence that cellphone bans are having a positive effect on students’ mental health—at least not yet. That’s because the research hasn’t caught up with fast-moving policy developments, said Sharon Hoover, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and formerly a co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health.
But there is research showing that heavy cellphone use—and the social media platforms students access on them—are undermining kids’ mental and physical well-being, she emphasized.
For example, a study published in the journal Pediatrics in December found that kids who own a smartphone by age 12 have higher rates of depression, obesity, and poor sleep than peers who don’t have a smartphone.
“I think we have enough data for real serious intervention to be warranted at this point, and for schools to play a role in that,” Hoover said, “because it’s not just impacting kids at home. It’s actually impacting the primary mission of schools.”
However, cellphone bans are only the first step, Hoover said. Schools should also develop policies to facilitate communication with parents and invest in mental health supports and strengthening students’ social competencies.
“I don’t think we can ignore the mental health impacts that have already been established” through technology use, she said. “You can’t just put a cellphone ban in place. There are all these other things you need to do, including making sure you have a really robust mental health system that can recognize the impacts of social media and cellphone use and address them.”
