The DPS Phone Ban: I Was Sure I Was Right

By July 1st, Colorado bill HB25-1135 will require public schools to implement policies that restrict cell phone usage for students during the day. Denver Public Schools (DPS) will hold their board vote on June 11th (Asmar, 2026). I'm a bit surprised that DPS didn't have a policy before this (Asmar, 2026), but I was happy to hear that the schools will finally be limiting these devices during learning times. Obviously, phones and similar watch technology distracts kids from learning during crucial times, stops them from being social with their peers, and promotes online bullying. Néstor Bravo, principal at Abraham Lincoln High School, called phone access "a quick hit of Instagram" (Asmar, 2026). Ninety percent of NEA members nationally support prohibiting phones during instruction (Brambila, 2026). This cell phone ban is in the best interest of everyone involved: the teachers, the students, and the parents.

Right?

...

I started researching this post long before the email came in. It was one of my first ideas for a post for the website. I figured it would be pretty easy to find all sorts of studies about how cell phones in school were some significantly detrimental scourge for education. After all, roughly 75% of U.S. schools already had some form of cellphone ban back in 2020 (Brambila, 2026). The studies.. don't seem to reflect what I thought, though. Böttger & Zierer's (2024) meta-analysis of 5 European studies found that grade changes were statistically indistinguishable from zero. Campbell et al.'s (2024) global review found "little to no conclusive evidence" of improved academic outcomes. The Figlio & Özek (2025) Florida Year 1 study found no test score gains at all.

Okay, fine, maybe kids aren't distracted. But what about their mental health? As we all know, too much screen time is a problem, right? Well, Goodyear et al. (2025) found that there was zero difference in wellbeing, anxiety, or depression between schools with and without a ban.

As a matter of fact, for some students, the problem is worse than no improvement. Campbell et al. (2024) found that bans actually caused anxiety, with students reporting distress when separated from their phones post-COVID. And as for bullying? Two studies in the Campbell et al. (2024) review (citing Davis & Koepke, 2016; Walker, 2013) found more cyberbullying in schools with a ban. If bans were clearly improving grades, mental health, and reducing bullying, six years of data should be showing that by now. Hmm...

There are other problems, too. Rob Gould, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said "If the policy is absent, it's more challenging" (Brambila, 2026). Teachers want top-down cover so they're not making enforcement calls on their own. In Florida, here's what that cover looked like in practice: in the first year of their statewide ban, Black students saw in-school suspensions jump 30% with no significant effect for White or Hispanic students (Figlio & Özek, 2025). That's from an NBER working paper, not peer-reviewed, so treat it as preliminary. But it's the only U.S. statewide ban data that exists, and the disparity is flagged by the authors themselves.

So why? As Weiss & Bonell (2025) point out in a Lancet commentary, this generation manages relationships in real time with phones. Maybe that's where the anxiety comes from. Campbell found that an increase in bullying is not a coincidence - stricter enforcement cultures correlate with increased social aggression, not less (Campbell et al., 2024). Cyberbullying happens outside of school anyway, so banning the device doesn't stop it where it actually occurs (Campbell et al., 2024).

Here's the thing - there's solid evidence that screen time broadly does harm mental health. That zero-difference wellbeing finding makes more sense when you look at usage. Goodyear et al. (2025) found that while bans cut in-school phone use by around 40 minutes a day, the total weekly screen time was unchanged as kids just made it up at home. However, in a Lancet commentary, Weiss and Bonell (2025) argue that school bans cover 8am to 3pm, and the harmful usage is happening after 10pm. There can be late-night scrolling, Instagram comparisons to others, or a group chat that blows up right when your kid should be asleep (Weiss & Bonell, 2025). It's not just how much time they're on the phones, but what they're doing and when. Type and timing matter more than total duration. Banning at school doesn't move the mental health needle because the damage isn't happening during 2nd period.

Here's how we handle it at our house: we have Mario Mondays where video games are sanctioned all day, monitored, but it stops at 6pm (for Jeopardy). We learned the hard way early on that just saying "less screen time" doesn't work without structure. The ban works the same way: For parents who are already managing screen time, the school ban is a welcome extra layer during the hours they can't be there. For parents who aren't - or can't - kids just compensate after 3pm and nothing changes.

Okay, so what are the benefits, albeit limited? As noted earlier, phone pings dropped to 1/3 of pre-ban levels (Figlio & Özek, 2025) and there was a 40 minute a day reduction in school use (Goodyear et al., 2025). Also, 70% of students stated they'd be fine without phones in class anyway (Campbell et al., 2024) (citing Walker, 2013). But does any of that even matter if the time is made up at home or outside of school? That doesn't seem like any real benefit. One area where there is a positive improvement is for low-performing students, who showed an improvement in GPA (Sungu et al., 2025) (SSRN preprint, not peer-reviewed, conducted at colleges in India). But that wasn't here in the United States. Beland & Murphy found the bottom quintile had a 14.23% standard deviation gain (a meaningful academic gain) and zero effect for the top quintile (Campbell et al., 2024) (citing Beland & Murphy, 2016). Figlio & Özek (2025) found that after Year 2 of a ban there were improvements, but not in Year 1, meaning... this stuff might take time to be realized. DPS should brace for a rough first year.

