This policy also had a worrying side effect. Cell phone bans have led to a significant increase in freshman suspensions, particularly among black students. But disciplinary actions decreased during the second year.
“Cellphone bans are 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 help the children. They go to school more and they get better results on exams.”
Figlio said he was “concerned” about the 16 percent short-term 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 target black students for punishment. It is also unclear from these administrative behavior records whether students initially received warnings or lighter sanctions before being suspended.
The data suggests that students have adapted to the new rules. A year later, student suspensions, including those of black students, returned to what they were before the cellphone ban.
“What we are seeing is a difficult start,” Figlio added. “There was a lot of discipline.”
The study, “The Impact of School Cell Phone Bans on Student Achievement: Evidence from Florida,” is a draft working paper and has not been peer-reviewed. It was due to be released 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 this is the first study to show a causal link between cell phone bans and learning rather than a simple correlation.
Academic gains from the cell phone ban were small, on average less than one percentile point. This is 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 appear until second grade for most students. Academic benefits were greatest for middle 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 information from Advan Research Corp., which collects and analyzes data from mobile phones around the world for commercial purposes, such as to determine the number of people visiting a particular retail store. Researchers were able to obtain this data for schools in a Florida school district and estimate how many students used their cell phones before and after the ban took effect between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Data showed that more than 60% of middle 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 nation’s ten largest school districts are in Florida.) After the ban, that percentage dropped by half, to 30 percent of middle schoolers in the first year and 25 percent in the second year.
Initially, primary school students were less likely to use cell phones and their use at school fell from around 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 figure dropped to about 10 percent afterward.
Average daily smartphone visits to schools, by year and grade level
Florida has not banned cell phones completely in 2023, but has imposed severe restrictions. These restrictions were tightened in 2025 and this further strengthening has not been explored in this paper.
Anti-cell phone policies have become increasingly popular since the pandemic, largely based on our collective adult intuitions that children don’t learn well when consumed by TikTok and SnapChat.
This may be a rare case in public policy, Figlio said, where “data confirms hunches.”
Contact the editor 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. Register for Proof points and others Hechinger Newsletters.
