I would suspect that just examining the use of smartphones by the students is insufficient to explain the results, because it misses other critical factors. As the post alludes to, but doesn’t explore, the use of individual screens (laptops, tablets) in class must surely be important, not just if kids watch Tik Tok on them, but because gamified learning platforms emulate the social media experience by design. Furthermore, teachers nowadays rely on short videos to teach, replacing their natural spoken explanation with visual elements drawn on the blackboard. Finally, surely there must be an enormous impact that screen-addicted parents have on their children, which is completely ignored by these studies and (only instinctively) I’d say may dominate the effects completely. Only studying the whole picture will probably reveal how harmful this new world is to human knowledge, deep thought and critical thinking. Unfortunately designing studies to address this seems extremely challenging, but I think highly worth the effort.
Speaking as a teacher in Texas, I can say that there's definitely been a rough transition period (we started the pone ban last year 25-26), but it subsides over time. Most students were experiencing real withdrawals, many of them clamoring to go to the bathroom to take a hit off their phone. Many of them were fidgety and lacked the social skills to interact with others in a whole some manner, leading to outbursts and conflicts. The Fall of 2025 was no fun.
That said, the quickest change has fortunately been social and behavioral. Kids are talking to one another more, but they are also acting out more. We're suddenly realizing just how delayed they are maturity-wise. Part of this is Covid, but a lot of this is the phone. I find myself frequently teaching them manners and healthy habits along with how to write an essay and read a book.
Academically, I think there's been a small improvement. This is hard to gauge since standardize tests tend to change from year to year, and there could be some creative math going on at the district and state levels. From what I can tell, the improvement has been marginal thus far. For most of last year, kids were recovering from the shell-shock of not having their smartphone and performing more or less the same on assessments. I expect to see better progress this year.
Like you suggest, there're a million things playing out, and the benefits of going phone-free at school will take years to really come out. Now is the time for educators to take advantage of this and ask more from the students.
Lots of science. Something I'm sure of; phone free schools work. I'm 73. School had no phones. Engineering school had slide rules. We built rockets, vaccines, and a more just society (for a while, anyway.) Are things better than that now? Certainly more powerful tools.
Between 2015 and 2025, children’s exposure to smartphones and classroom technology increased enormously. Yet England’s PISA scores did not significantly change.
The latest English study also found that restrictive school phone policies produced no significant improvement in English or maths attainment, wellbeing, sleep, physical activity or disruptive classroom behaviour.
Phones may be distracting. But the English data do not support the claim that they caused declining attainment. England did not decline, and phone restrictions did not improve the measured outcomes.
We took smartphones out of our school in 2019, and it made a huge, positive difference. But then COVID happened. After a year and a half at home, many students returned with very short attention spans and had lost the ability to read for more than a couple of minutes at a time.
We started intentionally rebuilding their stamina for reading, and that seemed to make a real difference in their ability to focus.
Then AI arrived on the scene.
So once again, we’re finding ways to help students strengthen their critical thinking skills and, perhaps even more importantly, rebuild their confidence in their own ability to think, write, solve problems, and figure things out for themselves.
Yes, removing cell phones helped, especially when parents also limit screen time at home. But we’re constantly fighting for our students’ attention and helping them develop the ability to focus deeply.
As a teacher and principal of a tech-free school in Ireland, I’m interested in how children come to enjoy what’s available once the phones are away. If we fill every quiet or difficult moment with entertainment, they get little chance to discover the pleasure of staying with something. I’d love to know whether, over time, they choose to continue a book or conversation even when the phone is available again.
Almost all countries are in decline, and the 10th percentile scores are typically decreasing more than the 90th percentile scores. My guess is that higher-achieving students have better executive skills and manage the phones better, but not without consequences, than lower-achieving students.
Well in Iran, all schools (since the existence of phones) have been completely phone free. Even in universities, using phones in the class is extremely prohibited.
The schools are absolutely phone free, not even allowed with the students.
A phone in a classroom is an exit. What it mostly lets a child leave is the moment of being watched while they get something wrong. Take it away and the first thing back in the room is exposure. Attention comes much later, if it comes. Plenty of children will do a great deal rather than sit still in that gap. Whether a ban helps turns on what the adult does in the ten seconds after a child gets stuck.
