Parents Should Support Cellphone Bans
This fall, millions of students across the country began the school year under new “bell-to-bell” cellphone bans. Early signs are encouraging — teachers report calmer classrooms and fewer disruptions — but banning smartphones alone will not solve America’s academic crisis. Parents must do their part by supporting these schoolwide bans and limiting children’s screen exposure at home, too.
For too long, educators and parents tolerated a familiar sight that would have been shocking just 15 years ago: children and teens, heads bent, eyes down, mentally transported and endlessly scrolling. Smartphones have become constant companions for America’s students and a pernicious source of distraction, anxiety, and academic decline.
As a mother and education policy advocate, I’ve seen the damage firsthand: children struggling to concentrate; social media fueling anxiety, depression, and identity confusion; and teachers spending valuable class time policing phones instead of teaching. Fortunately, policymakers are taking decisive action with 35 states introducing laws and rules limiting cellphone use during the school day.
Both schools and parents should establish clear rules and restrictions around digital devices. Schools have a responsibility to create a learning environment where students can focus. Parents have a duty to establish appropriate screen boundaries and reinforce school policies at home. We already accept that schools can set expectations for attendance, dress codes, and behavior. Banning smartphones from bell-to-bell is no different. This isn’t a battle over parental rights – it’s about common sense.
When schools adopt “away-for-the-day” cellphone policies, some parents initially panic that they won’t be able to reach their child every minute of the day. But the bad habit of craving constant contact does not have to be a permanent condition. For generations, schools operated just fine without direct parent-child communication during class. And sensible phone restrictions have worked well in schools that never indulged digital and communication addictions. If an urgent need arises, students can use the front-office phone. Older students with school laptops can email their parents or wait until after school to receive text messages. I’ve done this with my own children, and it works.
Parents have raised safety concerns in response to cellphone bans, but smartphones are endangering children in numerous ways by fueling cyberbullying and performative physical fights and bombarding kids with pornographic images, online gambling, “thinspo” content, and more. During true emergencies like school lockdowns, phones can make things worse by distracting students from following safety directions and jamming communication lines for first responders.
Early analysis of cellphone bans shows promising results. Florida led the way in 2023 by introducing a statewide cell-phone ban during instructional time. States introducing “bell-to-bell, away-for-the-day” laws often allow districts and schools to determine whether to use Yondr pouches, lockers, or front-office storage. This model of setting a policy at the state level and allowing local districts to choose the best implementation method makes sense. The goal is simple: phones off and out of reach from the first bell to the last.
Ironically, the greatest threat to these new policies may be the devices that remain. Since Washington flooded schools with nearly $190 billion in "emergency" pandemic-era funding, more than 90 percent of public schools now assign each student a laptop or tablet. Even without their phones, students are still glued to screens, messaging each other through Google Docs, shopping online rather than taking notes, or toggling between lessons, ChatGPT, and games.
Reluctant policymakers and parents act as though banning phones and scaling back devices is impossible. It isn’t. As I shared during a recent American Enterprise Institute webinar on cellphones in schools, my daughters attended a K–8 school that used screens sparingly for testing and occasional research projects, and otherwise relied on books, writing, and direct instruction. Students learned deeply and focused fully. Across the country, many classical and faith-based schools are proving that you can educate children without surrounding them with technology all day.
Beyond simply supporting school cellphone bans, parents need to create healthy approaches to digital devices at home. Jonathan Haidt’s recent book The Anxious Generation has given us permission to say “no” to smartphones and “yes” to healthier childhoods. Parents can opt for a flip phone instead and install a landline. They can collect devices at night, ban social media for younger teens, and talk with other parents to create a shared standard.
Down the road, I hope parents and educators will aspire to make classrooms truly device-free. Let’s bring back the computer lab down the hall, where students learn technology skills without living behind a screen. Let’s rediscover the power of books, pencils, and paper, and focused thought. Our kids deserve better than endless scrolling.
Now that cellphone bans are in place in many schools, it’s time for parents to match that resolve at home. Let’s go beyond “away for the day” to build a culture of focus, curiosity, and real connection, one where our children can look up, listen, and learn again.
