Limiting access to cellphones could help students' grades, social skills and early development, experts say

Cellphones are a staple of American life in 2024, but research shows in-class cellphone use can have a negative impact on students' grades, social skills, emotional development and mental health. Many educators, school officials and politicians believe cellphone use should be restricted at school, while some parents oppose such bans as they believe it would restrict direct access to their children in the case of an emergency. 

More than 70% of high school teachers say students being distracted by their cellphones in the classroom is a major problem, according to a recent study by Pew Research Center. Similar findings in a Study.com survey, which asked 1,000 middle and high school teachers about the impact of policies limiting cellphone use in the classroom, found that 68% of educators nationwide saw improved classroom management with strict cellphone policies, 76% said such policies boosted focus and learning and 70% said stricter policies enhanced safety and reduced bullying and anxiety.

Children ages 8-12 in the United States spend on average four to six hours a day watching or using screens, while teens spend up to nine hours, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Moreover, nearly 20% of children and teenagers ages 3-17 in the United States have some sort of mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral disorder, while suicidal behaviors among high school students increased more than 40% in the decade before 2019, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. 

"Essentially, when digital consumption is that high, it's really getting in the way of our brains' natural development to strengthen skills as we get older, and they end up, for many people, almost arrested in development," Dr. Judy Ho, a clinical neuropsychologist and professor at Pepperdine University, who has conducted extensive research on children and teen development, told Fox News Digital. "More and more kids are struggling with attentional issues, even if they don't meet criteria for something like ADHD." 

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Amid mental health concerns, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has asked Congress to put a tobacco-style label on social media platforms detailing the risks for young users similar to alcohol and cigarettes. 

Dana Bryson, SVP of Social Impact at Study.com, told Fox News Digital that teachers in schools with flexible policies were 21% more likely to spend more than an hour a week managing student cellphone use.

"You think about what that educator could do with another hour in a week. That's precious time," she said. "It could be tutoring someone one on one, grading papers, preparing for a lesson plan and that, cumulatively, over time, is a lot of time." 

By relying less on digital devices, Dr. Ho argued that people can rewire their brains to create deeper connections which would lead to better educational outcomes, social development and overall wellness for students. 

"We're constantly doing what we believe is multitasking, but actually that doesn't really exist from a neuropsychological perspective, it's really about switching tasks back and forth super quickly," she said. "When we think we're multitasking, that actually really tires out our brain and makes it less efficient over time."

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"People are not paying attention in class and so then, they're not getting the learning that they really should," she added. "Over time, they also miss out on important emotional regulation skills. When they are upset, distressed or stressed about something, they go right to the phone instead of using other coping strategies that may be more helpful. So then, there's no diversity in coping strategies either and overall we're building a less, resilient population."

Florida became the first state in 2023 to enact a state law banning cellphones in classrooms, with Louisiana and South Carolina following suit, according to an Education Week analysis. Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Virginia have laws in place that require school districts or state education departments to adopt policies around digital device usage. Alabama, Connecticut and Washington state have policies that strongly encourage districts to adopt cell-phone use restrictions, while Arkansas, Delaware and Pennsylvania incentivize districts to restrict the use of cellphones during the school day. 

In June, California Governor Gavin Newsom said he plans to build on a law he signed in 2019 that gave school districts the power to limit or ban students' use of smartphones during school hours, pointing to statements from the Biden administration that social media harms the mental health of children. Newsom said he would work with the state's Democratic-controlled legislature to pass a measure to restrict smartphone use in schools, but the California School Boards Association said that school districts, rather than the state, should decide whether to regulate smartphone use in classrooms.

In New York, students are currently allowed to bring their cellphones to school, with every school in charge of establishing its own cellphone policy, according to NYC 311. But, NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks said a ban could come into effect as early as January 2025, Fox 5 NY reported.  

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Dr. Ho said she is in favor of policies that restrict students from using their cellphones at school, but also said parents can mitigate digital exposure at a young age. She believes that the longer parents can delay giving a child a phone of their own, the better, because it allows children to connect more meaningfully with their peers and teachers. 

"They're going to take away a lot more from school than they otherwise would, and they might actually start to enjoy it more," she said. "It just causes you to experience your life in a completely different way, and it's going to help a lot in terms of developing more important skills later on."

Dr. Ho also discussed the dangers of "passive consumption" of social media, which increases the risk of social anxiety and depression among young people, especially adolescent girls who might turn to social media for self-validation, emotional fulfillment or distraction, 

"I think that over reliance on digital media to soothe, calm and distract us when we don't want to be doing something that we'd rather not do, it's really causing a cascade of different problems and not only is it affecting learning, it's also affecting social skills development," she said. 

"They're constantly going to social media and then taking away these lessons that are likely not true and that increases their risk for mental health concerns as well as increases their risk for escapist coping, which oftentimes includes alcohol and drugs," she added. 

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Fox News' Landion Mion contributed to this report.