Banning cell phones in schools has been touted as a silver bullet for poor test scores and low student well-being and attendance, but new research suggests the results are more mixed.
Cell phone bans in schools are working—at least as far as keeping kids off their phones during school, according to a new working paper. But the bans, which have been touted by researchers, educators and policymakers as a way to boost children's attendance and academic achievement and to combat mental health issues and online bullying, aren't delivering on all those promises, the findings reveal.
In the years since cell phone bans went into effect in schools, students and teachers at those schools have reported higher levels of well-being, but average test scores and attendance records haven't budged. Perceived levels of online bullying have also not improved, according to the paper.
The research was released on Monday by a nonprofit called the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study authors looked specifically at schools where kids have been required to keep their smartphones in magnetically sealed pouches that are not unlocked until the end of the school day. They then compared these schools with others that have not enforced pouches—more than 40,000 schools overall between 2019 and 2026. The researchers analyzed schools' test data, attendance reports, discipline records, GPS data, and student and teacher surveys...
Read full article by Claire Cameron in Scientific American