3 Steps to Help Educators Get Phones Out of Schools

Smartphones in schools are increasingly wreaking havoc on both the academic and social development of America’s children. They are distracting students from learning, inhibiting healthy socializing, and undermining student discipline in class and on campus. Teachers are frustrated, students are suffering, and parents are fighting against two powerful forces: curated algorithms designed to give their children constant dopamine hits, and age-old teenage peer pressure. 

Many schools and localities have recognized that phones undermine learning and discipline and have banned them during class time. This is a step in the right direction, but classroom policies alone aren’t sufficient. They put an exhausting burden on teachers for enforcement, and the result is that despite classroom prohibitions, many students are still accessing and being distracted by cellphones during class. 

Even when classroom bans are enforced, students can still access their phones during lunch or between classes. This can be an academic distraction, as students continue to think about what they saw on their phones just minutes earlier, and it is clearly detrimental to real-world socialization. When the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was debating a cellphone ban, School Board President Jackie Goldberg visited a school during lunch, and was startled by what she saw. She sat down with students hoping to talk but said “‘All of them took out their cellphones’” only to text each other. Partially due to this experience, LAUSD’s proposed ban removes phones from schools for the entire day, a more complete and effective policy.

Additionally, studies out of the UK and Norway have found that schools with a bell-to-bell phone ban saw far greater benefits than schools with more limited policies. In the UK, schools with a bell-to-bell ban performed 1-2 grades better on the country’s national test, the GCSE. And in Norway, girls’ GPAs and test scores increased most in schools where phones were completely banned or handed in at the start of the day. The Norway study also found massive mental health benefits for girls, including a 60% decline in the number of visits for psychological symptoms and diseases at specialist care, and a 29% decline in the number of visits with their doctor due to issues such as psychological symptoms and diseases. 

School phone bans work, but to be maximally effective, schools should pursue the following steps, as outlined in a new memo EPPC released last week: 1) Create distance between the phone and the student, 2) enforce consequences for violations, and 3) secure parental understanding and support.

Schools have sought to distance students from their phones in various ways, such as requiring phones to be left at home, having them turned in to the office at the start of the day, or using pouches or lockers to keep them sealed away. When these practices are not logistically possible, the next best option is a “never used, seen, or heard” policy, where students are allowed to keep phones in their backpacks on the condition they are not allowed to take them out at all during the school day, not even between classes or during lunch. But ideally, phones should not only be out of sight but out of student possession. A 2017 University of Chicago study found that “the mere presence of one’s smartphone may impose a ‘brain drain’ as limited-capacity attentional resources are recruited to inhibit automatic attention to one’s phone, and are thus unavailable for engaging with the task at hand.” This aligns with the real-world data from the UK and Norway that found much bigger academic boosts for schools with comprehensive bans. 

Second, bans must be diligently enforced, ideally by administration rather than solely by individual teachers. In addition to being less distracting, keeping phones physically away from students makes enforcing bans easier because it takes the enforcement onus off individual teachers. Teachers can focus on teaching, and students can focus on learning. Furthermore, violations must have consequences. In Orange County, Florida, the penalty for a first offense is confiscation, but it can escalate to detention or even suspension for repeated offenses. When Timber Lake High School in Orange County first implemented a ban, Principal Mark Wasko said there were hundreds of confiscations in the first days and weeks, but once students realized the policy was being enforced, confiscations dropped because students stopped taking their phones out.

Third, schools should seek parental understanding as they make changes to the phone policy. Parents often worry that if phones are banned, they will not be able to communicate with their child when needed, perhaps to coordinate a pick-up, or during an emergency. Schools can reassure parents that classrooms have phones the office can call if a parent needs to get in touch with a child, and that if a child needs to contact a parent they can go to the office. As for emergencies, phones may actually make such situations less safe by giving off light or sound to expose a location or serving as a distraction from running, hiding, or listening to first responders.

States are beginning to understand how destructive phones in schools can be and are acting to remove them. Three states have now passed bans on phone use during instructional time: Florida was the first to pass such a law in 2023 and Indiana and Ohio followed in 2024. Most recently, Virginia’s Governor issued an Executive Order directing executive branch officials to issue guidance on cellphone-free education policies for school districts to adopt. Some states have gone a step further. This summer, Louisiana and South Carolina both announced bell-to-bell phone bans, removing phones from the entire school day. Governors Gavin Newsom (California) and Kathy Hochul (New York) have also expressed interest in pursuing bell-to-bell bans in the coming months.

There are a variety of ways states can pursue a ban and get creative with their policies. For example, Florida also banned TikTok on school Wi-Fi and devices, South Carolina made state funding conditional on banning phones, and California’s proposed legislation leaves the specifics to districts so long as they limit or prohibit cellphone use. It’s also worth noting that the coalition to remove phones from schools is broad and bipartisan. Politicians as different as Governors Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom agree that this is a major issue and are taking action, and bills to ban phones face minimal opposition in state legislatures. Getting phones out of schools is popular, bipartisan, and the right thing to do. 

In summary, states and school districts should act to remove phones not only from instructional time but from the entire school day. As much as possible, a policy should physically distance students from their phones during the school day through pouches or lockers, and impose significant and consistent consequences for violations, enforced not solely by individual teachers but by the administration. Finally, schools should work to explain the policy change and rationale to parents to secure their support and demonstrate how communication needs can be met without children using their phones. Districts and states should seek to establish school days as oases of learning and healthy socialization in an increasingly tech-saturated childhood.

Read more in our full EPPC memo here. 

Matthew Malec is a Research Assistant at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His work has appeared in National Review, The Federalist, City Journal, and other outlets.