Cellphone bans reduced in-school phone use, but they did not immediately lead to better academic or behavioral outcomes, according to a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stanford University reported.
The national report compared schools that implemented strict phone policies and those that did not over a three-year span across more than 43,000 middle and high schools. Researchers found that the cellphone ban policies had no major impact on test scores, attendance, attention or perceived cyberbullying.
The report showed that math scores in high school had modest gains, while middle schools saw slight decreases in test scores early in the ban, with “more impulsive younger students substituting other disruptive behaviors for the distraction of cellphone screens.”
The first year of the ban also led to more disciplinary incidents and poorer student well-being, but by the third year, disciplinary incidents returned to previous levels and student well-being was better than before the ban.
“There is clearly justifiable enthusiasm for school phone bans, but it’s important to recognize that building effective, phone-free learning environments does not appear to be a simple or quick fix,” said Thomas Dee, a professor in Stanford’s graduate school of education and one of the authors of the report. “The very early experience schools have with phone bans is sobering, but there are also indicators that as schools adjust to phone-free policies, the benefits of these bans may be realized.”
Researchers emphasized the need for long-term consistency with cell phone bans as well as broader digital use policies and classroom engagement reforms to further improve learning and student well-being.
This story originally appeared in EdSource.
