School Phone Bans Hit 36 States: What the Evidence Says

As of late August 2026, 36 US states ban or limit student cellphone use in K-12 classrooms, and 45 have some statewide law or policy on the question, according to Ballotpedia's tracker. The research behind the wave is thinner than the politics: the best US evidence so far shows phone use at school drops sharply, discipline spikes in year one, and average test-score effects are small or close to zero. Wellbeing gains are real in some studies and absent in others.

That gap matters. States have moved from a single law in 2023 to near-universal coverage in three years, largely on the strength of a clear intuition and strong public support. The studies that could confirm or complicate that intuition are only now arriving, and most of the newest ones are working papers that have not yet been through peer review. Here is what the policy map looks like, what the evidence actually shows, and what that means for families and school leaders living with these rules.

How many states ban phones in school as of 2026?

Ballotpedia's State policies on cellphone use in K-12 public schools tracker is the most complete public count. As of August 27, 2026, it reports:

• 36 states ban or limit cellphones in classrooms.
• 5 states (Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota and New Mexico) require districts to adopt a phone policy but do not specify what it must say.
• 4 states (Connecticut, Washington, Idaho and Montana) only encourage districts to limit phones.

That leaves five states with no statewide policy in Ballotpedia's table: Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wyoming. Pennsylvania is the odd one out, because it funds restrictions without mandating them: in July 2024, Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a bill allocating $100 million for a grant program schools could use to buy phone-storage pouches.

Florida started the trend. Its House Bill 379, enacted May 9, 2023, barred students from using phones during instructional time. A 2025 update to Florida's statute extended that to the whole school day for elementary and middle school students, while high schoolers remain restricted during instructional time. The 2026 legislative season added or tightened rules in a long list of states, including:

• New Jersey (S3695, January 8), which requires policies prohibiting non-academic device use on school grounds during the school day.
• Michigan (HB 4141, February 10), which bans phones during instructional time starting in the 2026-27 school year.
• Kansas (HB 2299, March 20), which requires devices to be turned off and stored away from students for the school day.
• Utah (SB 69, March 18), which extended its ban to cover the whole school day.
• Virginia (SB 108, April 6), which moved to a bell-to-bell standard.
• Maine (LD 2212, April 10), which replaced a policy-only requirement with a bell-to-bell ban.
• Georgia (HB 1009, May 5), which extends its K-8 ban to high schools from July 1, 2027.
• Illinois (SB 2427, July 28), which requires school-time bans by the start of the 2027-28 school year.

Is every "ban" the same?

No, and headline counts hide the difference. Ballotpedia labels many laws a "statewide ban," but the underlying text varies widely. Some laws restrict phones only during class, while others lock them away from the first bell to dismissal. That distinction is the single most important variable for anyone trying to compare outcomes across states.

Policy tier	What it requires	Example states (per the enacted text)
Instructional-time restriction	No phone use during class; phones may be allowed at lunch or between classes	Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin
Full school day ("bell-to-bell")	No access or use from the start of the school day to dismissal, with exceptions	Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Virginia, Maine
Split by grade level	Stricter rules for younger students than high schoolers	Florida (all-day for elementary and middle; class time for high school, since 2025), Hawaii (all-day for elementary and middle; class time for high school), Illinois (districts may allow high schoolers phones at lunch and between classes)
Policy required, content open	Districts must adopt some phone policy	Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico
Encouragement only	State guidance or executive request, no mandate	Connecticut, Washington, Idaho, Montana

Most laws carve out exceptions for medical needs, emergencies, and students with individualized education plans (IEPs). The trend line is toward the stricter end: Utah, Virginia and Maine all moved from partial rules to bell-to-bell standards in 2026.

What does the research say about achievement and attention?

The two strongest US studies to date agree on one thing: bans do reduce phone use at school. They differ on how much that shows up in test scores.

