A new US study tracked 4,600 secondary schools that brought in phone bans. The schools used Yondr pouches — small locking bags where the phone goes at the start of the day and stays until the end. Three years of data, published on 4 May 2026.
The study answers a simple question: when you take phones out of schools, what changes?
What changed
Kids felt better at school. Not straight away — wellbeing actually dipped for the first year as kids adjusted to the new rule. By year three, kids at the schools with bans were slightly happier at school than they had been before.
What didn’t change
Test scores stayed the same. Attendance stayed the same. Bullying stayed the same.
This last one surprised a lot of people. Schools and parents had hoped phone bans would reduce bullying. They didn’t. The reason is probably that most bullying now happens online, after school, in group chats parents and teachers can’t see. Locking the phone away during lessons doesn’t reach any of that.
What was hard
Year one was rough. Kids resisted the new rule. Suspensions went up 16%. Most of the resistance had faded by year three.
What this means for you right now
If your child’s school has just brought a phone ban in and your child is furious about it — making the atmosphere at home miserable, telling you the rule is stupid, fighting about it daily — the data says this is normal for year one. It eases. By the end of the second year most kids stop pushing back. By year three they’re happier at school than they were before the rule existed.
If a school is selling a phone ban as a fix for grades or bullying, the evidence doesn’t support that. If it’s selling it as something that slowly improves how kids feel about being at school, the evidence does.
Phone bans in schools are spreading. The UK made them statutory on 29 April. Several US states and Australian state governments have rolled them out in the last year. France, the Netherlands and parts of Canada have moved the same way. If your child’s school doesn’t have a phone rule yet, the conversation is probably coming.
The next study to watch is the one Ofcom has commissioned on the first year of the UK’s Online Safety Act, due alongside its platform-response report this month.
