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Rebekah Munro traded in Snapchat for novels this school year.
The Oklahoma teen, 17, said a complete ban on cellphones during the school day that state lawmakers passed in 2025 means she uses more of her free time to read sci-fi and dystopian novels, her favorite genres. She’s less glued to her phone, an Android in a pastel blue case, she said.
Munro is in the narrow minority of teens — 4 in 10 — who support classroom phone bans, according to a nationwide survey out this month from Pew Research Center. And data released Monday by researchers with the University of Southern California found that 78% of teens surveyed reported that their schools have a policy limiting or completely banning phones this year.
Policies range from restrictions on using phones during class to “bell-to-bell” bans that prohibit phone use in the hallways and during lunch.
As the reins tighten on phone use in schools — with some directives coming all the way from state governments — this research offers a glimpse into how teens feel about the attention on cell phone use in schools in recent years. Policymakers and educators credit phone bans with improving school culture as well as focus in the classroom. One study even found phone bans can improve test scores.
But the data indicates that the majority of teens aren’t on board with their school’s phone bans, and support among teens wavers as the bans become more strict. About 73% of students ages 13 to 17 reported to Pew that they opposed “bell-to-bell” bans. However, students may be open to some boundaries: 68% of teens in the USC survey said they preferred rules that require students to put away their phones during class time, with 8% supporting bell-to-bell bans. The USC survey used different questions than the Pew survey.
Phone policies are evolving fast in American schools: 50% of teens said in the USC survey that the rules are different from last year, and enforcement has ramped up. About half of teens in the USC survey said their school’s policy is stricter this school year than last year. About 42% said their school’s rules were “just right,” while 48% said they were too strict, and just 9% said they were too lenient.
“There were very few teens who said they didn’t have rules in place,” said Anna Saavedra, a research scientist with the University of Southern California.
More than 30 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws or executive orders around students using their phones in schools, according to the Phone-Free Schools State Report Card, which tracks state laws governing phones in schools.
In Oklahoma, the ban is limited to this school year, but lawmakers have already introduced legislation, S.B. 1719, to extend the ban permanently. Munro said before the state law some teachers at Santa Fe High School in Edmond banned phones in their classrooms, while others did not.
“It’s really good for us to be able to be actual children and function like actual people,” she said. “I think the school system should definitely keep the phone ban.”
The USC research found that 48% of teens reported that phones are allowed in their schools but not allowed to be out during the day, 42% said their schools don’t allow phones to be used during class time but are allowed during other times, and 5% said phones aren’t allowed on school grounds. The remaining 2% reported no rules at all.
Saavedra said this research indicates these rules are working: Teens in schools with no phones allowed out estimated using devices for 1.3 hours during the school day compared with an estimated 1.6 hours a day for teens in schools with phones allowed during non-instructional time.
“Kids with bell-to-bell bans are using cell phones much less at lunchtime and in hallways,” she said.
Both USC and Pew also asked adults how they felt about phone bans. Both reported a majority of adults support restrictions.
But the majority of both teens and parents also reported in the USC survey that they don’t think the policies have affected them when it comes to issues like a sense of community, relationships between teachers and students, and bullying. Those findings belie the onslaught of attention phone bans have received from policymakers and news stories.
A lack of pushback from the people who have to follow these policies, however, means schools could double down on their efforts, Saavedra said.
“It’s also notable the level of support for having restrictions on cell phone use in classrooms.”
For Munro, the ban in Oklahoma schools has allowed her some distance from Instagram, where she often found herself comparing her own life to the opulent and flawless lifestyles of influencers.
“I definitely get more out of just being in the present and not always constantly looking at social media,” she said. “Being able to be present and being in the moment of where I’m at just makes [life] a little more realistic.”
Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.
