A MART脥NEZ, HOST:
More students than ever are going to class without their cellphones. Thirty-two states have laws limiting personal devices during the day, with 20 of them passing laws this year. NPR's Sequoia Carrillo looks at how classrooms, hallways and cafeterias have changed.
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, BYLINE: Earlier this year, students at Mount Olive Middle School in northern New Jersey made a podcast about their new cellphone ban and submitted it to NPR's Student Podcast Challenge.
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SANIYAH ALAM: Do you think we should have phones during lunch, and what are your thoughts?
CARRILLO: Saniyah Alam and other student journalists interviewed some of their classmates about the policy in their district which makes students leave their phones in their lockers from the beginning of the school day until the end. They wanted to know what about lunch? Here's what they heard.
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: I think we should have a system in place to, like, prevent people from, like, misusing phones, but I think we should.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: Lunch is our free time, so that would be, like, fun.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #3: I think yes because students should be able to have the time to be kids.
CARRILLO: Not surprisingly, their vice principal, Daniel Barcia, had a different argument.
DANIEL BARCIA: To me, it's just sad. Like, you guys don't hang out, and you don't talk. Like, when I was your age, we would be outside riding bikes, and everybody would meet at the park. You guys don't do that. So I don't know. It's dangerous.
CARRILLO: Legislators from both parties agreed. Here's Republican governor Greg Abbott when he signed the Texas statewide ban in August.
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GREG ABBOTT: One thing that we're very concerned about with students is what's happening to them by exposure, not only to use of a cellphone, but things like social media.
CARRILLO: And Governor Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, in May.
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KATHY HOCHUL: I went around the state, anybody who would sit down with me, and hear from them, about what the impact of cellphones in schools has been doing to our children. I didn't hear anything good.
CARRILLO: For some teachers, almost a year in, it's less black and white. Oliver Perry (ph) is a tenth grade English teacher in Richmond, Virginia. In January, the new state ban took effect. And in his district, that means teachers would start collecting phones at the start of each class.
OLIVER PERRY: I have this lockbox in my room and I have a little key for it. I have these little sticky notes that I give out with a number on it.
CARRILLO: Students have to voluntarily give up their phones. And in the beginning, they did. He would get close to 20 cellphones every class. But by year's end...
PERRY: I get maybe one or two phones per class period, and that's because students would much rather get in trouble with it than give it up.
CARRILLO: He sees the impact of cellphones on student attention spans and engagement, but writing up every cellphone under the new disciplinary guidelines also takes away class time.
PERRY: It's not sort of a one-size-fits-all problem.
CARRILLO: David Figlio, a professor of economics at the University of Rochester, would agree. He's been studying one Florida district cellphone ban over the past two years. His early findings - cellphone bans do more good than bad. But...
DAVID FIGLIO: If we had stopped our study in the first year, I might have come up with a more mixed view.
CARRILLO: In that first year, the district surveyed saw only minor increases in test scores and an uptick in suspensions as students violated the policy. But by the second year, suspensions had returned to normal, and test scores creeped higher, along with student attendance.
FIGLIO: It moves the needle in a meaningful way, but it's not the absolute game changer. So if that's the outcome that you're looking for, just be realistic with one's expectations.
CARRILLO: For now, expect to hear more about cellphone bans in schools in the coming year. At least three more states - California, Ohio and Massachusetts - have statewide policies going into effect in 2026. Sequoia Carrillo, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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