The data are very useful but the simplest way to answer your question (as you also note in the article) is to talk to students and teachers. The kids are observably healthier, in class and at home. The adults can see this change and should consider how else they can manage the role and impact of technology in the rest of the child’s daily experience.
Perhaps decline is less associated with devices than it is with the increasing prevalence of a daily diet of Instagram, SnapChat, etc. Sure you can prevent a diabetic student from eating candy at school, but that’s not a cure for the underlying condition.
I’m an elementary school principal and I’m thrilled that this is getting the traction it needed now. We don’t see it as much at our level but if schools can be a shelter from the tech that’s stealing attention spans, our kids will benefit greatly. We already have a no phone or smartwatches more at this age in our school. I will never go back!
It would also be interesting to see if there is any correlation with the OECD Results from TALIS 2024 - The State of Teaching report and some of those findings.
We have a cellphone policy and it does have benefits…the next fire is the chrome book….i plan on addressing my personal experience in a series this year 😅
Phone-free schools should do more than separate students from their phones. They should also explain, in age-appropriate terms, why they are doing it.
This need not mean allowing students access to their phones while trying to persuade them not to use them. The prohibition can remain firm. But students should learn the same concepts used to persuade adults to adopt it: smartphones and their applications are designed to capture attention; sustained learning requires freedom from continual interruption; and friendships and school communities function differently when everyone present is genuinely available to everyone else.
A short instructional component could address attention, habit formation, persuasive design, sleep, compulsive checking and the displacement of face-to-face interaction. Students could also be invited to observe whether a phone-free school day changes their concentration, conversations, conflicts or enjoyment of school.
That would not weaken the policy. It would make the policy intelligible and turn it into an educational opportunity. Schools should not merely place students’ phones in locked pouches while reserving the explanation for parents, administrators and legislators. The students themselves deserve to understand what the intervention is intended to accomplish—and to acquire knowledge they can use when the pouch is eventually removed.
I would suspect that just examining the use of smartphones by the students is insufficient to explain the results, because it misses other critical factors. As the post alludes to, but doesn’t explore, the use of individual screens (laptops, tablets) in class must surely be important, not just if kids watch Tik Tok on them, but because gamified learning platforms emulate the social media experience by design. Furthermore, teachers nowadays rely on short videos to teach, replacing their natural spoken explanation with visual elements drawn on the blackboard. Finally, surely there must be an enormous impact that screen-addicted parents have on their children, which is completely ignored by these studies and (only instinctively) I’d say may dominate the effects completely. Only studying the whole picture will probably reveal how harmful this new world is to human knowledge, deep thought and critical thinking. Unfortunately designing studies to address this seems extremely challenging, but I think highly worth the effort.
Speaking as a teacher in Texas, I can say that there's definitely been a rough transition period (we started the pone ban last year 25-26), but it subsides over time. Most students were experiencing real withdrawals, many of them clamoring to go to the bathroom to take a hit off their phone. Many of them were fidgety and lacked the social skills to interact with others in a whole some manner, leading to outbursts and conflicts. The Fall of 2025 was no fun.
That said, the quickest change has fortunately been social and behavioral. Kids are talking to one another more, but they are also acting out more. We're suddenly realizing just how delayed they are maturity-wise. Part of this is Covid, but a lot of this is the phone. I find myself frequently teaching them manners and healthy habits along with how to write an essay and read a book.
Academically, I think there's been a small improvement. This is hard to gauge since standardize tests tend to change from year to year, and there could be some creative math going on at the district and state levels. From what I can tell, the improvement has been marginal thus far. For most of last year, kids were recovering from the shell-shock of not having their smartphone and performing more or less the same on assessments. I expect to see better progress this year.
Like you suggest, there're a million things playing out, and the benefits of going phone-free at school will take years to really come out. Now is the time for educators to take advantage of this and ask more from the students.
Lots of science. Something I'm sure of; phone free schools work. I'm 73. School had no phones. Engineering school had slide rules. We built rockets, vaccines, and a more just society (for a while, anyway.) Are things better than that now? Certainly more powerful tools.
The elephant in the room is England.
Between 2015 and 2025, children’s exposure to smartphones and classroom technology increased enormously. Yet England’s PISA scores did not significantly change.
The latest English study also found that restrictive school phone policies produced no significant improvement in English or maths attainment, wellbeing, sleep, physical activity or disruptive classroom behaviour.
Phones may be distracting. But the English data do not support the claim that they caused declining attainment. England did not decline, and phone restrictions did not improve the measured outcomes.
