Reducing mobile phone use in schools makes ‘no significant difference’ to student wellbeing

A new study finds that restrictive cell phone policies in schools do not improve students’ mental health.

The research also found that enforcing rules around mobile phones in schools costs staff more than 100 hours a week.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham found no noticeable differences in measures such as anxiety, sadness or optimism between Year 8 and Year 10 students, regardless of whether their secondary school had strict or lenient mobile phone rules.

It comes after the government recently updated its guidance to advocate against phone use in schools and announced plans to consult on an Australian-style social media ban on under-16s.

The research involved 20 secondary schools that were carefully matched according to their characteristics, 13 of which implemented restrictive policies and seven adopted more permissive approaches.

Permissive schools generally allowed phone use during recess times, while restrictive institutions banned cell phones throughout the entire school day or within school grounds.

Schools with more restrictive rules reported spending an average of 102 hours per week enforcing those rules and imposing behavioral sanctions if they were violated.

However, schools with more lenient rules reported spending an average of 108 hours managing phone use, with more time spent on things like administering policies and recording phone-related incidents.

The findings show that new ways to manage phones in schools are needed, the researchers said.

Professor Victoria Goodyear, lead researcher on the Smart Schools Study from the University of Birmingham, said: “School phone policies, whether permissive or restrictive, are a huge burden for a school to enforce.

“The high proportion of time teachers spend managing phone use or phone-related behavior throughout the school day is potentially diverted from other types of activities that promote wellbeing, such as pastoral support or extra-curricular activities. So we need new ways of approaching adolescent smartphone use in schools.”

The researchers also said that restrictive phone policies save schools some money due to reduced time spent administering them; Restrictive rules are estimated to cost an average of £94 less per student per year than looser rules.

Professor Hareth Al-Janabi, senior study author and head of the Health Economics Unit at the University of Birmingham, said: “While there may be a small difference in the resources required to implement a restrictive policy, we are under no illusion that policing phone use is a huge burden for schools and a stricter policy is not a silver bullet.”

Data collection for the study took place between 2022 and 2023, before the former Tory government introduced an extralegal directive banning phones in schools.

According to data from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (Dsit), 99.9 percent of primary schools and 90 percent of secondary schools have mobile phone policies.

However, 58 percent of middle school students reported unauthorized use of cell phones during at least some classes; this rate increased to 65 percent for students in the fourth cycle.

Schools watchdog Ofsted will be instructed to examine schools’ mobile phone policies and how effectively they were implemented during inspections that have been criticized by teaching unions.

Some campaigners are calling for a complete legal ban on bringing phones into schools, while others advocate storing phones in lockable bags when students arrive.

On Monday, teachers’ union NASUWT backed a full legal ban on phones in schools.

Professor Goodyear told the Press Association: “There is a lack of evidence in this area and as researchers we tend to say that all new policies should be supported by robust evaluation and evidence informing this.”