How strict are U.S. schools on banning phones and does that leave any lasting impact?

America’s push to limit screentime in the classroom is reaching new heights. As of this spring, about 37 states have moved to restrict or ban phones entirely in schools. On the other spectrum, districts are opting for “bell-to-bell” bans which mandate students to keep their devices locked in magnetic pouches for the entire day. 

Public systems are spending real money to make sure this materializes too: New York City schools alone allocated $29 million toward phone pouches, followed by Los Angeles committing another $5.2 million.

This push stems from a growing frustration among educators as per a Pew research survey one in three teachers considered student cellphone distraction a “major problem,” and among teachers that number is at staggering 72%. As for the public, they are vouching for this shift with 74% of Americans now supporting classroom phone bans for middle and high schools, up from 68% just months earlier.

In one sense, the bans are working exactly as intended. A national study on school phone restrictions spearheaded by researchers from Stanford, Duke, Michigan, and Pennsylvania found that students using phones in class for personal reasons plunged from 61% to 13% after the onset of strict pouch policies were introduced. GPS tracking data also showed a roughly 30% decline in device activity during school hours by the third year of implementation.

The catch is that the academic results of the students aren’t getting any better. Researchers found that standardized test-score improvements were “consistently close to zero,” followed by little to no substantive change in attendance, attention in the classroom, or online bullying either. Albeit the situation was better for high schools with slight gains in math performance, conversely middle schools were dealing with modest declines.

Instead, the effects of this are manifesting in the behavior of students, and it's not entirely always positive. Suspension rates increased by roughly 16% within the first year after the introduction of bans as schools enforced the new rules and students adjusted. Student well-being also initially dipped before rebounding later. By the third year, however, researchers found well-being levels had climbed above baseline levels, while disciplinary rates were normalized.