This fall, students are returning to school amidst tighter cellphone restrictions than ever. From California to Florida, a rare consensus of politicians, educators, and parents is rising against the dangers that smartphones pose to student learning and well-being.
But it is too early to celebrate. Simply banning cellphones is like locking the front door while leaving the back door open.
As an educator who has worked in phone-free schools for decades, I have seen firsthand how the distraction economy survives. Laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets—sometimes handed out by the schools themselves—can connect to the same social media platforms, as well as potent, addictive games, all on a bigger, brighter screen. These devices can also remotely access smartphones and even gaming systems like PlayStation and Xbox.
Firewalls help, but they are frequently no more than low fences. Classroom rules depend heavily on the eagerness of teachers and administrators to enforce them. Many educators look the other way, averse to confrontation, hoping that a distracted student is better than a disruptive one.
Even when students are actually on task, research consistently shows that screens are less effective than paper for deep reading and long-term retention. Students reading on paper can comprehend more complex texts, sustain focus longer, and remember more the next day.
And the effect is immediate: The moment a laptop is open on a desk, students’ attention spans shrink—not just for those using the devices but also for peers in their line of sight. According to a recent PISA study, about two-thirds of U.S. teens say they’re distracted by their own digital devices, and roughly 54 percent say they’re distracted by peers’ usage—a pattern linked to a 15-point drop in math scores in OECD countries.
In my first decade teaching in Massachusetts, I studied public data to find the schools near me where students had the fastest rates of growth from year to year. Again and again, I found the same thing: engaged students but minimal tech. With only a notebook, pencil, and text, students flourished under strong instruction—whether debating literature and history in whole-class discussions or wrestling with STEM problems in small groups while their teachers circulated and coached.
My own 10th grade world history course is hardly tech free. I project instructions and a timer for most activities, so expectations are clear. I post all lessons and resources online in case students need to revisit a topic. Students occasionally use their laptops in class when necessary—for example researching and preparing slides for current-events presentations. But I design most lessons to be device-free for students.
What about AI and the argument that our future will be intertwined with ChatGPT and Claude? The reality, as any teenager will tell you, is that it takes mere hours, if not minutes, to learn how to use AI tools adroitly. Conversely, it takes decades to develop the reading skills needed to be a discerning thinker. As cognitive scientists like Daniel Willingham have argued, attributes like creativity and critical thinking rarely exist in isolation but instead rely on deep foundations of subject-specific content knowledge that build slowly over time.
We need to insist that schools tighten access to all electronics, not just cellphones. The default for our nation’s classrooms needs to be that electronics are away unless they bring a clear benefit. And when students are on devices, teachers need to monitor all screens rather than naively hoping that students will self-police when highly addictive apps are a click away.
If we want to prepare our young people for a future that demands focus, knowledge, and critical thinking, the first steps are simple: Ban the phones, close the laptops, put away the tablets, and let the learning begin.
