A state ban on cellphones in school is a necessary step to help young people learn to live in the real world instead of being overly engaged in the virtual reality on their phone screens, an education professor at Arcadia University near Philadelphia told CapitolWire/State Affairs.

The state Senate approved a ban on cellphones in school earlier this month, days after Gov. Josh Shapiro urged lawmakers to send him the legislation. The state House has not yet acted on the Senate bill, but Gov. Josh Shapiro has urged lawmakers to send him a school cellphone ban.

“We are spending nearly $12 billion on K-12 education this year alone. But we’ll be flushing it down the drain if we can’t recapture our students’ attention,” state Sen. Devlin Robinson, R-Allegheny, said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. “Teens spend an average of eight hours on their phone each day. A study from last year found that, on average, teens are spending one and a half hours on their phones during school hours.

“That’s a quarter of the school day. We need to step in. We cannot allow our investment into education to be robbed by the tech moguls who are stealing our students’ attention.”

Robinson is the prime sponsor of SB 1014. Twenty other states have already enacted similar bans on cellphones in school, he said.

Among neighboring states, only Maryland and Delaware do not ban cellphone use during the school day. Ohio’s school cellphone ban took effect Jan. 1. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation enacting a cellphone ban in that state in January. The New Jersey school cellphone ban goes into effect at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year.

A statewide ban would likely be more effective because it would reduce the likelihood that students and parents will successfully balk at attempts to get students to relinquish their electronic devices, Arcadia associate professor Kim Dean said.

“What it does for families, for teachers, for principals is that nobody is acting alone in creating these guide rails and these boundaries,” she said.

“We’re making a decision based on what the data’s telling us. The data is in. It is clear. (Constant cellphone use) is hurting kids. It is hurting their development.

“It makes them sad and they are more isolated. It’s clear. So, we need to take action, and it can’t be that just the English teacher’s going to take action.”

Having support to enforce the ban would be important because so many young people are so tied to their phones that they are literally addicted to the screen time, she said.

Students who are allowed to have unabridged access to their phones all the time will struggle to adapt to real-world situations where they have to make decisions without consulting their devices, she said.

The ability to focus and maintain sustained attention are vital for both social and academic success “and our phones are specifically programmed to steal that from us,” she said.

For young people, the ability to consult their smartphones constantly is similar to allowing young people unfettered access to the candy aisle in the grocery store, she said.

“You don’t have enough perspective as a kid to understand. If I’m a kid and people give me candy, I’m going to be like, ‘This is delicious. This is so much better than broccoli,'” Dean said.

It may not be surprising then that researchers at the University of Rochester and the Rand Corporation found that disciplinary actions against students spiked in Florida after that state implemented a cellphone ban.

However, researchers noted that the spike in disciplinary actions moderated in the second year after the cellphone ban was implemented as students adjusted to the new expectations. The same researchers also found that in the second year after the cellphone ban was enacted, test scores started to improve.

The researchers said the cellphone ban led to a drop in the number of students skipping school, as well. The drop in unexcused absences suggests that when students stop looking at their phones, they are more engaged in their school work and the school climate, in general, improves.

In fact, the researchers said the evidence suggests that the boost in academic performance linked to the cellphone ban may actually be due to the fact that students started coming to school more regularly.