Away For The Day | Latest News - SLJ Survey: Cell Phone Bans Boost Reading, Library Use

The final circulation numbers for the 2025–26 school year are in at Pleasure Ridge Park High School library in Louisville, KY: 7,765 books checked out.

This was more than triple the previous year’s checkouts, and nearly double the average annual total over the past decade. Librarian Erin Reed can directly connect the spike in circulation to the school’s new bell-to-bell cell phone ban.

Students at Pleasure Ridge Park put their cell phones in Yondr pouches—a magnetic, lockable, signal blocking phone pouch—for the duration of the school day. With that change, Reed saw new populations of students begin to explore the library’s collection.

“We have had an influx of boys this year, and they got super excited about manga, of course, and the graphic novels—recommending books to each other, having discussions and arguments about series,” says Reed, who ended up overhauling the manga section to meet the new level of interest. “Our library is pretty small. We don’t have a lot of space, so I made a manga team.... We voted out some series and voted in others. We are in the process now of refreshing that whole section, so we can hopefully get even more attention on it next year.”

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SLJ Survey: Cell Phone Bans Boost Reading, Library Use

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