Florida, district-level evidence. In NBER Working Paper 34388 (October 2025), economists David Figlio and Umut Özek used student-level data from one of the 10 largest US school districts, a large urban county district in Florida, to study the state's 2023 ban. According to the NBER Digest summary, the first year showed no statistically significant change in test scores. In the second year, scores rose by 1.1 percentiles in the spring semester, with a 1.3-percentile gain in middle and high schools. Unexcused absences fell, and the authors suggest better attendance could explain as much as half of the test-score improvement. Device use between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on school days fell by about two-thirds.

National evidence from lockable pouches. A larger study, NBER Working Paper 35132 (April 2026) by Hunt Allcott, E. Jason Baron, Thomas Dee, Angela L. Duckworth, Matthew Gentzkow and Brian Jacob, evaluated schools that adopted lockable phone pouches. It combined surveys, GPS pings, test scores, school records and sales data from the largest pouch provider. The authors found pouches "substantially" reduce phone use, but average test-score effects were "consistently close to zero." High schools saw modest positive effects, particularly in math, while middle schools saw small negative effects. The study found little evidence of effects on attendance, self-reported classroom attention or perceived online bullying.

Both are NBER working papers, which have not been peer reviewed. Treat them as the best available early evidence, not settled findings.

Do phone bans improve student wellbeing?

This is where the evidence is most contested, and the most honest answer is "it depends on the study, the ban and the time horizon."

England: no wellbeing difference. The SMART Schools study, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe in February 2025, compared 1,227 students aged 12 to 15 across 30 English secondary schools, 20 with restrictive and 10 with permissive phone policies. Restrictive schools cut in-school phone use by about 40 minutes a day and in-school social media use by about half an hour. But total daily and weekly use did not differ, and neither did mental wellbeing, anxiety, depression, sleep, physical activity, attainment or classroom disruption. The authors concluded their findings "do not provide evidence to support the use of school policies that prohibit phone use during the school day in their current form." One more finding matters: across all schools, more phone and social media time was associated with worse wellbeing, sleep and attainment. This is peer-reviewed but cross-sectional. It compares schools at one point in time, so it cannot prove cause and effect in either direction.

Norway: gains for girls. Sara Abrahamsson's study of Norwegian middle schools (Norwegian School of Economics discussion paper, 2024) used an event-study design and found that bans reduced girls' use of health care for psychological symptoms, cut bullying among both boys and girls, and improved girls' GPA, with larger effects for girls from lower socio-economic backgrounds. It is a discussion paper, not a peer-reviewed journal article.

US pouches: worse first, better later. The Allcott-Baron national study found student subjective wellbeing fell in the first year after pouch adoption, consistent with short-term disruption, then turned positive in later years.

Study	Design	Peer reviewed?	Phone use	Wellbeing	Achievement
Figlio & Özek, Florida (NBER w34388, 2025)	Quasi-experimental, one large district	No (working paper)	Down about two-thirds in school hours	Not the focus	No change year 1; +1.1 percentiles in year 2
Allcott, Baron et al., national pouches (NBER w35132, 2026)	Staggered difference-in-differences	No (working paper)	Substantially reduced	Falls in year 1, positive later	Close to zero on average
Goodyear et al., SMART Schools, England (Lancet Reg. Health – Europe, 2025)	Cross-sectional, 30 schools	Yes	Lower in school, same overall	No difference	No difference
Abrahamsson, Norway (NHH discussion paper, 2024)	Event study, administrative data	No (discussion paper)	Not reported in abstract	Fewer mental health visits for girls; less bullying	Girls' GPA improves

What are the costs nobody campaigned on?

The clearest downside in the data is discipline. In Florida, suspensions rose 25% in the first month of the ban compared with the previous year, and in-school suspensions of Black male students at the schools most affected by the ban rose 30%, according to the NBER Digest. Those effects faded after the first year. The national pouch study also found disciplinary incidents increased in year one before fading.

