Unlock Editor’s Digest for free

FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is a contributing columnist based in Chicago

The idea of ​​banning cell phones from school classrooms achieved the politically impossible: convincing many Republicans and Democrats in the United States to agree on something.

As the new school year begins, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has ordered all schools in the state to immediately restrict cellphone use in the classroom. The Republican state of Indiana has banned cellphone use in the classroom this year. Several other states have also enacted bans. At the local high school where I live outside Chicago, new restrictions went into effect last week. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has said social media platforms should include health warnings.

I sense that a new general understanding is emerging here.

Research shows that cell phones in class can distract students, impair their performance, and lead to cyberbullying. A Common Sense Media study of 200 11- to 17-year-olds found that 97 percent used their cell phones during school hours, receiving an average of 237 notifications per day, and about a quarter of those during school hours. According to Pew Research, more than 70 percent of U.S. high school teachers say cell phone distraction is a major problem.

And distraction from cell phones is linked to poorer academic performance: A 2016 study of British schools found that test scores for 16-year-olds improved when cell phones were banned – but not for already high-performing students. Some studies have found that even having a cell phone turned off reduces cognitive performance.

“There is a great hunger in the United States and around the world: parents, teachers and the teenagers themselves want to … push back the phone-based childhood,” says Zach Rausch, chief researcher of Jonathan Haidt’s new bestseller. The fearful generationHe tells me that this is a “problem of collective action”: “If everyone else is on their phones and you (the teenagers) aren’t, there’s a risk of social isolation… but if you take those devices away from kids at a group level, the incentive to use them tends to decrease.”

Dr. Delaney Ruston, a physician and activist for the “Away for the Day” cell phone rules, points to studies that show college students would pay to be freed from the burden of TikTok or Instagram – but only if their fellow students had to do without them as well.

So how much collective action is enough? Even before this year, many teachers at our local Evanston Township High School banned cell phones in class. The new school-wide ban takes the pressure off individual teachers, but it only applies during class, when students must put their phones in a receptacle; they can use them during recess and lunch. Haidt’s book says a ban limited to class is “virtually useless.”

Reine Hanna, the school’s communications director, admits there are ways around the new restrictions. When they were piloted in summer school, some students put a “fake phone” in their pocket and kept the real one. Hanna says the high school considered locking the phones away all day, “but we wanted … to give students the opportunity to develop healthy boundaries around technology.”

Rachel Durango-Cohen, student representative on the ETHS school board, says “everyone hated the idea” when it was brought up last year. But now “they see that it’s not as difficult as they thought and they just live with it.” One downside is that “there is even less interaction between classes than last year, everyone is focused and studying so they can use their phones during breaks.”

Lucia Contreras, a student at San Mateo High School in California, tells me she’s never known a time without cell phones – but she’s never been allowed to use one freely at school. And Todd Chapman, the principal of a Wisconsin middle school, tells me he’s seen a “dramatic decrease in cyberbullying during the school day” because students aren’t constantly filming each other.

Ruston says it will take time to create a new culture and new norms around cell phone use. But she predicts, “We’re going to look back and say, ‘What were we thinking?'” to the days when cell phones were allowed in the classroom. One day, she hopes, cell phones in schools will be like smoking in public buildings: something you just don’t do.