2025 may be the year that the ubiquitous cell phone is expelled from schools across America. From California to Maine, schools are cracking down on when and where kids can use their phones during the school day.

Many of the policies aim at banning phone use during class time, but some are implementing wider bans that forbid use even during nonlearning time such as recess, passing from class to class, during lunch breaks, etc. Several states have put the responsibility on individual schools to devise the new policies, while other states are taking a top-down approach by mandating certain limitations throughout their school districts.

Regardless of the approach, it’s a safe bet that your child who has had free and constant access to their phone at school will find those days are over, if not this year, than certainly in subsequent years as data is gathered and “best practices” are shared throughout the education community.

The impetus for the smartphone crackdown at school is the result of parents and educators drawing attention to the problem: If your child has been heading to school with their smartphone in their pocket, there’s a high likelihood they’ve been dividing their time between what they’re supposed to be doing in school (e.g., learning) and managing a barrage of notifications on their phones. While this is a potential problem for all kids, it’s especially concerning for kids who struggle with ADHD and other attention deficits.

A report from Common Sense Media confirmed that “teens are constantly receiving and fielding notifications on their smartphones.” And by “constantly” they mean hundreds of notifications daily. The report entitled “Constant Companion: A Week in the Life of a Young Person’s Smartphone Use,” found that “over half of the study participants received 237 or more notifications per day—about a quarter of which arrive during school hours.”

The report, which was composed of voluntarily collected data from teens’ phones, and supplemented with interviews from the nonprofit’s Media Youth Advisory Council made it abundantly clear that students struggle with the push-pull that having their phones with them at school, “including the apps they love, the pressure they feel to respond, and the strategies they use to balance their smartphone use. For example, while TikTok was one of the most popular and longest-duration apps for teens in the study, a Youth Council member said, “The algorithm for TikTok is just way more addicting … it draws you in more.”

Other important findings from the study are:

• The smartphone is a constant companion that encourages regular pickups. The data revealed that teen participants checked their phones on average over 100 times per day.
• Length of time on their phones while at school varies widely, but even on the low end is significant: “Almost all of the participants used their phones at least once, for a median of 43 minutes, and over six hours on the higher end.”
• TikTok is popular and takes up a lot of teens’ time. TikTok was the longest-duration app used by 11- to 17-year-olds, used for almost two hours on average, but ranging to over seven hours per day for some participants.
• Teens admit that their smartphones can be hard to put down. Over two-thirds of 11- to 17-year-old participants said they “sometimes” or “often” find it difficult to stop using technology, and use it to get relief from negative feelings.
• Smartphones both hurt and help teens sleep. From never-ending TikTok scrolling to using YouTube as calming background noise, some teens’ phones run almost all night long.

To learn more, see the full report here.

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