Students at a public charter science academy sit at their desks during English class in Warr Acres, Okla., in August 2025. More states are considering joining Oklahoma in legislating strict bell-to-bell cellphone bans. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

The momentum behind cellphone bans in schools has reached more than half the states, as teachers, superintendents and education experts praise these policies as a way to boost student achievement and mental health, and to rebuild a sense of community that many believe has been diminished by students’ addiction to screens.

Now, the question for many states and school districts isn’t whether to remove distracting devices from students each day, but for how long.

States that have passed laws requiring some kind of cellphone policy now are considering going further and mandating daylong bans, even for high schoolers. The idea has gotten some pushback from students, but also from teachers and parents who say strict bell-to-bell bans aren’t necessary. Some say they worry about safety in the event of a school shooting or other emergency.

Education experts say the modern push for school phone bans accelerated after the pandemic reshaped how students use technology and interrupted crucial in-person experiences in a classroom. Kara Stern, director of education and engagement for SchoolStatus, a data-collecting firm that assists K-12 districts with attendance and other school issues, said smartphones shifted from being tools of connection during remote learning to sources of isolation once students returned to classrooms.

“During remote learning, phones became a primary way kids entertained themselves and stayed connected,” Stern said. “But once schools reopened, phones stopped being a connection tool and started creating disconnection.”

Currently, 38 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted some form of statewide restriction or requirement for districts to limit student phone use. Of those, roughly 18 states and the district have full-day bans or comprehensive statewide restrictions (including during classroom and noninstructional time).

Despite widespread adoption of school cellphone restrictions and support for them, compliance remains uneven, according to a 2025 University of Southern California study. Most students continue to use phones during the school day regardless of restrictions, the researchers found.

Still, more than half of teens surveyed said enforcement this school year is stricter than it was the previous year.

“Teaching a class where students are on their phones is like trying to teach at Disney World over a loudspeaker,” Stern said. “The environment just isn’t designed for learning.”

Pushing for broader bans

Georgia is among the states considering a bell-to-bell policy for all public high schools. This comes a year after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a ban for K-8 grades.

Students are paying attention. At East Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia, students and teachers offered mixed views on cellphone bans. On a student-run news broadcast aired last fall, some students expressed concern over their safety, while some teachers were bullish on the idea that a ban would be effective at the high school level.

Republican state Rep. Scott Hilton, who proposed the new law, told the Georgia Recorder that the ban for younger students helped families get used to a bell-to-bell ban.

“I’ve just been blown away at the positive reaction across the board from all different constituencies, teachers, administrators, parents and even in a lot of cases, students who have experienced a difference and said, ‘Oh, wow, I kind of like this,’” Hilton said.

Several states focus their bans on prohibiting cellphone use “during instructional time,” which wouldn’t necessarily include free time such as lunch. Kansas lawmakers are pushing ahead on a ban on use during instructional time; it would supersede previous action that allowed local district discretion on cellphone use in schools. Michigan legislators passed a similar bill last month; it was sent to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday.

Similar instruction time bills passed in Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin last year. In Oregon, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek issued an executive order in July requiring every district to adopt bell-to-bell cellphone bans by Jan. 1. Several districts have said the mandate has gone better than expected, with some superintendents saying they’ve seen more interaction among students.

Bell-to-bell cellphone restrictions are being considered or advanced in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and were recently enacted in New York. The Massachusetts bill goes further than most, adding smartphones, tablets and Bluetooth devices to its list of banned electronic devices.

Most legislation reviewed by Stateline includes exceptions to the bans for students with special needs and in cases of emergency.

School shootings in 2025 fell to the lowest number since 2020, according to a review by Education Week. Still, there were 18 shootings that left seven people dead last year, the review found.

In Georgia, state Superintendent Richard Woods, a Republican, told reporters he’s heard firsthand from survivors of a shooting there about the importance of having cellphones on hand for safety reasons.

“Do I support this? Absolutely,” Woods said, referring to the cellphone ban. “But I think we have to find a sweet spot and not move to the extremes.”

What works best?

According to a Pew Research Center poll released last summer, 74% of U.S. adults support banning cellphones during class for middle and high school students, up from 68% in fall 2024. Far fewer adults (19%) oppose classroom bans, and 7% are unsure, the poll found.

For advocates of a phone-free education, the gold standard of cellphone policies is a bell-to-bell restriction with inaccessible storage for the device.

A 2025 article in JAMA Pediatrics reported that teens ages 13-18 spend an average of 90 minutes on their phones during school, but that little has been written about what students are doing during that time.

“Although 99.7% of US public school principals report their school has a smartphone policy, few studies have objectively examined smartphone app usage during school,” an abstract of the study reads.

Stern said she saw the effects of a “consistent bell-to-bell” policy firsthand with her own son. When his phone broke in eighth grade, he dreaded going to school without it. But after his first day, he came home and told Stern that he played soccer at recess, met new classmates and had “a really good day” — one he said was better than usual.

