December 2, 2025
Textbooks vs TikTok: Round 2
School Cell Phone Bans and Student Achievement (NBER Digest)
Phones banned, scores up: “Finally!” vs “It’s only 1.1 points”
TLDR: A big Florida district banned phones all day, saw phone use plummet and test scores rise slightly, but also endured a spike in suspensions that later settled. Commenters are split between “phones are the new cigarettes” and “1.1 points is tiny,” with side debates on fairness and enforcement.
A Florida school district went full “phone jail” — silenced and stashed all day — and two years later, test scores ticked up while in-school smartphone pings dropped by about two-thirds. But the rollout wasn’t all honor roll: suspensions jumped 25% in month one (especially at the hardest-hit schools), before easing near normal the next year. The study behind the drama is here: NBER working paper.
Commenters stormed in with generational energy. One camp cheered, basically shouting, “At last!” and comparing screen addiction to cigarettes, arguing phones need to be out of reach, period. Nostalgia hit hard too, with the classic “uphill both ways” joke about flip phones staying in lockers back in the day. Skeptics pushed back: the score bump was just 1.1 percentage points, so, was it worth a year of detention-palooza? Others poked at potential selection bias — maybe schools that can enforce bans are already better organized. The pandemic and TikTok got dragged as the real villains, with some saying the ban nibbles at a bigger problem.
Meanwhile, meme-lords declared “Textbook vs TikTok,” and “phone jail” photoshops flooded imaginations. A serious thread asked about fairness, noting discipline spikes — especially for Black male students in the most affected schools — and whether we’re trading learning gains for harsher policing. The only consensus? This isn’t the last bell in the phone wars.
Key Points
- •A Florida urban school district implemented an all-day cell phone ban requiring phones be silenced and stored in backpacks throughout the school day.
- •Two years after the ban, student test scores were significantly higher, with stronger effects for male students and in middle and high schools.
- •Smartphone activity during school hours dropped by approximately two-thirds after the ban, based on Advan’s building-level data.
- •Suspensions rose 25% in September 2023 compared to the prior year; elevated disciplinary rates persisted through the first post-ban year.
- •Disciplinary action rates fell to near pre-ban levels by the start of the following school year, including at highly affected schools.