Phone bans in schools show mixed results, study finds

What's happened

A National Bureau of Economic Research study tracking 4,600 schools has found that lockbox-style phone bans reduce in-class phone use, but do not yield clear gains in test scores or other non-academic outcomes. Disruptions drop after initial years, while well-being initially dips then recovers.

What's behind the headline?

Key takeaways

• The bans achieve a substantial reduction in in-school phone activity by the third year, according to GPS data and device pings.
• Academic outcomes, including test scores and attendance, show little to no improvement.
• Disciplinary actions rise in the first year but fade in subsequent years; student well-being declines initially and then rebounds.
• The results are presented as a “conservative lower bound” on actual device use, since data include adults on campus.
• Policymakers face a nuanced trade-off: disruption is reduced, but broader academic gains remain elusive. The long-term effects and implementation quality may determine whether bans become a durable reform.
• The research notes that teachers and parents often support bans, while students frequently oppose them, and that implementation varies by district.

How we got here

The study uses data from Yondr, a company providing magnetic lockable pouches, to track phone activity and school discipline across multiple cohorts starting in 2022. It builds on ongoing policy moves in several US states to restrict or ban phone use in schools.

Our analysis

The Guardian, The Independent, AP News, New York Times have all covered the National Bureau of Economic Research study on phone bans in schools, citing similar findings about reduced phone activity but mixed effects on academics and well-being. Direct quotes and attributions are provided in the linked articles.

Go deeper

• What are schools doing to mitigate initial disciplinary spikes?
• Will the long-term well-being rebound affect policy decisions?
• How do these findings compare with private or parochial schools with different enforcement models?

More on these topics

• Duke University - Private university in Durham, North Carolina

  Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892.

• Stanford University - Private university in Stanford, California

  Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. Stanford is ranked among the top five universities in the world in major education publications.

• University of Pennsylvania - Private university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The University of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. The University claims a founding date of 1740 and is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered prior to the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

• Yondr - Company

  Yondr is an American company founded by Graham Dugoni in 2014. It makes mobile phone pouches which close with a magnetic lock, similar to those of a retail security tag, and a device for unlocking them.

• University of Michigan - University in Ann Arbor, Michigan

  The University of Michigan, often simply referred to as Michigan, is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The university is Michigan's oldest; it was founded in 1817 in Detroit, as the Catholepistemiad, or the University of Michigania, 20