As cellphone bans in schools become more popular, lawmakers say it’s time to take action by any means necessary

Students at a public charter science academy sit at their desks during English class in Warr Acres, Oklahoma, August 2025. Other states are considering joining Oklahoma in enacting strict door-to-door cell phone bans. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

The momentum behind cell phone bans in schools has reached more than half of the states, as teachers, school leaders and education experts praise the measures as a way to boost student achievement and mental health and restore a sense of community that many say has been weakened by students’ screen addiction.

For many states and school districts, the question now is not whether distracting devices should be removed from students every day, but for how long.

States that have passed laws mandating some sort of cell phone policy are now considering going further and mandating day-long bans, even for high school students. The idea has faced some resistance from students, but also from teachers and parents, who say strict doorbell-to-door bans aren’t necessary. Some say they worry about safety in the event of a school shooting or other emergency.

Education experts say the state-of-the-art push for school phone bans has accelerated after the pandemic changed the way students operate technology and disrupted essential in-person experiences in the classroom. Kara Stern, director of education and engagement at SchoolStatus, a data collection company that helps K-12 districts with attendance and other school issues, said smartphones have evolved from a connection tool during distance learning to a source of isolation once students returned to classrooms.

“During distance learning, phones became one of the primary ways for children to entertain themselves and stay connected,” Stern said. “But when schools reopened, phones were no longer a means of connection and resulted in disconnections.”

Currently, 38 states and Washington, DC, have enacted a statewide restriction or requirement for districts to limit student phone operate. Of these, approximately 18 states and the District have all-day bans or comprehensive statewide restrictions (including during and after school hours).

According to a 2025 University of Southern California study, compliance with cell phone restrictions in schools remains inconsistent, despite the widespread adoption and support of these restrictions study. Researchers found that most students continue to operate phones during the school day, regardless of restrictions.

Still, more than half of teens surveyed said enforcement was stricter this school year than last year.

“Teaching a class where students are using their phones is like trying to teach over a speaker at Disney World,” Stern said. “The environment is simply not conducive to learning.”

Pushing for broader bans

Georgia is one of the states given a “bell-to-bell” policy for all public high schools. This comes a year after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a ban on K-8 grades.

The students are attentive. At East Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia, students and teachers offered mixed views on the subject of cell phone bans. In a student-led newscast that aired last fall, some students expressed concerns about their safety, while some teachers were positive about the idea that a ban would be effective at the high school level.

Republican Rep. Scott Hilton, who proposed the novel law, told The Georgia Recorder reported that the ban on younger students helped families adjust to a bell-to-bell ban.

“I was just overwhelmed by the positive response from everyone involved, from teachers, administrators, parents and in many cases even students who experienced a difference and said, ‘Oh, wow, I kind of like that,'” Hilton said.

Several states focus their bans on prohibiting cell phone operate “during school time,” which does not necessarily include free time like lunch. Kansas legislators are advance to a ban on operate during class time; It would replace previous measures that gave the local district discretion over cell phone operate in schools. Michigan lawmakers passed a similar bill last month; it was sent to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday.

Similar classroom time laws passed last year in Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin. In Oregon, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek issued an executive order in July requiring every district to adopt doorbell-to-door cell phone bans by Jan. 1. Several districts said the mandate was lifted better than expectedwith some school leaders saying they had seen more interaction among students.

In Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, cell phone restrictions are being considered or advanced door-to-door; They were recently put into effect in New York. Massachusetts’ bill goes further than most, adding smartphones, tablets and Bluetooth devices to its list of banned electronic devices.

Most of the laws reviewed by Stateline provide exceptions to the bans for students with special needs and in emergencies.

School shootings fell to their lowest level since 2020 in 2025, according to a study review from Education Week. Still, there were 18 shootings last year that left seven people dead, the review said.

In Georgia, Republican Richard Woods told reporters he had heard firsthand from survivors of a shooting there about the importance of having cellphones on hand for safety.

“Do I support that? Absolutely,” Woods said saidwith reference to the cell phone ban. “But I think we have to find a sweet spot and not go to extremes.”

What works best?

According to a Pew Research Center Opinion poll According to the survey released last summer, 74% of U.S. adults support a ban on cell phones during class for middle and high school students, up from 68% in fall 2024. Significantly fewer adults (19%) oppose bans in the classroom and 7% are unsure, the survey found.

For advocates of phone-free education, the gold standard of cell phone policies is a ring-to-bell restriction with inaccessible memory for the device.

A 2025 article in JAMA Pediatrics reported that teenagers ages 13 to 18 spend an average of 90 minutes on their phones during school, but little has been written about what students do during this time.

“Although 99.7% of U.S. public school principals report that their school has a smartphone policy, few studies have objectively examined smartphone app use during school,” a summary of the study states.

Stern said she has seen the effects of a “consistent bell-to-bell” policy firsthand with her own son. When his cell phone broke in eighth grade, he was afraid to go to school without it. But after his first day, he came home and told Stern that he played soccer at recess, met novel classmates and had “a really good day” — one, he said, that was better than usual.

Kim Whitman, co-director of Smartphone Free Childhood US, and other education experts believe cell phone bans will reflect past public health setbacks – like a ban on smoking in schools — and potentially redefine what it means to be in a classroom post-pandemic.

“Today we cannot imagine allowing smoking in schools,” Whitman said. “I think in five to 10 years we’ll be saying the same thing about cell phones – wondering how we ever allowed them into classrooms.”

Whitman, who has studied and rated states on the effectiveness of their cell phone bans, said North Dakota and Rhode Island were the only states that earned high marks for adopting and enforcing phone-to-bar policies.

Despite the claims of adults who love the cellphone-free policy, students aren’t so convinced. According to this, only 41% of teenagers support cell phone bans in middle and high school classrooms Opinion poll by the Pew Research Center published in January.

According to the USC study, most teens who like certain phone-free policies are in schools where the policy allows phone operate throughout the day during non-school hours.

Editor’s note: This story has been edited to correct that it was SchoolStatus’s Kara Stern who told Stateline about her son’s experience with a phone-free day.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.