A national study released this month by researchers at Stanford, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan analyzed more than 40,000 schools across the country using data from Yondr, a company that makes magnetic locking pouches for student cellphones.
The researchers found that cellphone activity at schools dropped sharply after schools adopted the pouches. Cellphone “pings” from school grounds fell by 30 percent, and teachers reported far less nonacademic phone use in class.
But the study found “close to zero” effects on test scores, attendance and online bullying, even three years after schools adopted the pouches. The researchers compared the Yondr schools to schools that had similar demographics and academic performance.
At first glance, those findings appeared to conflict with a study of schools in Florida released last year, which found small academic gains a year after statewide cellphone restrictions took effect in 2023.
The researchers behind that study, from the University of Rochester and RAND, compared schools where student cellphone use had historically been high with schools where phone use had already been relatively low before the statewide restrictions began. Their logic was that schools with heavier pre-ban cellphone use should experience a larger effect from the policy change.
The national Yondr study, by contrast, largely compared schools using one particularly strict form of enforcement against schools that often already had softer cellphone restrictions in place. Some schools in the comparison group still required students to keep phones tucked away in backpacks or out of sight during class.
In other words, the national study was largely comparing stricter restrictions against weaker ones while the Florida study was comparing schools with high versus low cellphone use before the ban.
Even with the different methodologies and research questions, the researchers of both U.S. studies emphasized in interviews how similar their results actually were. The Florida study calculated that the academic gains, which materialized in the second year after the ban, were less than a percentile point, the equivalent of moving a student from the 50th percentile, dead in the middle, to the 51st percentile. In practical terms, the difference between a tiny gain and near-zero effects may not matter.
Both studies also documented an initial increase in disciplinary incidents before behavior stabilized, and both found signs of nonacademic benefits, including improvements in school climate or student well-being.
The broader international research, however, remains genuinely mixed.
The first quantitative study of cellphone bans, published in England in 2016, found that cellphone restrictions improved exam scores primarily for low-achieving students. But a Swedish study in 2020 found no academic or behavioral benefits.
The Swedish researchers speculated that their results might reflect the country’s long history of integrating computers into classrooms. In the 1970s, Sweden was an early European adopter of school technology, so students already relied heavily on laptops and other digital devices during lessons before the ubiquity of cellphones. A separate Swedish case study also found that students were often using phones between assignments rather than during instructional time.
Since then, studies in Spain, Norway, Brazil and India have all found academic benefits from cellphone restrictions, though the gains varied widely. The randomized trial in India produced some of the largest academic gains in the literature. Researchers there randomly assigned college students by field of study to store their phones in wooden cubbies before class while others kept them. Unlike in many American universities, there weren’t many laptops or tablets in these Indian classrooms. Removing phones, in effect, may have removed all digital distractions from the classroom.
One possible explanation for the disappointing U.S. results is that students are still surrounded by digital distractions even when phones are gone. David Figlio, the lead author of the Florida study, said students often shift to texting, gaming or social media on laptops and tablets that remain permitted in school.
Another possibility is that the academic harms of modern technology aren’t primarily caused by classroom distraction itself. Smartphones may influence sleep, study habits, sustained attention and reading stamina outside school hours in ways that a seven-hour school day ban cannot easily reverse.
“Cell phones still could be having a large effect on the diminishment of student achievement, even if cell phone bans are not turning this around by a tremendous amount,” Figlio said. “Students could be cutting corners on their studying, or staying up very late and getting less sleep.”
Tom Dee, a Stanford education researcher who led the national study, said the “sobering” findings in this country should not discourage schools from continuing to experiment with cellphone policies.
“We should just continue to iterate, which is something we do too infrequently in education policy,” Dee said. “Let’s not move on to the next fad or the next flavor of the day. This issue is too important for us not to stay in the fight to try to figure out how to manage our children’s use of digital devices responsibly.”
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