With the 2024-2025 academic year in full swing, schools across the United States (US) have adopted cell phone policies in their classrooms. State governments have enacted efforts to ban or restrict cell phone use in schools in 15 states. These laws and policies seek to limit students’ use of electronics during the school day and require public school districts to enforce regulations to create a more social and productive learning environment, according to edweek.org.
Roughly 72 percent of public high school teachers in the US assert that cell phones cause major distractions in their classrooms, according to pewresearch.org. States that have created policies surrounding cell phones include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington. In these states, lawmakers have taken various approaches to institute regulations in schools. The State Governments in Arkansas, Delaware, and Pennsylvania have incentivized these policies with funding offers. Ms. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Governor of Arkansas, and the Delaware Legislature launched two similar pilot programs that will pay for pouches to store phones in during the day, according to edweek.org. Other states have passed laws that require all districts to adopt and enforce a cell phone ban. Mr. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, signed the Phone-Free Schools Act, which requires all public schools to ban cell phone use with the exception of emergency circumstances by July 1, 2026, according to msn.com.
As authorities point to a correlation between mental health issues and cell phone use, excessive screen time and social media use becomes a growing concern for adolescents. A study conducted by the University of Chicago demonstrates how the mere presence of smart devices reduces available cognitive capacity, according to journals.uchicago.edu. With connectivity to social media, communication, and entertainment at their fingertips, students are prone to checking their phones frequently during the school day, impacting their learning and mental health, according to afterbabel.com. Mr. Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author, commented on the long-term effects on mental health and cognitive issues in children and teens if cell phone use persists in schools.
“The problem is not just transient distraction, though any distraction in the classroom will impede learning,” Mr Haidt said, according to afterbabel.com. “Heavy phone or social-media use may also have a cumulative, enduring, and deleterious effect on adolescents’ abilities to focus and apply themselves.”
Cell phone use during the school day can not only hinder cognitive development but also social development. With smart devices rarely out of arm’s reach, students have difficulty maintaining concentration in schoolwork as well as social interactions. In social settings, breaking away from conversation to check a smartphone may pressure others to do the same, which interferes with the intimacy and quality of social interactions, according to afterbabel.com. Mr. Haidt shared how cell phone use has been tied to increased feelings of loneliness among students.
“Students around the world became less likely to agree with items such as ‘I feel like I belong at school,’ and more likely to agree with items such as ‘I feel lonely at school,’” Mr. Haidt said, according to afterbabel.com. “That’s roughly when teens went from mostly using flip phones to mostly using smartphones. It’s also when Instagram caught fire with girls and young women globally, following its acquisition by Facebook. If we must pick a date for the start of selfie culture and its poisonous levels of visual social comparison, I’d say it’s 2012.”
New regulations in the US surrounding cell phones in schools have affected many high school students, including Miss Mary Frances Ruskell, a senior at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School in Columbia, South Carolina, according to CNN. This year, her school instituted a policy for students to turn their phones in at the beginning of each day. She suggested solutions for phone-free schools in a digital age.
“Maybe going old-school is a way to combat the damage done by phones in schools, like the physical textbooks my school brought back,” Miss Ruskell said, according to CNN. “Maybe physical posters in the hallway announcing events instead of Instagram posts could help.”
This year, Sacred Heart Greenwich has also adopted a cell phone free policy in the Upper School. This new approach to cell phone use aims to provide an optimal learning environment for students and strengthen the sense of community in the Upper School. Mrs. Meghan McMahon, Head of Upper School, shared the positive influence of decreased cell phone usage across grades thus far.
“In the first month of school, we have observed a positive impact on students’ focus, attention spans, and social interactions,” Mrs. McMahon said. “Many students have also expressed how much they appreciate not having their phones. Students have reported getting more work done during the school day, having more conversations with their friends, and feeling more connected to our Sacred Heart community and less pressure to engage on social media.”
Featured Image by Caroline Gammon ’26
