The policy also had a worrying side effect. The cell phone bans led to a significant increase in student suspensions during the first year, especially among black students. But disciplinary actions decreased during the second year.
“Banning cell phones is not a silver bullet,” said David Figlio, an economist at the University of Rochester and one of the study’s co-authors. “But they seem to be helping the children. They attend school more and do better on tests.”
Figlio said he was “concerned” about the short-term 16 percent increase in suspensions of black students. What is not clear from this data analysis is whether black students were more likely to violate the new cell phone rules, or whether teachers were more likely to punish black students. It is also not clear from these administrative conduct records whether students first received warnings or lighter punishments before being suspended.
The data suggests that students adapted to the new rules. A year later, student suspensions, including those of black students, returned to what they were before the cell phone ban.
“What we see is a difficult start,” added Figlio. “There was a lot of discipline.”
The study, “The Impact of School Cell Phone Bans on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Florida,” is a draft working paper and has not been peer-reviewed. It was scheduled to be distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research on October 20, and the authors shared a draft with me in advance. Figlio and his co-author Umut Özek of RAND believe it is the first study to show a causal connection between the cell phone ban and learning, rather than simply a correlation.
The academic benefits from banning cell phones were small, less than one percentile point, on average. That’s equivalent to moving from the 50th percentile on math and reading tests (in the middle) to the 51st percentile (still near the middle), and this small gain didn’t emerge until the second year for most students. Academic benefits were greatest for high school students, white students, Hispanic students, and male students. Academic gains for black and female students were not statistically significant.
I was surprised to learn that there is data on student cell phone use at school. The authors of this study used data from Advan Research Corp., which collects and analyzes mobile phone data from around the world for commercial purposes, such as determining how many people visit a particular retail store. The researchers were able to obtain this data from schools in a Florida school district and estimate how many students used their cell phones before and after the ban went into effect between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
The data showed that more than 60 percent of high school students, on average, used their phones at least once during the school day before the 2023 ban in this particular Florida district, which was not named but described as one of the 10 largest districts in the country. (Five of the nations 10 largest school districts are in Florida.) After the ban, that number dropped by half, to 30 percent of high school students in their first year and 25 percent in their second year.
For starters, elementary school students were least likely to use cell phones, and their use at school fell from about 25 percent of students before the ban to 15 percent after the ban. More than 45 percent of high school students used their phones before the ban and that number fell to about 10 percent afterward.
Average daily smartphone visits in schools, by year and grade level
Florida did not enact a complete ban on cell phones in 2023, but imposed severe restrictions. Those restrictions were hardened in 2025 and that additional adjustment was not studied in this article.
Anti-cell phone policies have become increasingly popular since the pandemic, largely based on our collective adult hunches that children don’t learn well when consumed by TikTok and SnapChat.
This is perhaps a rare case in public policy, Figlio said, where “the data supports the hunches.”
Contact the staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about cell phone bans was produced by The Hechinger Reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Enroll in Test points and others Hechinger Newsletters.
