Tim Callahan’s view on cellphones has changed over the course of his career as an educator.
When he was the technology director for the North Adams district in Massachusetts, Callahan said he never would have supported a ban on cellphones.
But after six years as a high school principal and now the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Callahan has seen how cellphones have stunted students’ social skills and hurt their mental health. He now believes more restrictions on young people’s cellphone use are needed.
“I think it’s a huge problem,” Callahan said. “I think we’ll look back on cellphones the way we look back on cigarette smoking, and say, ‘I can’t believe that was allowed.’”
Callahan may soon get his wish, as could educators in other states who share his views about cellphones in schools.
Massachusetts’ attorney general is championing a bill this legislative session that would ban students from using their cellphones and other personal electronic devices during the school day. That makes Massachusetts one of more than two dozen states where lawmakers are considering legislation this spring that would restrict students’ cellphone use, according to a tally by Education Week. (Governors in another four states have also called for additional restrictions.)
The deluge of bills shows how quickly momentum behind state-level policies to address student cellphone use has built up since last May, when Florida became the first state to ban cellphones in classrooms.
Some bills—such as one in Arkansas and one in Hawaii—would create a statewide policy restricting student cellphone use during the school day that districts would be required to follow. Other bills, such as one in Colorado, would require districts to craft their own policies restricting students’ cellphone use. Some bills also include funding to help schools implement cellphone bans, as is the case in Arizona.
Currently, at least 19 states have laws or policies that ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in schools statewide or recommend local districts enact their own bans or restrictive policies, according to an Education Week analysis. Some states, such as Florida and Louisiana, bar students from using cellphones throughout the entire school day, with some exceptions. Other states require or recommend that districts create their own cellphone policies to limit—if not completely restrict—students access to cellphones.
Districts have met these directives in a variety of ways. For example, some districts require students to lock up their phones in specially designed pouches at the start of the school day. Others allow students to use their cellphones between classes and during lunch periods, but they must be stowed away during class time. Still others have left cellphone policies up to teachers to create for their individual classrooms.
While many state policymakers and educators are responding to growing public concern over how cellphones affect student learning and behavior, some experts warn that these policies are getting ahead of the research.
“The research isn’t there yet to say if it’s a good idea or not,” said Adam McCready, an assistant professor in residence at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Educational Leadership.
Most educators say cellphones are huge distractions to learning and want them out of classrooms
Nearly all 13- to 17-year-olds (95 percent) have access to a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center. On average, teens receive 237 notifications on their cellphones per day, and kids spend a median of 43 minutes on their phones during school hours, or the equivalent of about one class period, according to a 2023 study by Common Sense Media that tracked the cellphone usage of 200 11- to 17-year-olds. Those distractions hurt students’ ability to learn, research has found.
Many educators are tired of those distractions taking students’ focus away from learning. They’re also concerned about the devices’ effects on young people’s mental and social-emotional health.
That’s why most educators would welcome more restrictions on student cellphone use. An August 2024 survey from the National Education Association found that 90 percent of teachers support policies prohibiting student use of cellphones or other personal devices at school during instructional time.
“Our leaders—our local, state, and national leaders—really would help all of us by providing some regulations and some legal guidance around these really dangerous tools,” said Callahan from the North Adams district.
But while cellphone restrictions may be welcomed by most educators, they are not necessarily popular with all parents. Sixty-five percent of parents of K-12 students polled by the Pew Research Center in the fall said they support banning middle and high school students from accessing their cellphones during class time, and 35 percent favor banning phones for the entire school day.
The main reason many parents do not support cellphone bans, according to a separate poll by the National Parents Union, is because they want to be able to reach their children in case of an emergency.
Cellphone restrictions are not popular with most students, but some kids are more receptive to the rules, knowing firsthand the negative effects of overuse of the devices.
