Missing from these debates is evidence of a ban’s impacts on student learning. We bring such evidence to bear from Florida’s first-in-the-nation statewide cellphone ban, adopted in May 2023. That law banned cellphones during instructional time but allowed local districts to impose additional restrictions according to their needs; a 2025 Florida law instituted a bell-to-bell ban in elementary and middle schools. Our study looks at one of the nation’s 10 largest districts, where local leaders imposed a “bell-to-bell” ban that prohibits using phones, earbuds, and smartwatches throughout the entire school day, including noninstructional time. We track changes in test scores, attendance, and disciplinary incidents and use geolocated cellphone-use data to observe changes in student cellphone use during the school day. Finally, we compare outcomes at schools that had the highest and lowest level of pre-ban student cellphone use to estimate the causal effects of the ban.
Overall, our findings reveal that cellphone bans improve student outcomes, but these benefits come at the cost of temporarily elevated suspension rates when the new rules are first enforced. As states and school districts nationwide seek a reset on student cellphone use, the challenge is to minimize short-term adverse effects until a new cellphone-free status quo is established.