The signal is not the cause.
Can I see that study? Sleep didn’t improve because this ban was only in schools, no? Every kid opens their phone the minute they walk out of school.
We took smartphones out of our school in 2019, and it made a huge, positive difference. But then COVID happened. After a year and a half at home, many students returned with very short attention spans and had lost the ability to read for more than a couple of minutes at a time.
We started intentionally rebuilding their stamina for reading, and that seemed to make a real difference in their ability to focus.
Then AI arrived on the scene.
So once again, we’re finding ways to help students strengthen their critical thinking skills and, perhaps even more importantly, rebuild their confidence in their own ability to think, write, solve problems, and figure things out for themselves.
Yes, removing cell phones helped, especially when parents also limit screen time at home. But we’re constantly fighting for our students’ attention and helping them develop the ability to focus deeply.
It feels like a never-ending battle.
As a teacher and principal of a tech-free school in Ireland, I’m interested in how children come to enjoy what’s available once the phones are away. If we fill every quiet or difficult moment with entertainment, they get little chance to discover the pleasure of staying with something. I’d love to know whether, over time, they choose to continue a book or conversation even when the phone is available again.
I posted graphs of PSA scores for countries' 10th and 90th percentiles for math and reading this week: https://briefedbydata.substack.com/p/country-pisa-percentile-results
Almost all countries are in decline, and the 10th percentile scores are typically decreasing more than the 90th percentile scores. My guess is that higher-achieving students have better executive skills and manage the phones better, but not without consequences, than lower-achieving students.
Well in Iran, all schools (since the existence of phones) have been completely phone free. Even in universities, using phones in the class is extremely prohibited.
The schools are absolutely phone free, not even allowed with the students.
A phone in a classroom is an exit. What it mostly lets a child leave is the moment of being watched while they get something wrong. Take it away and the first thing back in the room is exposure. Attention comes much later, if it comes. Plenty of children will do a great deal rather than sit still in that gap. Whether a ban helps turns on what the adult does in the ten seconds after a child gets stuck.
The data are very useful but the simplest way to answer your question (as you also note in the article) is to talk to students and teachers. The kids are observably healthier, in class and at home. The adults can see this change and should consider how else they can manage the role and impact of technology in the rest of the child’s daily experience.
Perhaps decline is less associated with devices than it is with the increasing prevalence of a daily diet of Instagram, SnapChat, etc. Sure you can prevent a diabetic student from eating candy at school, but that’s not a cure for the underlying condition.
The PISA detail that looks most diagnostic is that reading fell furthest on long texts, and fewer students will push through when work gets hard.
Sustained reading is effortful in Kahneman's sense, and effort is always priced against what else is available.
Short form video sets that price very low, and a student carries the comparison into the room whether or not the phone is in their bag.
Which would predict modest effects.
The policy changes access, not the comparison I think.
I’m an elementary school principal and I’m thrilled that this is getting the traction it needed now. We don’t see it as much at our level but if schools can be a shelter from the tech that’s stealing attention spans, our kids will benefit greatly. We already have a no phone or smartwatches more at this age in our school. I will never go back!
It would also be interesting to see if there is any correlation with the OECD Results from TALIS 2024 - The State of Teaching report and some of those findings.
We have a cellphone policy and it does have benefits…the next fire is the chrome book….i plan on addressing my personal experience in a series this year 😅
Phone-free schools should do more than separate students from their phones. They should also explain, in age-appropriate terms, why they are doing it.
This need not mean allowing students access to their phones while trying to persuade them not to use them. The prohibition can remain firm. But students should learn the same concepts used to persuade adults to adopt it: smartphones and their applications are designed to capture attention; sustained learning requires freedom from continual interruption; and friendships and school communities function differently when everyone present is genuinely available to everyone else.
A short instructional component could address attention, habit formation, persuasive design, sleep, compulsive checking and the displacement of face-to-face interaction. Students could also be invited to observe whether a phone-free school day changes their concentration, conversations, conflicts or enjoyment of school.
That would not weaken the policy. It would make the policy intelligible and turn it into an educational opportunity. Schools should not merely place students’ phones in locked pouches while reserving the explanation for parents, administrators and legislators. The students themselves deserve to understand what the intervention is intended to accomplish—and to acquire knowledge they can use when the pouch is eventually removed.