From magnetic locking pouches and blocked Wi-Fi access to outright bans and legislation, schools around the world have been waging war on cellphone use for years.
In Canada, too, several provinces have introduced cellphone bans for the 2024-25 school year. The bans vary by jurisdiction, but they all have a similar aim: to restrict cellphone use in classrooms to cut down on distractions and encourage safe social media use.
But as the bans gain global momentum — along with confusion about how they will be enforced and criticism about lack of consistency — some researchers say there isn’t enough evidence on whether they’re actually effective.
“Politicians seem to say, as a very easy, nice slogan, ‘Ban the phones. Stop the phones.’ It’s catchy,” said Marilyn Campbell, a professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia who studies cellphone bans in schools.
But there’s very little actual research on whether prohibiting cellphones improves certain parameters, such as cyberbullying rates, student mental health, distraction and academic performance, Campbell told CBC News. And even when there is good research, the evidence is conflicting, she said.
Students going back to school next week will see new rules around cellphones. The province earlier mandated all 60 school districts to restrict cellphone use in classrooms. As Pinki Wong explains, the move is intended to cut down on distractions and encourage safe social media use.
“We don’t know that it’s beneficial, and we don’t know that it’s detrimental. We don’t have enough research to say one or the other,” Campbell said. “My position is that, as we don’t know, why does government insist all schools ban them?”
Across the globe, particularly in the past two years or so, different jurisdictions have announced all different kinds of cellphone bans in the classroom, said Sachin Maharaj, an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa who also studies school cellphone bans.
The impacts haven’t been studied vigorously in most places until very recently, he said in an interview. While the schools that ban phones tend to show improved academic outcomes in those few studies, it’s not uniform, Maharaj said.
“The academic benefits tend to confer most among those students who…
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