Lockable pouches keep kids off phones during class, but don’t improve test scores, study finds
Researchers focused on schools that used lockable pouches to store students' phones during the way.
Schools that banned cell phones through lockable pouches succeeded in limiting how often kids used their phones, but test scores didn’t improve, a new national study found.
The study, a working paper published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, offers a broad review of cell phone bans, which have become increasingly prevalent amid concerns about kids’ social media addiction and classroom distractions.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has voiced support for a so-called “bell-to-bell” ban advancing through the Pennsylvania General Assembly; most states have passed similar measures.
But data on the results of the bans have been relatively limited, with most research coming from outside the United States.
The new study — which was conducted by researchers at Stanford University, Duke University, and the University of Michigan, alongside University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth — suggests bans aren’t a cure-all.
To evaluate the effect of cell phone bans, which vary depending on the school, researchers focused on a “well-defined” method: lockable Yondr pouches. The study compared schools that adopted bans requiring students to lock phones in the pouches during the day with similar schools that didn’t adopt them.
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Using data supplied by Yondr for 4,600 schools that bought pouches starting in 2014, along with GPS phone tracking data for a sample of 40,000 schools between 2019 and 2026, researchers found a 30% decline in cell phone pings on school campuses by the third year into the phone bans, according to the study. It noted the data also includes adult phone use, and that phones ping when receiving email or messages, even if students aren’t using them.
Along with responses from teacher surveys, the “results indicate that Yondr adoption meaningfully reduces in-school phone use,” even if enforcement is imperfect, the study said.
Teachers in schools that implemented Yondr, meanwhile, reported a large increase in satisfaction with their schools’ phone policy after the bans were adopted —from 26% to 75%, according to the study.
But in other areas, the results were mixed. Suspension rates, for instance, increased by 16% in the year the bans were adopted; the rates dropped after that, the study said.
There was also temporarily disruption to student well-being, which fell in the first year of the bans. But students reported a better sense of well-being by the second year.
What didn’t improve over the three-year period was students’ achievement on standardized tests. The study found “average effects on test scores that are close to zero over the first three years following adoption.” There was a “modest” positive impact on high school math scores, the study said, but in middle school, the effects were “generally negative.”
The study also found no significant benefits to the bans when it came to student attendance, or perceptions of the prevalence of online bullying.
Researchers offered some possible explanations for the lack of improvements — including that students may have shifted their attention to “digital distractions that are not blocked,” like social media accessed through computers.
And because the study only considered three years of data, “longer-run effects remain an open question,” it said.
