The Fine Print: Do Smartphone-Bans in Schools Actually Benefit Students?

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Welcome to my monthly opinion column, The Fine Print, where I dive into a law, policy, or court case and break down how it actually affects our world today, both nationally and locally. From Supreme Court rulings to Congressional legislation, I connect the dots between legal decisions and real life. As a local high school student passionate about law and current events, I’m here to make sense of the legal world, one case at a time.

As part of the agreement on New York’s 2026 state budget, NY Governor Kathy Hochul has included a statewide, “bell-to-bell” restriction on smartphones in K-12 schools. This policy prohibits the use of smartphones or “other internet-enabled personal devices” such as smartwatches on school grounds in K-12 schools for the entire school day, including during lunch, study hall, and between classes. The budget also allocates $13.5 million for schools in need of assistance to purchase storage solutions for students’ smartphones. Still, the policy allows for some caveats, including ensuring that parents can contact their children during the day when necessary, and exempting students with language barriers or medical conditions who require access to internet-enabled devices. Overall, the policy is part of a largely bipartisan national movement to limit phone use in schools, prompted by concerns about the mental health and decreasing attention spans of today’s youth.

Arguments for smartphone bans in schools often cite reduced distractions in the classroom and improved academic performance as a result, reduced harm caused by cyberbullying and social media usage, increased face-to-face social interaction, and reduced burden on teachers to manage phone use during class. It is true that smartphone restrictions during class time have seen some success in schools that had previously implemented them, with many school leaders reporting benefits such as increased student participation in class, according to The New York Times. However, smartphone bans for the entire school day are not necessarily the most effective way to benefit students in the long-term.

For one thing, New York’s ban applies during lunch, study hall, and in between classes, periods which are generally considered time belonging to students. While many students may spend this time on social media platforms, many others use it to keep in touch with parents and friends, or stay up-to-date with employers and other out-of-school commitments. This is especially true for high school students, many of whom have jobs after school. Additionally, concerns about cyberbullying and other harms caused by smartphone and social media use would not cease to be problems with a smartphone ban that doesn’t control students outside of school, where the same risks remain.

There are also significant safety concerns to consider when completely removing students’ access to their phones throughout the school day, with many parents worried that they will be unable to quickly reach their children during a crisis, such as a school shooting. As school crises such as shootings have only become more common, the desire for students to have access to their smartphones in case of an emergency has grown more significant. Groups such as the New York Civil Liberties Union have also expressed concerns that the ban “puts students at an increased risk of police searches and surveillance,” potentially violating students’ rights to privacy without good reason.

But most importantly, there is simply no way to remove the threat that smartphones pose to student health and focus from their everyday lives. When students return home, sitting down to do their homework, their phones will be right beside them. When they graduate from school and live independently, attending university or getting a job, they will almost always have constant access to their phones. In fact, today, many college courses and employers may require it. But by this time, students will not know how to manage the desire to pick up their smartphone and spend endless hours scrolling through social media, or how to deal with the harm caused by cyberbullying and online threats, against the very real need to be productive and focused. For 12 years, their schools will have done that work for them.

In New Jersey, according to the New Jersey Monitor, a bill similar to the policy now in place in New York also proposes to restrict smartphone use in schools, though it has some exceptions for emergencies, and gives school districts flexibility in deciding whether or not to apply the ban in between instructional periods. As such, it is important to reach out to state legislators and local district Boards of Education to ensure that legislation aimed at restricting smartphone use in schools is actually effective, and does not hinder important communication necessary for students to remain safe and to thrive in an increasingly digital world.

The purpose of schools in K-12 education is largely to give students the skills necessary to prepare them for independent life after graduation. Schools are certainly in need of solutions to address rampant smartphone use that disrupts instructional time, but these solutions must teach students how to responsibly manage the constant temptation to pick up their phones in the long-term, while also considering safety issues and the very real and reasonable need to communicate digitally when instructional time has ended. Forcibly restricting smartphone use in schools robs students of the opportunity to learn how to combat the threat posed by phones after school administrators can no longer do the heavy-lifting for them.