Cell Phone Ban Update Report

“With virtually all students in the country now attending a school with some sort of cellphone restriction, [the researchers] wondered what challenges schools face in implementing and enforcing these rules, and how students themselves are experiencing cellphone bans. … [In] October 2025 and May 2026, [the researchers] asked a nationally representative sample of teens, including those attending public, private, and charter schools … about their schools’ cellphone policies and their own experiences with phone rules during the school year. … [The researchers’] evidence suggests that policies like bell-to-bell bans persist across the year more than less-strict policies. … [Under] bell-to-bell policies, there was a 10 percentage-point increase in the proportion of teens reporting using their phones during core classes (25% to 35% …). In schools with less-strict policies, there was an 18 percentage-point increase (from 32% to over 50%). Although cellphone usage increased across the board by the end of the year, the increase at schools with less-strict policies was nearly double the increase … at schools with stricter policies. … Although there was little change in the proportion of teens perceiving a positive impact of their school’s phone policy, with most shifts moving away from negative perceptions toward neutral perceptions, our results are still consistent with teens learning that navigating a day without their phones is not as devastating as they might have imagined.”

 Silver, D. et al. (2026, Sept. 10). A year later, What teens tell us about school cellphone bans. Brookings.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-year-later-what-teens-tell-us-about-school-cellphone-bans/