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‘Close to zero impact’: US study casts doubt on effect of phone ban in schools
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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Technology
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This should have been obvious. Why would you only be able to bully someone digitally in the time you're in the school building? I was in high school when cell phones were first coming out, so I remember school before and during phones, and kids always could and would ignore class if they wanted to. This feels like an attempt to divert blame from school systems not being reactive to generational learning differences and needs. There are reasons to ban phones in schools, but if you think that doing so is going to prevent bullying or ignoring class, methinks you don't remember pre-phone school.
I’m sorry but this comment, as well as the posted article is misguided. I am a classroom teacher and I can say without hesitation that it is 100% impossible to teach someone when they have a phone in their hand. It is extremely challenging when the phone is in their pocket. It is manageable but not ideal when it is in their bag.
Your brain is capable of doing one thing at a time and if that thing is scrolling feeds, then it is not learning.
If you’d like to develop an informed opinion on the matter, I highly recommend The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. His book comes with a website with a regularly updated collection of research and data on the matter. The data is staggering; there is absolutely no question that smartphones do not belong in a classroom, full stop. They generally don’t belong in a child or adolescent’s hand either, but schools cannot do anything about that. To think otherwise simply indicates that you have not been in a classroom later than 2011.
Here is a link to that data: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/collaborative-review-docs
My partner is a teacher, as well.
Yes, but this is a symptom of structural problems with our school system. Looking at phones didn't make kids hate school. Hating school made kids want to look at their phones.
Schools have been shifting from places of learning, which requires exploration, to places of compliance and regurgitation. And it's not just about the shift towards obedience-based, rote memorization in service of standardized testing (or how schools care about attendance only for funding reasons), we've even shifted the literal architectural design philosophy behind how we construct school buildings to be more prison-like.
The pandemic lockdown was horrible for kids, but the rush to reopen schools wasn't about the negative impact it was having on their social development, it was about serving business interests who wanted their parent-employees back at work. They wanted the childrens' holding cells reopened.
When we actually start shifting schools back towards environments of learning, at a structural level, I will have sympathy for the mission of education over sympathy for the disinterested ~~inmates~~ students.