Authored by Bansi B.
Member, Digital Wellness Lab 2023-24 Student Advisory Council
Introduction
Currently, 38 states across the country have implemented some type of regulation requiring school cell phone bans in every district (Prothero, 2026). Many of these states have recommended bell-to-bell bans that require phones to be inaccessible to students for the entirety of the school day. These bans are being implemented with the purpose of prioritizing education, building healthier media habits, and ensuring a distraction-free classroom environment. However, by failing to address the larger issues at hand, we may be doing young people a greater disservice in the long term.
Recommending the banning of cell phones in response to the scale of problematic or harmful media use we are seeing among young people feels akin to placing a band-aid on the wound. We may be addressing some of the symptoms of the problem, but the core issues remain the same. While cell phone bans may provide some helpful education to young people on limiting technology use, we need to be doing more to teach digital literacy.
The Limitations of Bans
The solution to the problem requires far greater learning than that which can be provided through simple bans. Rather than taking away their phones during the school day, we owe it to young people to teach long-term skills in self-regulation. This holds even more true in stages of adolescence where natural consequences are critical for development. Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson posited that for those aged 12-18, teens work to create a sense of identity through experimentation (McLeod, 2026). This type of experimentation requires certain levels of autonomy, allowing young people to make mistakes. If a high school senior decides to spend their entire class time doomscrolling on Instagram Reels, their grade on the next quiz will likely reflect that, hopefully sparking an interest in installing screen time limits. Speaking to my own experience, there is a stark contrast between the environment in senior year of high school, as opposed to the freshman year of college. While high school classrooms may require cell phones to be placed in holders for the entirety of class, college students are expected to enter lecture halls with an expectation that they are able to self police. 17 and 18-year-old high school kids are, most likely, rapidly approaching stages of life, whether that be post-graduate education or the workforce, where no external forces will police their cell phone usage. If we send them into these situations with little knowledge of regulation, we have failed to adequately prepare them.
To add a key caveat here, I want to be clear on my position that any cell phone usage that disrupts a classroom or hinders the ability to instruct should be immediately discouraged. In these situations, natural consequences may be insufficient to effectively discourage cell phone usage. Teachers should not be expected to teach in spaces where they cannot remove distractions from their students’ learning environment. Additionally, these types of consequences more closely mirror a post-graduate environment. While I don’t have any professors who would take away my phone for texting during lecture, I certainly would expect to face consequences if I were being loud or disruptive with the use of my phone. Natural consequences should only be employed up until the point that others are impacted. Once others’ learning is impacted, external repercussions are warranted and entirely justified. To recognize and acknowledge the potential struggles with this, making teachers take devices away from kids with significant media usage may pose challenges, especially in younger grade levels, where kids may not have fully developed abilities to cope with disappointment without causing harm or disruption.
“In my experience, taking iPads away from children who have developed a reliance on them can shift the entire tone of the classroom, potentially ruining the day.” — Veronika S.
Self-regulation is also far from the only issue young people worry about when it comes to bans, however. There were 18 school shootings in 2025 (Lieberman, 2026). Growing up in educational environments full of lockdown drills and colored paper covering windows, young people are acutely aware of the danger they face every time they enter a school building. Taking away their sole source of contact with family members or law enforcement in these circumstances may worsen feelings of already heightened anxiety. Again, speaking from personal experience, the first thing I would often consider when asked to put away my phone in high school was the fear of not being able to reach my family if something were to happen. If cell phones are able to help young people feel safer navigating the disheartening and often terrifying educational environment, then it feels difficult to fault them for this.
Proposing an Alternate Solution
The fact of the matter is that banning something is not akin to imparting effective education around it. We are not automatically teaching young people anything about technology by taking away their cell phones. In a widely digital world, it is the job of educational and family systems to make sure that young people know how to navigate through the online world with clear priorities of safety, connection, kindness, and respect.