Kim Whitman, a co-head of Smartphone Free Childhood US, and other education experts believe cellphone bans will mirror past public health reversals — like banning smoking in schools — and possibly redefine what it means to be in a classroom post-pandemic.

“Today we can’t imagine allowing smoking in schools,” Whitman said. “I think in five to 10 years we’ll say the same thing about cellphones — wondering how we ever allowed them into classrooms.”

Whitman, who has examined and graded states according to the efficacy of their cellphone bans, said that North Dakota and Rhode Island are the only states warranting high marks for their adoption and enforcement of bell-to-bell policies.

Despite claims from adults who love the phone-free policies, students aren’t as convinced. Only 41% of teens support cellphone bans in middle and high school classrooms, according to polling by Pew Research Center released in January.

The largest share of teens who like certain phone-free policies are in schools where the policy allows phones during noninstructional time throughout the day, according to the USC study.

Editor’s note: This story has been edited to correct that it was Kara Stern of SchoolStatus who told Stateline about her son’s experience with a phone-free day. 

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

Federal agents take a man into custody in Denver, in a photo posted to social media by the Denver field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Feb. 5, 2025. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston advised peers at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting to think about how to help their constituents while navigating federal pressure on immigration enforcement. (ICE)

WASHINGTON — As federal immigration enforcement agents continue to clash with protesters in cities around the country, U.S. mayors gathering in Washington, D.C., this week said they’re anxious about what might be coming next. 

At a nonpartisan forum of mayors, elected officials identifying as Democrats and Republicans described an escalating situation among municipalities, their residents and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement, sanctuary policies and the threats of revoked funding for cities that don’t comply with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s deportation efforts.

Fresno, California, Mayor Jerry Dyer, a Republican and a former police chief, expressed support for President Donald Trump’s immigration policies at the border, but he said agents lack training for city operations and are being rejected by communities because of their policing tactics. 

Suburban leaders from Minnesota, where agents have killed two community members and shot a third this month, echoed his sentiment. Edina, Minnesota, Mayor Jim Hovland, whose city of about 53,000 lies a few miles south of Minneapolis, said that ICE has also trickled out to suburbs and exurbs to conduct operations, spreading unease.  

“We were told the actions would be precise. They were not.” said Hovland, a Democrat, speaking on a panel before a crowded room of mayors and city staffers at the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

“Fear has not confined itself to a single household or status,” Hovland said. “Immigration enforcement without coordination does not just remove individuals … it damages communities.”

Another Minnesota mayor, Elizabeth Kautz, a Republican who represents Burnsville, said that ICE has not reduced crime during its operations and has caused mayhem for residents.

Tim Busse, a mayor from nearby Bloomington, Minnesota, described an incident in which an Hispanic off-duty police officer was pulled over by immigration enforcement agents and nearly detained until she identified her occupation. 

“This is throughout the state of Minnesota and through our suburbs, including Edina and Burnsville and Bloomington, and quite simply retribution is real,” said Busse. 

Trump has threatened to cut off funding beginning Feb. 1 from sanctuary cities and states that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement, which is a federal responsibility. Some mayors said they won’t let the threat deter them.

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Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat, told the room that his city has one of the highest concentrations of Venezuelans in the country. 

Johnston said it was a moral imperative for mayors to think of their constituents, harkening to the parable of the Good Samaritan – a biblical story about a man showing kindness to an injured stranger, no matter his status.

“And that’s a question that many of us are asking a lot right now, because there’s a question of … what happens to my city?” Johnston said. “Well yes, you could lose federal funds, you could be targeted for prosecution by the Department of Justice. You could see ICE agents deployed in the streets of your city. All of those are possible.”

Several mayors said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations are disrupting construction, health care, hospitality and food sectors. Others said that ICE operations have led to reduced 911 and emergency calls as residents fear possibly being detained. 

For some mayors, the battle over immigration enforcement is deeply personal. Berkeley, California, Mayor Adena Ishii, a Democrat, had Japanese-American relatives who were forcibly put in internment camps during World War II following an executive order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

“My family was incarcerated by the United States government during World War II as U.S. citizens. We cannot repeat history,” said Ishii. “This is our opportunity to stand up and protect our people.”

Mayor Adrian Mapp was born on the island of Barbados before migrating to the United States at the tail end of the 1970s, and received his citizenship en route to being elected as a three-term mayor of Plainfield, New Jersey. 

“Sometimes as politicians you can choose to take an issue, but when the issue is your life, you don’t really get the choice,” Mapp told Stateline. “We have a very large immigrant community in Plainfield and a large undocumented community that is very fearful right now. In our downtown, a number of businesses are suffering because people are afraid to be seen in public.”

