Cellphone bans deliver slow but real gains, study finds

Strict classroom cellphone bans deliver meaningful reductions in student tech use but produce few short-term academic or behavioral gains. That’s according to a new multi-university study that examined stricter bans than the one recently adopted in North Carolina.

State Board of Education Vice Chair Alan Duncan flagged the findings at the board’s planning session on May 6 in Duplin County, four months after North Carolina’s Protecting Students in a Digital Age law took effect.

“This is the first year of some control of cell phones in classrooms in North Carolina, and anecdotally I think many of us have been hearing very positive stories from students and teachers and parents about the effect of that,” Duncan told the board.

He then raised the new research, which he described as “the largest study ever of school cellphone bans” finding teachers report fewer distractions but “little evidence that bans quickly bring improved academic achievement or better behavior.”

“I don’t know whether the emphasis there is on the word ‘quickly,’” Duncan said. “But I don’t want this to undercut what we’re trying to do.”

The study — released in April by researchers at Stanford University, Duke University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania — is the largest analysis of US school phone bans to date. It examined more than 43,000 middle and high schools nationwide using a research design that compared schools before and after they adopted the bans.

The study concluded that phone use dropped from 61% to 13% at schools that used the Yondr lockable pouches, the intervention studied. The new law in North Carolina bans phone use during class but allows students to keep their phones with them, including at lunch and between classes. Yondr pouches lock phones away for the entire school day. Most schools in the study had used policies similar to North Carolina’s approach prior to adopting the Yondr pouches.

The study found that in the first year after adoption, school suspension rates rose by about 11% and students reported lower well-being on classroom surveys, with more negative emotions and fewer positive ones. The researchers suggest two possible causes: enforcement of the new phone rules themselves, and students substituting other disruptive behaviors — such as conflicts with peers — once their phones were locked away.

Beyond the suspension findings, average effects on test scores, attendance, classroom attention, and perceived online bullying were all close to zero.

The longer term trend, however, appeared more positive. By the third year, disciplinary issues had faded back to baseline and student well-being had become more positive than before adoption. High school math scores showed a small positive bump of about 0.9 percentile points, while middle school scores showed a slight decline.

“There is clearly justifiable enthusiasm for school phone bans, but it’s important to recognize that building effective, phone-free learning environments does not appear to be a simple or quick fix,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford education professor and one of the study’s authors, in a statement. “The very early experience schools have with phone bans is sobering, but there are also indicators that as schools adjust to phone-free policies, the benefits of these bans may be realized.”

Panelists at the state board’s planning session pushed back on drawing conclusions too quickly. Karl Johnson, an assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, told board members the word “quickly” was doing significant work.

“When you’ve had a system in place for so long and you change a factor in that system, how quickly should you expect results?” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t jump to too many conclusions too quickly.”

Christa Gluski of NC State University’s Friday Institute added that removing cellphones from schools does not automatically yield a meaningful learning environment, and that classroom design and teacher practice remain critical to whether bans translate into academic gains.

The study’s authors cautioned that their analysis covers at most three years after adoption. They also note that the working paper has not yet been peer-reviewed.

“This study is really a first step,” said Matthew Gentzkow, a Stanford economist and co-author, in a statement. “It answers a number of important questions but also raises new ones.”

“Cellphone bans deliver slow but real gains, study finds” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.