In 2025, more students than ever will be going to class without cell phones. This year, researchers, teachers, and students looked back at attempts to build learning spaces without phones.
MARTÍNEZ, GUEST:
More students than ever are going to class without their cell phones. Thirty-two states have laws restricting personal devices during the day, with 20 of them passing laws this year. NPR’s Sequoia Carrillo looks at how classrooms, hallways and cafeterias have changed.
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, Byline: Earlier this year, students at Mount Olive High School in northern New Jersey created a podcast about their new cell phone ban and submitted it to NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge.
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SANIYAH ALAM: Do you think we should have phones during lunch, and what do you think about that?
CARRILLO: Saniyah Alam and other student journalists interviewed some of their classmates about the policy in their district that forces students to leave their phones in their lockers from the start of the school day until the end. They wanted to know what about lunch? Here’s what they heard.
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: I think we should have a system to prevent people from abusing phones, for example, but I think we should.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: Lunch is our free time, so that would be fun.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #3: I think so, because students should have time to be kids.
CARRILLO: Not surprisingly, their deputy director, Daniel Barcia, had a different argument.
DANIEL BARCIA: It’s sad for me. Like, you guys don’t hang out and talk. Like when I was your age we used to ride our bikes outside and everyone would hang out in the park. You don’t do it. So I don’t know. Is it dangerous.
CARRILLO: Lawmakers of both parties agreed. Here’s Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signing Texas’ statewide ban in August.
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GREG ABBOTT: One thing that we’re very concerned about with students is what happens to them when they’re exposed not just to cell phone use, but to things like social media.
CARRILLO: And Governor Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, in May.
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KATHY HOCHUL: I’ve been going around the state, anybody who would sit down with me and hear from them what the impact of cell phones in schools is doing to our kids. I haven’t heard anything good.
CARRILLO: For some teachers, it’s almost a year less black and white. Oliver Perry(ph) is a tenth grade English teacher in Richmond, Virginia. A new state ban went into effect in January. And in his district, that means teachers would start collecting phones at the start of each class.
OLIVER PERRY: I have this locker in my room and I have a little key to it. I have these little sticky notes that I hand out with a number on them.
CARRILLO: Students have to voluntarily give up their phones. And they did in the beginning. He would approach 20 mobiles in each class. But by the end of the year…
PERRY: I get maybe one or two calls an hour, and that’s because the students would much rather struggle with it than give up.
CARRILLO: He sees the impact of cell phones on student attention and engagement, but typing every cell phone under the new disciplinary guidelines also takes away from instructional time.
PERRY: It’s not a one-size-fits-all problem.
CARRILLO: David Figlio, an economics professor at the University of Rochester, would agree. Over the past two years, he has studied one cell phone ban in Florida. His early findings – cell phone bans do more good than harm. But…
DAVID SON: If we had stopped our studies in the first year, I might have come away with a more mixed opinion.
CARRILLO: In that first year, the district surveyed saw only a slight increase in test scores and an increase in suspensions because students violated policy. But in the second year, suspensions returned to normal and test scores crept higher along with student attendance.
SYN: It moves the needle in a meaningful way, but it’s not an absolute game changer. So if that’s the result you’re looking for, be realistic with your expectations.
CARRILLO: For now, expect to hear more about cell phone bans in schools next year. At least three other states — California, Ohio and Massachusetts — have statewide policies that will take effect in 2026. Sequoia Carrillo, NPR News.
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