Yes, phone bans in schools help when done right

Written By Christina Dinur

A new Lancet study on the impact of phone bans in schools on students’ mental health has been receiving lots of media attention. Unfortunately, some of the coverage has been misleading, causing confusion. Case in point—a widely shared BBC article had this headline: “Mobile ban in schools not improving grades or behaviour, study suggests.” If you saw this headline and moved on with your day—as many of us often do in today’s era of information overload—you might conclude that smartphones aren’t actually a problem for kids and schools shouldn’t ban them. But keep reading, and it’s clear this is NOT what the study is suggesting.

Three things to know about the Lancet study

1. The study found that more time scrolling = worse mental health for kids.
The researchers state: “Importantly...we observed that increased time spent on phones/social media is significantly associated with worsened outcomes for mental health and wellbeing, physical activity and sleep, and attainment and disruptive behaviour.”

2. The findings do NOT mean school phone bans are wrong, but rather that bans alone are not enough to solve the problem.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Victoria Goodyear, told the BBC, “the findings don’t mean that schools’ smartphone bans are wrong; they actually show that more needs to be done to keep children off their phones out of school.” The researchers state, “Our data suggest that interventions to reduce phone/social media time to positively influence adolescent mental wellbeing are plausible, but that both in-school and outside of school use should be considered in tandem.” In other words, we need to do more to protect kids from this addictive technology, not less.

3. The study muddied the waters by failing to distinguish between schools that physically separate students from phones and those that don’t.
Of the 20 schools in the study with some sort of phone restriction, only four had true bell-to-bell, away-for-the-day policies—i.e., bans in which the students are physically separated from their phones for the entire school day. This type of ban is much more effective than bans that allow student phone access. Due to the phone proximity effect, the mere presence of one’s phone compromises cognitive performance even when the phone is turned off. Further, in schools where phone use is restricted but the students can still access their phones, teachers report far more disruption compared to schools where access is prohibited, as indicated in this chart:

Source: Impact of Social Media and Personal Devices on Mental Health Report by the National Education Association, August 12, 2024.

The Lancet study grouped schools where students have access to phones and schools where students cannot access phones under the same umbrella, and we suspect the results might have looked different if the study had better distinguished between the two. We hope future studies will look specifically at schools that physically separate students from phones for the entire school day.

Learn how to advocate for bell-to-bell phone-free schools in your community

At SFC-US, we believe every child deserves the gift of a phone-free education, and many of our members have been advocating for legislation to support that. If you’d like to introduce or support phone-free school legislation in your state, we can help you get started! We are now offering FREE, ongoing Phone & Social Media-Free Legislation Community Calls. Please register in advance at the links below:

Other ways to help our kids (and ourselves!)

We wholeheartedly agree with the Lancet study that banning phones in schools alone is not enough to solve this problem. That’s why, in addition to getting phones out of schools, we also support the other norms proposed by Jonathan Haidt and The Anxious Generation team:

  • No smartphones before high school (reminder, smartphones are actually optional after that as well!)

  • No social media before age 16 (social media is not required after 16 either—not even for adults!)

  • More independence, free play, and responsibility for kids in the real world (adults can also benefit from less scrolling and more IRL connection!).

  • Delay and reduce “EdTech” in schools; no one-to-one laptops and tablets (this is Jonathan Haidt’s newly proposed 5th norm; go to minute 41:50 in this video to see the announcement).

We hope you’ll join one of our regularly scheduled community calls (next one is today at 12pm ET!), our book club (we’re reading Nicholas Carr’s Superbloom this month), and/or our WhatsApp group for practical tips and support on enacting these norms in your own community!

Christina Dinur