Student Cellphone Bans Are Spreading Across the Globe, With 39 U.S. States and 106 Countries Now Prohibiting Phones in Class | National News
As students gear up for the new school year, more than 900 million of them in the U.S. and around the world will take part in an expanding experiment: cellphone bans. Eight years after France put in place the first comprehensive school cellphone ban, 106 countries now have them – in places as farflung as Bhutan, Bolivia and Belarus, according to UNESCO. In the U.S., 39 states ban cellphones for schoolchildren during the school day. Some of the studies revealed that students without phones at school show improved academic performance and are victimized less by bullying. But others found no significant changes for student achievement or mental health. “The jury is out,” says Sonia Livingstone, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who says she finds it puzzling that so many bans are being enacted with scant evidence that they do much good. What Prompted the Phone-Free Movement The spike in political efforts to ban phones in schools coincides with a global reckoning over the effects of excessive …
