Why I changed my mind: The case for banning cell phones in schools
Like a lot of teachers, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the past couple of years thinking about how to manage cell phones in my classroom. The school I work in has had various policies over the years and varying levels of success in getting kids to put their phones away. Until recently, I’ve been of the mind that teachers should have the freedom and agency to figure out what works best in their classrooms. As a teacher of high school seniors, I have chosen not to have that fight and, instead, have tried to help my students use their phones productively. For example, I have asked them to look at the Instagram account of an author we are reading, take a picture of notes or new vocabulary words or find a photo in their camera roll that they want to write about. When we are doing work on critical topics, I have asked them to search for credible information in the apps they use—helping then to become more aware of algorithms and media literacy, while broadening their perspectives and critical understanding of the world.
And more pragmatically, I have used my students’ desire to be on their phones as a way to build trust and community in my classroom and to help them cultivate respectful phone habits. My deal with my students (explained on day 1) has been straightforward: I am going to treat you as adults and not ask you to give up your phone at the beginning of the class and you are going to respect what we’re doing here by being actively engaged in my class for the entire period. If things go well and we have time, I will thank you for your attention and give you permission to be on your phone for a few minutes at the end of class. If you break our agreement, I will ask you to hand over your phone for that period. If you do it again that week, I will write up a disciplinary referral and send you and your phone to the powers that be. If the problem persists, every student in the class will be required to put their phones in the phone caddy every day at the beginning of class. To date, this arrangement between my students and me has worked pretty well and honestly, I think I only had to write one or two students up all year for not adhering to our deal.
Lately, though, I’ve been reading more and more about a growing national trend to ban cell phones in schools altogether. According to Education Week, as of this month, at least 11 states have passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict students’ use of cell phones in schools statewide or recommended local districts enact their own bans or restrictive policies. The more I read, the more I realize that these bans and restrictions really are happening everywhere—even in my own district—and in a country that agrees on very little, there seems to be broad and absolute consensus that cell phones do not belong in schools. As a result, school administrators and state officials across the country are taking next steps to make sure that this is more than a sound educational idea—it is the law of the land.
Of course, this has me reflecting on my own thinking and practice.
And, what I’ve come to is this: The research really is in and it’s not ambivalent. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 72% of high school teachers report cell phone distractions as a major problem in their classrooms. Common Sense Media found that 97% of students use their phones during the school day for a median time of 43 minutes. Numerous studies suggest a significant link between excessive smartphone use and increased anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues, leading the Surgeon General to issue an official warning about kids and social media and urgently calling on schools to create reasonable guardrails for the use of smartphones in school settings.
Additionally, there is a growing body of research documenting the connection between bullying and social media. As anyone who works in a middle school or high school can attest, many—if not most—bullying cases begin or escalate online. According to an article in the May, 2024 issue of Education Week, research shows that early adolescents “are particularly susceptible to the seductive risks tied to cellphone use: Think cyberbullying, catfishing (creating a fake identity online to mislead someone), and straight-up addiction.” Educators and lawmakers agree that strong smart phone policies in schools can help curb some of these problems.
Of course these are all important reasons to ban or limit cell phones in the classroom, but the information that I found most compelling and persuasive has more to do with attention and engagement. Quite simply, students can not learn new information while they are glancing at their phone or their phone is vibrating in their pocket. Michael Rich, a professor and researcher at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health explains: “The human brain is incapable of thinking of more than one thing at a time,” he said. “And so what we think of as multitasking is actually rapid-switch-tasking. And the problem with that is that switch-tasking may cover a lot of ground in terms of different subjects, but it doesn’t go deeply into any of them.”
This really shouldn’t be surprising—but it is—and not only does it change the way I think about my students’ use of their cell phones, it changes the way I think about my own.
Other studies corroborate this idea. In 2023, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) published their Global Education Monitoring Report, a broad research review, whose call to action is straightforward: Schools need to impose strict bans on smartphones at school for students of all ages. The report insists that the data are unequivocal and show that countries that enforce restrictions on smart phone use in schools see improved academic performance and less bullying. One study looked at education at all levels in 14 countries and found that the presence of smartphones, even out of sight, were a significant source of distraction that led to diminished capacity for learning. Another study found that it can take students up to 20 minutes to refocus on what they were learning once distracted by a vibrating phone.
For me, this mountain of evidence is impossible to ignore and really, has forced me to acknowledge that my past practice is no longer useful to me or helpful to my students. I realize that this news is probably not what my students want to hear and I suspect that it’s not going to be easy enforcing these new rules with consistency and integrity. As a teacher who prides herself on being flexible and responsive, I know I will have to be uncharacteristically strict and absolute during these first few weeks of school. I also know that kids adjust and are more apt to be totally on board if I am totally on board. And, like many new policies with students, after an initial period of adjustment, they will actually change their behavior and many will begin to recognize and appreciate the benefits of a phone-free learning zone.
Parents, on the other hand, might be slower to embrace these changes. In most of the research on this topic, parents, as a group, are firmly against total cell phone bans in schools and the reason has nothing to do with anything I’ve written about here. They have other very real concerns and as I was pouring over article after article about this topic, I was struck—and a little heartbroken—by the most commonly cited reason parents say they need to be able to communicate with their children throughout the school day. A reason that I probably don’t even have to name here…
But that’s a conversation for another time.
