In recent years, there has been a growing concern, particularly among educators and governments, that cellphones are impediments to learning. At the state level, numerous states have started or are starting to roll out restrictions for phone usage in their schools. Massachusetts is no different. On the 31 July 2025, the senate passed “An Act to promote student learning and mental health,” a legislation requiring school districts across the commonwealth to prohibit students from using their phones during school hours. With this new bill the Massachusetts government aims to “boost focus, improve mental health, and foster healthier learning environments” by removing what they deem the ‘greatest distraction device ever created’ from classrooms. Whether this works towards their aims of improving students’ education will have be tested when the bill takes effect in fall of next year. (2026-2027)
Many states have made attempts to either pass a complete ban on phones in their schools or implement restrictions on students’ phone usage. In California for instance, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3216, named “The Phone free school act,” which stated that school districts (including charter) had to adopt policies to limit or prohibit the usage of smartphones during school hours. Similarly in New York, Governor Kathy Hochul announced in May of this year that they were implementing bell-to-bell restrictions on phones in all their K-12 schools.
The question of whether smartphones should be permitted in schools has, for a long time, been a major point of contention among those directly within the education system and governments wanting to improve education for students across their schools. Proponents of phone bans have persistently argued that restricting students’ access to their devices is necessary to ensure they are focusing as well as engaging in the classroom. They add that a phone ban would allow students to complete their assignments instead of procrastinating on them.
The problem with this argument, is that it fails to consider that students may turn to their phones in classrooms not because they are “addicted” to them but rather because they are disengaged with what they are learning. While it may be true that phones can serve as a distraction in certain cases, they have historically not been the only one. Students will find other means of distracting themselves if they are bored or uninterested in the content being taught. The increasing emphasis on phone policing dismisses the issue of disengagement in the classroom as being a result of technology instead of realizing that it could be caused by larger systematic issues regarding how we teach our students.
A state-wide phone ban only serves as a temporary solution to a systematic problem with our education system. It is a way for governments and schools to say that they have addressed the issue of disengagement in school without providing a long-term solution. School should be able to teach its students why education is important, yet many students are often left questioning why school should be important to them. School should be a place that excites its students in learning and being curious about the world, yet many students express that school bores them and that they dread the thought of going to school.
If schools or state governments cared about the education of students, there would be more of an emphasis on finding methods to integrate phones into the education system rather than take them away. There would also be an emphasis to teach students how to use their phone to advance their learning and curiosity. Technology after all did not advance all this way just for it not to be used.
For more information on the Massachusetts phone ban, consider visiting https://malegislature.gov/PressRoom/Detail?pressReleaseId=238
