Strict bans on mobile phones in schools have “close to zero” impact on student learning and show no evidence of improvements in attendance or online bullying, a study has found.
Researchers at US universities including Stanford and Duke looked at nearly 1,800 US schools where students’ phones were kept in locked pouches and found little or no differences in outcomes compared with similar schools without strict bans.
The report concluded that among schools instituting a ban: “For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero.”
The results will come as a disappointment to teaching unions and campaigners in England who backed the government’s recent move to restrict the use of mobile phones in schools. A ban is likely to come into force next year.
I’m sorry but this comment, as well as the posted article is misguided. I am a classroom teacher and I can say without hesitation that it is 100% impossible to teach someone when they have a phone in their hand. It is extremely challenging when the phone is in their pocket. It is manageable but not ideal when it is in their bag.
Your brain is capable of doing one thing at a time and if that thing is scrolling feeds, then it is not learning.
If you’d like to develop an informed opinion on the matter, I highly recommend The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. His book comes with a website with a regularly updated collection of research and data on the matter. The data is staggering; there is absolutely no question that smartphones do not belong in a classroom, full stop. They generally don’t belong in a child or adolescent’s hand either, but schools cannot do anything about that. To think otherwise simply indicates that you have not been in a classroom later than 2011.
Here is a link to that data: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/collaborative-review-docs
My partner is a teacher, as well.
Yes, but this is a symptom of structural problems with our school system. Looking at phones didn’t make kids hate school. Hating school made kids want to look at their phones.
Schools have been shifting from places of learning, which requires exploration, to places of compliance and regurgitation. And it’s not just about the shift towards obedience-based, rote memorization in service of standardized testing (or how schools care about attendance only for funding reasons), we’ve even shifted the literal architectural design philosophy behind how we construct school buildings to be more prison-like.
The pandemic lockdown was horrible for kids, but the rush to reopen schools wasn’t about the negative impact it was having on their social development, it was about serving business interests who wanted their parent-employees back at work. They wanted the childrens’ holding cells reopened.
When we actually start shifting schools back towards environments of learning, at a structural level, I will have sympathy for the mission of education over sympathy for the disinterested
inmatesstudents.“schools have a bunch of structural problems that should be fixed” - yes, agreed 1000%
“schools have a bunch of structural problems that should be fixed, and therefore schools shouldn’t ban phones until the structural problems are fixed” - nope. that’s a complete non-sequitur.
“fix structural problems with schools” is a gigantic undertaking. it’s absolutely worth doing, but it’s the kind of thing that will take many many years, and effort across many many different fronts. it’s not like Congress can pass the Fix Structural Problems In Schools Act of 2026 this summer and then starting this September schools are now fixed.
“you can’t do that small change until the all the larger problems are fixed” ends up being essentially a thought-terminating cliche.
You’re misunderstanding my position.
Right now, schools are not learning institutions that are trying but struggling to enrich kids. They’re a penal institution, punishing kids for being non-productive members of society, funneling many of them directly into military or prison, and actively making their lives worse than if they were sitting at home or hanging out with friends outside.
Every kid thinks that when they’re in school, but in most places they’re not correct; here they often are.
I think you can draw a pretty direct and causal line from the prison-ification of schools and increasing school shootings, NCLB being the instigating national change, but Republican anti-education policies in general being heavy contributors (and Red states are far worse than Blue states in this).
Bear in mind this is not some “school is bad” stance: there are actually a lot of schools numerically which are wonderful places of learning. Expensive private schools and high-income-neighborhood-servicing public schools don’t allow that kind of disruptive policing and aren’t looking for every opportunity to punish children as a show of dominance and teaching forced-submission. But numerically high does not equate to high percentage, and they’re a minuscule percent of the overall count of schools in America (115,000+).
So this is not a “don’t fix small problem until we fix big problem” issue. This is a “don’t pretend that these are students and not prisoners, and take away one of the few remaining joys most of them have”.
Taking away phones isn’t fixing a small problem, it’s making the bigger problem worse.
I mostly agree with what you are saying, but when was this golden age where school was about pure learning, exploration, and inquiry, and wasn’t an institutional machine? At least here in Canada, schools have never been more about inquiry than ever before… to the point where much of the value of traditional teaching styles is lost. IMO.
I don’t think phones make kids hate school, and I don’t think kids use phones because they hate school. Phones have seeped into our lives and into our children’s lives and it has prevented them from using their brains the way they are naturally made to work.
Last year most provinces in Canada banned phones from schools. But it didn’t work because students bring them anyways and parents still text their kids 24/7 so they are fine sending their kids to school with them. Teachers don’t stand at doors patting kids down. The problem is not, IMO, at the school system level, it is cultural. We are destroying the brains of a generation and sitting back and watching the train wreck in slow motion.
I have taught in Quebec schools this year, the first full year that cell phones were banned. I have not seen a single student using a phone. The teachers at my schools have also been unanimous in saying that there has been a significant improvement in the student attention, as well as communication and activity between students.
I didn’t realize you’re in Canada, and I fully admit I know nothing about Canadian schools or the education system there.
In the US, we have military recruiters in schools, armed officers patrolling halls, metal detectors and backpack checks (for the schools that don’t require transparent backpacks), and random locker searches. And this was all from before Trump.
Edit: oh, I forgot my (least) favorite new rule: no talking in the hallway between classes, though it seems like the UK leaned into that more heavily than the US has.
It’s a cage for kids, not a place to learn, and it is significantly different than when I was very young. 9/11 happened when I was in middle school, and even in the subsequent 6 years until I graduated high school, it had gone downhill fast.
“Hating school made kids want to look at their phones.” thats just 100% false. Hating work is not why adults look at their phones nor is it hating public transit or hating driving. 100% phones are a distraction in their own right outside of all exterior effects.
When I like what I’m doing I don’t get the urge to look at my phone.
maybe but as I replied to another then its that people hate life because they are on them all the time. Smartphones or some apps are addictive.
Um, ya sure about that?
Yes, phones are distracting, but distraction is entirely about competing levels of interest, and phones are more interesting than most people’s work or commute, and certainly than modern classrooms.
im 100% sure because people are doing it no matter what they are otherwise doing it. So its either they are on their phones because they hate life or smartphones or at least certain apps on them are addictive. its plain to see they are addictive although I will grant that life sucks especially now. Still. the phones be an addiction.
Addiction usually forms around something that is used for escaping one’s problems. True here as well.
And yes, most people are unhappy in life, right now especially.