Mapp said that mayors should bring in faith leaders from all denominations and members of the legal world to provide information to the community about how to respond amid federal immigration enforcement, and the threats of ICE coming to their neighborhoods.

“There is a sense that this is what the community wants from us — to know that we’re standing up,” Mapp said.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

A homeless teen, holding a sign “Only 19, alone on the street,” asks for help in Manhattan in New York City. A report from the Covenant House and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley finds that schools and agencies could do more to intervene when youth struggle at home. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Twenty-year-old Mikayla Foreman knows her experience is meaningful. Dealing with homelessness since 18 and currently living in a shelter, Foreman has managed to continue her academic journey, studying for exams this month in hopes of attaining a nursing degree.

But Foreman believes there were intervention points that could’ve prevented her from experiencing homelessness in the first place.

“If someone in school had understood what I was going through, things could’ve been very different,” she said in an interview with Stateline.

As more cities impose bans, fines or jail time for adults living on the streets, young people who have been homeless say they face unique problems that could have been addressed earlier. Through more than 400 interviews and survey responses, young people across the country recently told researchers how earlier guidance and intervention might have made a difference for them. The research suggests the country is missing its biggest opportunity to prevent youth homelessness — by intervening well before a young person reaches a shelter and years before they are chronically homeless.

The report, from Covenant House and the University of California, Berkeley, finds that the pathways into youth homelessness are different from those of adults experiencing temporary or chronic homelessness. A young person coming out to their family, or becoming pregnant, or experiencing untreated trauma can create conflicts that push them into homelessness. A lot of that doesn’t show up in current data.

The survey responses offer the nation’s schools and social services agencies the chance to get ahead of youth homelessness, researchers say, not only by intervening earlier, but also by pinpointing and responding to the diversity of needs among teenagers and young adults who might be close to losing their housing.

Advocates say there are multiple intervention points — in school, in child welfare organizations and inside family dynamics — where the worst outcomes can be avoided. States such as California, Florida, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington have explored some of those intervention points in policies that range from guaranteed income pilot programs to youth-specific rental assistance and campus housing protections.

Hawaii has made its youth drop-in and crisis-diversion program permanent, and Oregon and Washington have expanded rental assistance and education-centered supports for vulnerable youth. Florida now requires colleges to prioritize housing for homeless and foster students.

“With young people, we have opportunities to intervene much further upstream — in schools, in families, in child welfare — before anyone has to spend a single night on the streets. That’s simply not the case with older adults,” said David Howard, former senior vice president for Covenant House and a co-author of the new research, in an interview with Stateline.

“Even at 18, 20 or 24 [years old], young people are still developing,” Howard said. “Their vulnerabilities look very different from middle-aged adults, and the support systems they need are different too.”

One of the key points of intervention for potentially homeless youth is school. Public schools across the country have increasingly reported more homeless students since the COVID-19 pandemic.

And homelessness has many various regional factors outside of individual circumstances, such as climate-driven homelessness. More than 5,100 students in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina became homeless as a result of hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024.

“Homelessness is multifaceted and lots of us slip through the cracks because the system isn’t designed for our reality,” said Foreman, a former Covenant House resident who helped conduct the new research.

Foreman’s insights and lived experience were included in the study, which showed that youth homelessness rarely begins with an eviction or job loss — frequent causes of homelessness among adults.

The top three reasons that young people experience homelessness for the first time, according to respondents, were being kicked out of their family homes, running away, and leaving an unsafe living situation such as one affected by domestic violence. Other instigators included being unable to afford housing, aging out of foster care, being kicked out of or running away from foster care, and moving away from gang violence.

However, respondents also had suggestions for ways government, schools and the community could help or prevent youth homelessness. They suggested youth-specific housing options, identifying and helping at-risk youth in health care settings, providing direct cash assistance and offering conflict resolution support within families.

Among the most common suggestions was to offer services that create long-lasting connections for young people.

“Strong relationships with non-parental adults, including mentors, teachers, service providers, and elders, were identified as especially important when family connections were strained or absent,” the report said.

The surveys and interviews also demonstrated that young people want mental health care tailored to their personal experience, said Benjamin Parry, a lead researcher on the report, speaking during a September webinar hosted by Point Source Youth, a nonprofit that works to end youth homelessness.

The research breaks out responses from a few specific groups — Indigenous, Latino, immigrant, LGBTQ+ people of color and pregnant or parenting youth — to understand their distinct needs, said Parry, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “There’s so much nuance and specificity within these different groups.”

Indigenous youth, for example, often are dealing with the effects of intergenerational trauma and alcoholism that have been projected onto them, Parry said. Those young people have far different needs than pregnant or parenting youth, he noted.

“They are like, ‘I don’t know where my next paycheck’s going to come from, I don’t know how to put food in my baby’s stomach, I don’t have a support network or someone to go to for this advice,’” he said. “That specificity is exactly why we need to understand this better and do better to tailor our approaches and responses.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.