The problems with a school phone ban: a research perspective

“My message [to the Department for Education] would be to try to find a way to give schools more autonomy and agency because [the statutory school phone ban] is undermining schools’ ability to do the best practice for their context.”

So says Jessica Ringrose, lead author of a University College London (UCL) study investigating the impact of blanket smartphone bans in schools.

The research was conducted in summer/autumn 2025, before the government announced earlier this year that it would make guidance banning phones in schools statutory.

Some have welcomed the clarity of a statutory ban, though unions have warned that schools will need extra funding to be able to implement the policy properly, through investment in lockable phone pouches or lockers, for example.

Is a blanket phone ban the right approach?

However, after surveying students, teachers and parents and conducting in-depth case studies in five schools, Ringrose and colleagues now suggest an alternative to a universal ban: a framework to support schools to implement phone policies as they see fit.

Their survey of 732 students, 27 education staff and 41 parents, found, unsurprisingly, that students on the whole did not support blanket bans on smartphones in school, while teachers and parents did.

Phone bans shift the responsibility to prevent digital harms from technology companies on to schools, the researchers argue, and have “unintended consequences”, such as eroding trust between young people and adults, and reducing opportunities for digital literacy. These unintended consequences are particularly likely in schools without the resources to store phones securely, Ringrose says.

Most of the students surveyed agreed with the idea that phones should not be used in lessons, she adds, but felt blanket bans “undermine trust that the student has the capacity to use their phone in a responsible way”.

“There may also be less opportunity for young people to talk about digital harm at school,” Ringrose says. “For example, in one of the schools they said they had seen a massive reduction in incidents [involving phones], but then the kids were saying, ‘Well, that’s because they’re not hearing about it.’”

Phone bans in schools (and the related issue of social media access for under-16s) have been hotly debated in recent years.

A University of Birmingham study earlier this year suggested schools spend more than 100 hours a week managing students’ phone use - though this was the case whether or not their phone policies were defined as “restrictive” or “permissive”.

Meanwhile, a large-scale US study recently found that while a policy of locking phones away in school did reduce phone use, it did not result in significant improvements in behaviour, attendance or academic outcomes.

Overall, the research picture suggests that implementing a statutory phone ban in schools will not be straightforward - nor will it be a silver bullet in tackling challenges around safeguarding, behaviour and attention.

What the research says about making it work

Nevertheless, schools in England will be expected to enforce the ban from September. So, what does this latest research tell us about how to do that most effectively?

Ringrose sees a particular challenge in asking schools to outlaw phones without providing them with the cash to put the infrastructure - lockers, pouches, etc - in place to support the process.

Her study found that in some schools that had banned phones without a place to store the devices, the policy “became ‘you cannot bring your phone to school premises’,” Ringrose explains, “and the direction the school gave was to buy a brick phone [non-smart phone] or AirTag your child”.

Children at schools with policies that did not allow them to have a smartphone on premises at all raised concerns about their travel to school, the research found.

Together with Life Lessons, which helps schools to design personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education lessons, the researchers have designed a “pupil-centred digital use policy framework”, recommended for schools to use before they ban phones.

While originally designed as an alternative to implementing an outright ban, this framework can still help schools to get ready to meet statutory requirements ahead of September.

It recommends beginning with a comprehensive consultation with students, parents and teachers, to build a phone policy that addresses the anxieties of each group.

It then advises using survey responses to identify where students want more support in their digital literacy from the curriculum, and providing staff with training around digital wellbeing and safety.

The boundaries of any policy must be clear; it must make the intended impact of the rules transparent, and the consequences for not meeting them proportionate and consistent.

Finally, the policy must be reviewed regularly, with input from students.

“Parents are anxious,” Ringrose says. “They have a right to be anxious about social media and its toxicities, but [blanket bans] ultimately don’t empower young people to self-regulate, to be able to encounter and defend against [issues they might face online].”

Ringrose is aware there are some limitations to the research, given that it was undertaken before the statutory ban was announced.

“Look, we were looking at it when it wasn’t a statutory ban, but these are some of the problems we are already finding,” she says.

“We don’t actually know how young people are going to navigate this moving forward, but this raises some questions, some red flags and some points for building a better route forward.”