Lockable phone pouches in schools improve student well-being over time, not test scores or bullying

Study: The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches (DOI: 10.3386/w35132)

A popular device for restricting cell phone use in middle and high schools is effective at achieving that aim, leading to short-term disruption but ultimately positive effects on student well-being, new research finds.

The U.S. study conducted by a University of Michigan researcher and co-authors further reveals the restriction-lockable phone pouches-shows no impact on test scores, attendance, classroom attention or online bullying.

The research builds on small and mixed research examining school phone bans-most of which come from other countries. The new work provides large-scale, nationwide evidence on the effects of such restrictions.

The research also provides a more comprehensive assessment of how restrictive phone policies affect students by incorporating teacher and student surveys. The latter examines classroom attention, subjective well-being and perceived online bullying-outcomes central to the debate over phone restrictions.

The study draws on data from Yondr, a company that makes cell phone-blocking pouches used in schools, as well as nationally representative survey data. The research compares changes in schools that adopt pouches to those in observationally similar schools that don't adopt them.

A combination of GPS-based measures of device activity and teacher reports finds a substantial decline of phone use and greater teacher satisfaction. Taken together, the data also reveals disciplinary incidents increase and student-reported subjective well-being declines in the year of implementation-consistent with adjustment costs as schools and students adapt to the new restriction.

Over time, however, those disciplinary impacts fade and well-being rebounds, becoming positive in later years.

Brian Jacob, a lead author on the study, is a professor of education policy and economics at U-M's Ford School of Public Policy. He said the research doesn't conclude that lockable phone pouches couldn't produce meaningful student achievement improvements, just that they aren't a guarantee.

"It is difficult for us to say exactly why the policies did not have stronger effects in our context, but I suspect it was a combination of a few factors," said Jacob, who also co-directs the Youth Policy Lab, a joint research center of the Ford School and Institute for Social Research. "It is possible that students shifted from phones to laptops. I also think that students may have substituted toward more 'old fashioned' forms of distraction, such as talking with friends, passing notes or daydreaming."

Jacob added he was surprised not to find an effect on the prevalence of online bullying because he and his colleagues heard from many teachers and students this was driven in large part by phone use during school.

He was intrigued by something else that emerged: The average academic effects masked what the researchers call "interesting heterogeneity"-modest positive effects in high schools and small negative effects in middle schools.

"I think there is a lot to unpack there, and warrants further investigation," Jacob said.

Jacob's co-authors on the working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, are Hunt Allcott, Thomas Dee and Matthew Gentzkow, all of Stanford University; Jason Baron of Duke University; and Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania.

Jacob is also part of a multidisciplinary team of U-M researchers engaged in a study to understand how school cell phone policies across Michigan affect school and community violence, student well-being and academic measures.