It is critical to consider the practical implications of implementing this type of comprehensive digital literacy education to create systems that effectively scaffold media learning. It is important to note here that teachers are already strained under legislative pressure to provide education, often with a lack of funding and the absence of any structural support for the issues they are facing. I want to make it clear that any comprehensive education system needs to build in support for educators. One method with which to incorporate digital education while preventing additional strain on educators could be to allow young people to get involved in creating these curricula. In adolescence, the limbic system, which handles emotions, is more developed than the prefrontal cortex, which handles complex decision-making. This means that young people are more likely to prioritize their feelings and emotions over executive functions like planning and impulse control (Murdock, 2020). At this age, young people’s emotional and reward systems may also be wired to increasingly prioritize the opinions of peers as social-affective sensitivity is heightened (Chien et al., 2010). This predisposition to peer input makes it so that new information is processed better when presented by other youth. Another method to prevent placing the strain of digital literacy on educators is to encourage families to have conversations at home. Healthy parental modeling and strong familial support systems are crucial to the development of good digital habits, both of which start with curiosity and discussion.
Digital literacy education needs to clearly encompass offline needs as well. Arguably, one of the greatest preventatives for problematic media use is strengthening these offline skills. One clear deficit is that young people may not be able to form offline support systems as easily in recent years. Part of the issue is that many youth were in quarantine during periods when they were meant to be meeting key social developmental milestones. Like nearly all other things, community and connection are a great foundation upon which to build a comprehensive digital literacy system. A notable aspect of the issue lies in the fact that young people lack affordable, viable spaces where they can safely interact with each other, leading them to digital spaces instead. Providing greater opportunities for after-school clubs and organizations is an effective method with which to build stronger youth support structures.
Social-emotional learning may also be an effective method with which to reduce specific harmful patterns we are seeing from young people online. The “Red Pill” movement, for example, describes the online community of influencers that spread misogynistic ideas, usually under the guise of topics like fitness or career advice. Nearly ⅔ of young men regularly engage with masculinity influencers online (Movember Foundation, 2025). This type of content has real-world harms beyond the digital ecosystem, with men who commit domestic and family violence often sharing logic, arguments, and justifications with those in the manosphere (Nicholas et al., 2024). Harmful online communities such as these thrive in silence and isolation, and providing scaffolding for peer support systems would have tangible benefits in reducing the power of these.
It is not surprising, then, that young people are turning to technology at increasing rates for emotional regulation. There may not be anything inherently harmful about this. Personally, I have found some online regulation skills, such as meditation apps, that have been incredibly beneficial. The issue occurs when young people rely on technology to the point where they are unable to form any effective offline regulation skills. Studies have shown that up to half of cell phone usage may be for the purpose of emotional regulation (Shi et al., 2023). The implementation of these offline skills can often be incremental. I had an incredible teacher in my sophomore year of high school who had us practice five minutes of meditation every morning before we started our day. Five minutes of class time routinely dedicated to a lesson on misinformation or effective peer support systems may be more effective than an hour-long assembly held once per year.
Young people are navigating an increasingly confusing tech landscape. And, the fact of the matter is that we have failed to adequately prepare them with the skills to manage it. Cell phone bans, even those that last from bell-to-bell, certainly have their place, especially in the classrooms of younger-aged students. However, our solutions cannot end there. Youth are up against clickbait creators, AI-generated “brainrot” content, and algorithms designed to be as engaging as possible. We cannot treat it as a personal failing when teens struggle to put away their phones. Issues as widespread as problematic media use have to be viewed, treated, and solved systemically. And, as with any issue, education and knowledge are the greatest systemic preventatives at our disposal.
Author’s Note: thanks to Veronika S. and Gyan G. for their feedback and advice on this piece.
Bansi was a member of the Digital Wellness Lab’s 2023-2024 Student Advisory Council, and is currently a college junior in Boulder, Colorado.
The author of this article is a young person who has been engaging with the Digital Wellness Lab about topics of young people’s safety and wellbeing within digital environments. Here at the Lab, we welcome different viewpoints and perspectives. However, the opinions and ideas expressed here do not necessarily represent the views, research, or recommendations of the Digital Wellness Lab, Boston Children’s Hospital, or affiliates.