05/28/2026
In California, a high school teacher complains that students watch Netflix on their phones during class. In Maryland, a chemistry teacher says students use gambling apps to place bets during the school day.
Around the country, educators say students routinely send Snapchat messages in class, listen to music and shop online, among countless other examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning.
The hold that phones have on adolescents today is well-documented, but teachers say parents are often not aware to what extent students use them inside the classroom. And increasingly, experts are speaking with one voice on the question of how to handle it: Ban phones during classes.
“Students used to have an understanding that you aren’t supposed to be on your phone in class. Those days are gone,” said James Granger, who requires students in his science classes at a Los Angeles-area high school to place their phones in “a cellphone cubby” with numbered slots. “The only solution that works is to physically remove the cellphone from the student.”
Most schools already have rules regulating student phone use, but they are enforced sporadically.
Nationally, 77% of U.S. schools say they prohibit cellphones at school for non-academic use, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
But that number is misleading. It does not mean students are following those bans or all those schools are enforcing them.
A study last year from Common Sense Media found that 97% of kids use their phones during school hours, and that kids say school cellphone policies vary — often from one classroom to another — and aren’t always enforced.
For a ban to work, educators and experts say the school administration must be the one to enforce it and not leave that task to teachers. The Phone-Free Schools Movement, an advocacy group formed last year by concerned mothers, says policies that allow students to keep phones in their backpacks are ineffective.
Source: AP
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