The coverage additionally got here with a troubling aspect impact. The cellphone bans led to a big enhance in pupil suspensions within the first 12 months, particularly amongst Black college students. However disciplinary actions declined throughout the second 12 months.
“Cellphone bans are not a silver bullet,” mentioned David Figlio, an economist on the College of Rochester and one of many research’s co-authors. “But they seem to be helping kids. They’re attending school more, and they’re performing a bit better on tests.”
Figlio mentioned he was “worried” in regards to the short-term 16 % enhance in suspensions for Black college students. What’s unclear from this information evaluation is whether or not Black college students had been extra prone to violate the brand new cellphone guidelines, or whether or not academics had been extra prone to single out Black college students for punishment. It’s additionally unclear from these administrative habits data if college students had been first given warnings or lighter punishments earlier than they had been suspended.
The information recommend that college students adjusted to the brand new guidelines. A 12 months later, pupil suspensions, together with these of Black college students, fell again to what they’d been earlier than the cellphone ban.
“What we observe is a rocky start,” Figlio added. “There was a lot of discipline.”
The research, “The Impact of Cellphone Bans in Schools on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Florida,” is a draft working paper and has not been peer-reviewed. It was slated to be circulated by the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis on Oct. 20 and the authors shared a draft with me upfront. Figlio and his co-author Umut Özek at RAND imagine it’s the first research to point out a causal connection between cellphone bans and studying fairly than only a correlation.
The educational positive aspects from the cellphone ban had been small, lower than a percentile level, on common. That’s the equal of shifting from the fiftieth percentile on math and studying assessments (within the center) to the 51st percentile (nonetheless near the center), and this small acquire didn’t emerge till the second 12 months for many college students. The educational advantages had been strongest for center schoolers, white college students, Hispanic college students and male college students. The educational positive aspects for Black college students and feminine college students weren’t statistically vital.
I used to be stunned to study that there’s information on pupil cellphone use in class. The authors of this research used info from Advan Analysis Corp., which collects and analyzes information from cell phones all over the world for enterprise functions, reminiscent of determining how many individuals go to a selected retail retailer. The researchers had been capable of acquire this information for colleges in a single Florida faculty district and estimate what number of college students had been on their cellphones earlier than and after the ban went into impact between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
The information confirmed that greater than 60 % of center schoolers, on common, had been on their telephones not less than as soon as throughout the faculty day earlier than the 2023 ban on this explicit Florida district, which was not named however described as one of many 10 largest districts within the nation. (5 of the nation’s 10 largest faculty districts are in Florida.) After the ban, that fell in half to 30 % of center schoolers within the first 12 months and all the way down to 25 % within the second 12 months.
Elementary faculty college students had been much less prone to be on cellphones to start out with and their in-school utilization fell from about 25 % of scholars earlier than the ban to fifteen % after the ban. Greater than 45 % of excessive schoolers had been on their telephones earlier than the ban and that fell to about 10 % afterwards.
Common every day smartphone visits in colleges, by 12 months and grade stage
Common every day smartphone visits throughout common faculty days (relative to instructor workdays with out college students) between 9am and 1pm (per 100 enrolled college students) within the two months earlier than after which after the 2023 ban took impact in a single massive city Florida faculty district. Supply: Figlio and Özek, October 2025 draft paper, determine 2C, p. 23.
Florida didn’t enact an entire cellphone ban in 2023, however imposed extreme restrictions. These restrictions had been tightened in 2025 and that extra tightening was not studied on this paper.
Anti-cellphone insurance policies have turn into more and more widespread for the reason that pandemic, largely primarily based on our collective grownup intestine hunches that youngsters are usually not studying properly when they’re consumed by TikTok and SnapChat.
That is maybe a uncommon case in public coverage, Figlio mentioned, the place the “data back up the hunches.”
