School phone bans may actually harm some students’ mental health

Many people are concerned about the negative consequences of too much screen time, particularly if phone use at school distracts students and affects their learning. But a study suggests banning them from schools makes some students lonelier, at least initially.

“If schools do decide to implement a total smartphone ban, there are some things that they should watch out for,” says Sanyogita Khare at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “Socially vulnerable youth might struggle a little bit more. Students might feel a little bit more disconnected from their friends.”

Mobile phones and similar devices have been blamed for a host of ills, from poor grades to declining adolescent mental health. Despite there being little robust evidence to support these outcomes, the Netherlands banned phones and other smart devices in classrooms from 1 January 2024. Some of these schools also prohibit students from using such devices at any time during the school day, often requiring they leave them in lockers.

To better understand the effects of this, Khare and her colleagues surveyed students from two secondary schools in the Netherlands, both of which have banned smartphones throughout the school day. The survey was first done in December 2023, before the nationwide ban, and again in March or April 2024.

From this, the researchers measured two forms of loneliness: social and emotional. “Social loneliness is more about the broader network; whether you feel part of a group,” says Khare. “Emotional loneliness taps into more the feeling of closeness and intimacy in a close friendship.”

When comparing how these changed from before to after the ban, the researchers found mixed results. “We didn’t find an overall change in social loneliness, but we found a slight increase in emotional loneliness,” says Khare. This might occur if some of the students’ closest friends were not in the school, so the ban prevented them from contacting those people during the day.

The team also found while the children’s overall social loneliness did not increase, those who struggled more with social situations tended to become more socially lonely. Khare emphasises these outcomes might not be permanent if the students adjusted to the ban over time.

One issue with the study is the researchers didn’t compare these schools against other ones in the Netherlands that are more relaxed, for instance by allowing phone use at break time, says Jonathan Cantor at RAND, a non-profit research organization in California. “We need data on similar students from similar schools without a ban to make meaningful comparisons. Without that, we can’t determine whether the findings reflect broader trends.”

Both Khare and Cantor say there is a lack of basic data about the effects of banning phones in schools. Cantor and his colleagues recently tried to improve on this by looking at phone bans in US schools, where they are not mandatory.

They found policies vary enormously, with some schools banning them altogether and others allowing students to use phones in class at the teacher’s discretion. In the UK, government guidance discourages phone use in schools, but leaves it to their leaders to decide whether to prohibit the use of such devices.

“The biggest issue right now is that, in order for us to be able to rigorously evaluate the effect of these policies at school level, we need to have detailed data of the type of policy and when they went into effect,” says Cantor. “That’s what everybody’s running to try and analyse right now.”