Teachers Say Cellphone Bans Improve Students’ Social Habits

Government Technology

While some students have always succumbed to classroom distractions — think noisy chewing gum, the chirping of pagers or the passing of notes between desks — perhaps none have been as disruptive to learning and instruction, let alone as controversial, as the smartphone.Drawing on approximately 68,000 survey submissions from teachers who work in about 17 percent of all public schools in the U.S., the nonpartisan research initiative Phones in Focus found that restrictive cellphone policies have not only improved students' performance in class, but also appear to enhance the way they interact with one another, according to a news release last week about the study's preliminary findings. A prior news release announcing the project said it would be led by psychologist and author Angela Duckworth, along with Stanford University economists Matt Gentzkow and Hunt Allcott.The share of schools in the survey with bell-to-bell phone bans — meaning students are not allowed to use said devices during the school day — rose from 60 percent in the 2024-2025 school year to 74 percent thus far in 2025-2026. Notably, only about half of high schools in the national survey sample have full bell-to-bell bans, compared with about 9 in 10 elementary and middle schools, the release said.

‍

Read the full article here.