School phone bans don’t boost grades or wellbeing, study suggests

Banning phones in schools is not linked to pupils getting higher grades or having better mental wellbeing, the first study of its kind suggests.

Students’ sleep, classroom behaviour, exercise or how long they spend on their phones overall also seems to be no different for schools with phone bans and schools without, the academics found.

But they did find that spending longer on smartphones and social media in general was linked with worse results for all of those measures.

The first study in the world to look at school phone rules alongside measures of pupil health and education feeds into a fierce debate that has played out in homes and schools in recent years.

Dr Victoria Goodyear, the study’s lead author, told the BBC the findings are not “against” smartphone bans in schools, but “what we’re suggesting is that those bans in isolation are not enough to tackle the negative impacts”.

She said the “focus” now needs to be on reducing how much time students spent on their phones, adding: “We need to do more than just ban phones in schools.”