In early 2024, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed a law requiring all school districts and charter schools to ban cellphone use in classrooms by March 2025.
But a lot of students have already begun feeling the affects of the policy restrictions, when schools across the state became early adopters in September.
Even outside of Minnesota, a resounding majority of policymakers, parents, and teachers approve of the new law.
According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 68% of U.S. adults support a classroom ban on cellphones for middle and high school students.
When asked why respondents supported the ban, 70% believed that students would “develop better social skills,” 50% thought students would “be less likely to cheat,” and 39% hoped that it would “reduce bullying in schools.”
For child and adolescent psychiatrist Josh Stein, excessive phone use leads to poor mental health.
“Social media — when it starts to pass four hours and five hours — we see that symptoms of mental illness start to really increase,” Stein said on behalf of PrairieCare, a treatment organization in Minnesota.
“There’s no safe place anymore, and especially [with] teenagers,” Stein added, “it’s a 24-hour cycle of using a phone.”
Across the state, the ban is taking shape in different ways.
In Edina, CBS News journalist Susan-Elizabeth Littlefield reported that phones must be out of view completely. But 11 minutes away in Minnetonka, phones are only banned when educators are teaching.
Select schools only allow phones during bell breaks and lunch periods. While some students welcomed the respite from their phones, others said that it would be too hard to enforce.
“I feel like it’s just too late,” a high school student in St. Paul told the Star Tribune.
“I’m still going to keep my phone,” another student said. “Our generation needs our phones.”
As March 2025 approaches and policies take hold, one nonprofit — LiveMore, ScreenLess — is stepping up to help students ease into the transition.
This fall, the nonprofit partnered with Two Rivers High School in Mendota Heights to start the school’s first digital wellbeing club.
“Our mission is to continue to bring digital wellbeing forward, and then our vision is young people thriving in a digital age,” Katherine Meyers — founder of LiveMore ScreenLess and former teacher of 25 years — told CBS News Chicago.
The “phone free” club meets twice, sometimes three times, a month to facilitate discussions on screen use, accountability, and mental health.
Club members said that they felt more focused and less stressed — and they even began turning their phone off outside of the classroom too.
“[A phone] is a really great piece of communication,” high school junior Olivia Kanavati told CBS News Chicago. “At the same time it’s draining hours and wasting away time that I could be spending with family, or on school, or with friends.”
Which U.S. states have cellphone bans in schools?
As of December 2024, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina, California, Ohio, and Virginia have passed similar legislation restricting phones in classrooms.
As school phone ban proposals continue to sweep the country, Eric Alcera — the chief medical officer of a behavioral health hospital in New Jersey — told Newsweek that the policies warrant a nuanced approach.
Namely due to questions regarding safety.
“Safety is paramount for parents and kids, and our current climate of gun violence, war and political divide further increases family anxiety, and parental ‘safetyism’ becomes challenging for school officials to develop policies that some may perceive as favoring education over safety,” Alcera added.
Alcera is not alone. A top concern for students — and their parents — is the use of phones in the event of an emergency.
And it is a concern worth serious consideration.
A recent study by the American College of Surgeons found that school shootings in America more than quadrupled over the past 53 years.
And Alcera reasoned that emergencies are not always necessitated by violence.
“Children now can use phones for health-related reasons, such as apps for monitoring common pediatric medical conditions like asthma, diabetes, migraines and obesity,” Alcera said.
With redirection and reframing, Alcera believes that phones can be retooled as a classroom resource — not as a distraction.
Smartphones, Alcera said, allow students “access to educational resources” and help "increase digital literacy, which is relevant as global dependence on technology increases."
“Children need to be taught responsible cellphone and social media usage, preferably before they get to high school,” Alcera emphasized.
“Technology can be positive if children develop an informed and healthy understanding and perspective of it.”
Header image via Daniel Diaz Guerrero/Envato Elements