For my kid, pixie_technologist, physical removal is the point. pixie_technologist has ADHD, and wants to fidget constantly. That's fine with a fidget toy that she's allowed to have with her 504 plan, but a phone is going to be out of the question. A phone being physically gone removes the temptation, which she would acknowledge she needs. Look, all students deserve to learn without a distraction, too (a 504 plan exists for exactly this reason), but if the policy creates its own costs for other students, that argument has a real price and doesn't resolve cleanly. To be blunt, that means other students' phones will distract my daughter (and others with various disabilities) and that isn't fair to them. However, the kids who need the school to enforce screen limits because their parents won't or are unable to are the same ones that have the unfairness from enforcement with suspension spikes (Figlio & Özek, 2025). The policy helps and hurts the same population.

I went into researching this article expecting to have lots of solid evidence of why we need to ban cell phones in the classroom. Now, I'm not as sure. If you watch the news and get the school emails, the legislature (and schools) are banning phones for reasons that the research doesn't support, but HB25-1135 forces DPS's hand anyway. Bravo told Colorado Politics, "We're looking at a policy that can outlast us" (Brambila, 2026), but this feels like a familiar pattern, where policy is outrunning the evidence.

I know my kids, and for them, this ban is going to be helpful. pixie_technologist might get a limited device sometime soon in the future. Something that supports calls to an approved list, no browser, not a smartphone. Something that addresses communication without the content monitoring problem. Maybe I'll do an article on these in the future. For yummy_artisan (my 9 year old son, we'll do a bio on him, soon), he's too young to need a phone. He has a landline experiment, and barely uses it at all. If he doesn't use a landline, does he need a cell? Maybe for me to call him when he's down the street. Right now, my Tibetan Ritual Bell rings pretty loud for dinner.

What I don't know is if these rules will be helpful, harmful, or have very little impact on anyone else's kid. Almy Moore said "Students also acknowledged that putting phones away only for instructional time...doesn't actually work due to inconsistent enforcement" (Brambila, 2026). I guess for those that it does affect, we need the rules in place. I guess for parents that aren't able to enforce screen time, things will just get worse. I guess there isn't a good solution for this problem.

References

Asmar, M. (2026, April 16). Denver Public Schools cellphone ban. Rocky Mountain PBS. https://www.rmpbs.org/news/education/cellphone-ban-denver-public-schools

Böttger, T., & Zierer, K. (2024). To ban or not to ban? A rapid review on the impact of smartphone bans in schools on social well-being and academic performance. Education Sciences, 14(8), Article 906. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14080906

Brambila, N. (2026, April 21). DPS committee backs bell-to-bell cellphone ban. Colorado Politics. https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2026/04/21/dps-committee-backs-bell-to-bell-cellphone-ban/

Campbell, M., Edwards, E. J., Pennell, D., Poed, S., Lister, V., Gillett-Swan, J., Kelly, A., Zec, D., & Nguyen, T.-A. (2024). Evidence for and against banning mobile phones in schools: A scoping review. Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools, 34(3), 242-265. https://doi.org/10.1177/20556365241270394

Colorado General Assembly. (2025). H.B. 25-1135: Student cell phone and personal communication device restrictions. https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb25-1135

Figlio, D. N., & Özek, U. (2025). The impact of cellphone bans in schools on student outcomes: Evidence from Florida (NBER Working Paper No. 34388). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/papers/w34388 (Not peer-reviewed. Treat findings as preliminary.)

Goodyear, V. A., Randhawa, A., Adab, P., Al-Janabi, H., Fenton, S., Jones, K., Michail, M., Morrison, B., Patterson, P., Quinlan, J., Sitch, A., Twardochleb, R., Wade, M., & Pallan, M. (2025). School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools): A cross-sectional observational study. The Lancet Regional Health, Europe, 51, Article 101211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101211

Sungu, A., Choudhury, P. K., & Bjerre-Nielsen, A. (2025). Removing phones from classrooms improves academic performance (SSRN Working Paper No. 5370727). https://ssrn.com/abstract=5370727 (Not peer-reviewed. Conducted at colleges in India, significant context gap from DPS.)

Weiss, H. A., & Bonell, C. (2025). Smartphone use and mental health: Going beyond school restriction policies [Commentary]. The Lancet Regional Health, Europe, 51, Article 101237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101237