“Cellphone bans are generally a good idea,” said Evan Keith, 18, a senior at Forest Hills High School in Marshville, N.C. Cellphones have played a role in cyberbullying, they have hindered students’ learning, and students have become over-reliant on the devices, he said.
“But the way our communities enforce [a restriction] will play a vital role in how students take it,” and whether the rules have a positive effect on student learning and behavior, Evan said.
There isn’t much research yet showing cellphone restrictions in schools work
Many educators report meaningful changes for the good in their schools after banning cellphones: kids start talking to one another again in the lunchroom, discipline problems drop, student behavior improves. Beyond those anecdotes, there’s very little research on how effective cellphone restriction policies are in practice.
The findings from the research that has been done so far, much of it in other countries, aren’t a slam dunk for cellphone bans. Of the studies that found that restrictions improved students’ academic performance or mental health, the effects were small. Other studies have found no effects.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be benefits to cellphone bans, said McCready, who is studying cellphone policies in schools in Connecticut. But, he emphasized, it’s not clear what they are yet.
“I think legislators are doing this because the public narrative is that social media and cellphone use is bad and have detrimental effects,” he said. “One thing legislators should know is that research findings are not as confident as the public narrative is. Simply taking away devices doesn’t lead to improved wellbeing outcomes.”
One reason, said McCready, is that students might find ways to continue doing basically the same things they were doing on their cellphones during class, such as messaging one another through Google Docs on their school-issued laptops. Another possible reason is that bans alone aren’t effective without education on healthy technology habits, he said.
Cellphone bans might also have drawbacks.
State-level policies may not offer solutions to the unique challenges individual schools face in addressing student cellphone use, said Lucía Magis-Weinberg, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington.
“I think it’s important that a lot of districts retain independence” in crafting their policies, she said. “I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all type of legislation.”
For example, she said, in a school community where students may have to travel longer distances to and from school, or where a school doesn’t offer transportation, parents may want their children to have access to their phones to arrange rides and keep tabs on their whereabouts.
“The people closest to the parents—the students, the community, the staff members—are best equipped to know what’s appropriate and what’s favored by the community,” said Eric Fox, an assistant principal at Jenks High School in Jenks, Okla.
Strict bans might also mean that students—especially high schoolers—miss out on opportunities to learn how to manage their device use in more responsible ways, say some educators and researchers. That’s a critical skill for them to master in school before they go to college or into the workforce, where professors and bosses will expect them to possess those skills.
Cellphone bans without an educational component may fall flat
Discussions about young people’s cellphone use shouldn’t start and end with restrictions, said Fox. Students also need education around appropriate and inappropriate uses of technology and how to manage their screen time.
“We can’t just take something away without giving them tools and strategies that they can employ to deal with anxiety that comes up, or to deal with more interaction socially with other students, or how to navigate conflict and relationships without technology,” Fox said.
Students need to learn these lessons starting as early as kindergarten, said both McCready and Magis-Weingberg.
“These conversations need to happen repeatedly and respond to the developmental stages where children and adolescents are,” said Magis-Weinberg.
Students also need to learn how to multitask productively because, not only is it unavoidable in our modern world, but not all multitasking is equal, said Zheng Yan, a professor of education and developmental psychology at the University of Albany, State University of New York.
Teachers can encourage productive multitasking skills by asking students to use their phones to look up a term during a lecture or a visualization of a math concept they are trying to grasp, Yan said. That kind of multitasking supports learning.
However, if a student is doing two tasks that are in competition with one another, that will get in the way of their learning, said Yan.
“For example, a teacher is teaching about multiplication, and then one student takes out the phone to say, ‘hello, where is the birthday party going on?’ [Those] two things are very different,” he said. “They all require attention, and our attention is limited, therefore this will hurt the math learning.”
Another important aspect of education is modeling, said McCready. Students learn positive cellphone habits by watching the adults around them, including their teachers, coaches, and principals. Educators need to make sure they are setting a good example, he said.