Enforcement is the other hidden cost. In a Pew Research Center survey of teachers conducted in fall 2023, 72% of high school teachers called cellphone distraction a major problem in their classrooms, compared with 33% of middle school and 6% of elementary teachers. Among teachers whose schools had a phone policy, 60% of high school teachers said it was very or somewhat difficult to enforce. That enforcement burden is part of why states are shifting from "no phones in class" to "no phones at all": a rule that keeps devices locked away is easier to police than one that asks teachers to referee usage all day.

Why is public support rising if the evidence is mixed?

Because adults see the problem clearly and the policy is cheap. Pew's survey of 9,750 US adults, fielded May 26 to June 1, 2026, found 77% support banning middle and high school students from using phones during class, up from 68% in 2024 and 74% in 2025. Support for all-day bans reached 48%, with 43% opposed. That is the first time Pew found more Americans backing bell-to-bell bans than opposing them, up from 36% support in 2024.

Students see it differently. A Pew survey of 1,458 teens aged 13 to 17, conducted in fall 2025, found 41% support classroom bans and 51% oppose them. Only 17% back all-day bans, and 73% oppose them. Adults, not students, are writing these rules.

What should parents and schools take from this?

The evidence supports a narrower claim than the campaign rhetoric. Phone restrictions reliably reduce phone use during school hours. They do not, on their own, reduce total screen time: the SMART Schools study found no difference in students' overall weekday or weekend use between restrictive and permissive schools. Achievement effects so far are small. Wellbeing effects look positive over multiple years in some settings and absent in others. Our read of the data:

• Judge a ban on year two or three, not year one. Both US studies show an adjustment period with more discipline and, in the pouch study, lower wellbeing before benefits appear.
• Watch discipline data by student group. The Florida suspension spike fell hardest on Black students. Districts should publish suspension numbers alongside any claimed gains.
• Treat school rules as one layer, not the solution. Because total use did not fall in the English study, the home side of the equation still matters. Our guide to screen-time tools like Opal, Brick and ScreenZen covers software options for families, and our comparison of mood-tracking apps covers tools for spotting patterns in how a teen feels.
• Expect the evidence to keep changing. The Florida and national papers are not yet peer reviewed, and several states' bans only took effect this school year. Better data on bell-to-bell policies will take several more years.

The larger point for anyone building in wellness tech: the market has shifted from convincing people that phones distract kids to proving which interventions work, for whom, and at what cost. For a broader look at the appetite for disconnection among adults, see our report on digital detox retreats.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many US states have school cellphone bans in 2026?

As of August 27, 2026, Ballotpedia counts 36 states that ban or limit cellphone use in K-12 classrooms. Another five require districts to adopt some phone policy and four encourage restrictions, for a total of 45 states with a statewide law or policy. The five without one are Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Do school phone bans improve test scores?

Modestly at best, based on early evidence. A Florida study found no change in year one and a 1.1-percentile gain in year two, partly from better attendance. A national study of lockable pouches found average test-score effects close to zero, with small gains in high schools and small losses in middle schools. Neither study has been peer reviewed yet.

Do phone bans help students' mental health?

The evidence is mixed. A Norwegian study found fewer mental health visits and less bullying among girls after bans. A national US pouch study found wellbeing dipped in the first year and improved later. A peer-reviewed English study found no wellbeing difference between restrictive and permissive schools. This is an evolving research area, not settled science, and it is not a substitute for professional mental health advice.

What is a bell-to-bell phone ban?

A bell-to-bell ban prohibits student phone use for the whole school day, from the first bell to dismissal, including lunch and passing periods. It is stricter than an instructional-time rule, which only bars phones during class. Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Virginia and Maine have enacted bell-to-bell-style laws. Most laws include exceptions for emergencies, medical needs and IEPs.

Why did suspensions rise after some phone bans?

Enforcing a new rule creates new violations. In Florida, suspensions rose 25% in the first month of the ban compared with the prior year, with a larger rise for Black male students at heavily affected schools. The increase faded after the first year, a pattern the national pouch study also found, suggesting schools and students settle into the new norm over time.