Do school phone bans improve teen mental health? The first direct test found no difference

The first study to directly compare schools that ban phones with schools that allow them found no difference in teenagers' mental wellbeing between the two [s1]. Restrictive schools did cut phone and social-media use during the school day — but not across the whole day — and it is total, problematic use, not school-hours use, that the wider evidence links to worse mental health [s1][s2].

That is an awkward result for a popular policy, and it is worth stating plainly: the intervention landed where it was designed to land, inside the school gates, and the outcome it was sold on did not move.

What the SMART Schools study measured

The SMART Schools study, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, recruited 1,227 pupils aged 12 to 15 across 30 English secondary schools — 20 with restrictive policies, where recreational phone use is not permitted, and 10 with permissive policies, where it is [s1]. The primary outcome was mental wellbeing on the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale [s1].

The mean wellbeing score was 47 (standard deviation 9), with no evidence of a difference between the two groups of schools: an adjusted mean difference of −0.48 (95% CI −2.05 to 1.06; p = 0.62) [s1]. A confidence interval straddling zero like that is the statistical signature of a genuine null — not a hint of benefit that a bigger study would confirm, but an effect indistinguishable from none.

The policies did do something. Pupils at restrictive schools spent less time on their phones (adjusted mean difference −0.67 hours; 95% CI −0.92 to −0.43; p = 0.00024) and on social media (−0.54 hours; 95% CI −0.74 to −0.36; p = 0.00018) during school hours [s1]. But there was no evidence of a difference in total phone or social-media use across weekdays or weekends [s1]. Time reclaimed in class was apparently spent on the phone later.

Why that matters for the mental-health claim

The study's own interpretation is that there is no evidence restrictive school policies are associated with lower overall phone or social-media use, or with better wellbeing, and that such policies "in their current form" are not supported by the data and need further development [s1]. The mechanism the bans were supposed to work through — less use overall — did not materialise.

That lines up with what the broader literature actually implicates. A meta-analysis of 41,871 children and young people found that it is problematic smartphone use — a pattern marked by loss of control and distress, not merely hours logged — that carries the mental-health signal [s2]. The median prevalence of problematic use was 23.3% (range 14.0% to 31.2%), and it was associated with roughly tripled odds of depression (odds ratio 3.17; 95% CI 2.30 to 4.37) and anxiety (OR 3.05; 95% CI 2.64 to 3.53), along with higher perceived stress (OR 1.86; 95% CI 1.24 to 2.77) and poorer sleep quality (OR 2.60; 95% CI 1.39 to 4.85) [s2].

Those are associations, not proof of cause — problematic use and distress plausibly feed each other, and the review grades its evidence accordingly [s2]. But they point at a target a school-hours ban does not touch: the heavy, compulsive use that largely happens outside school.

What the study does not settle

It does not show that phones are harmless, and it does not show bans are pointless for every purpose. The case for restricting phones in class has always rested more on attention and classroom disruption than on mental health, and SMART Schools was not designed to test academic outcomes [s1]. Nor does a single cross-sectional comparison of 30 schools close the question; it establishes that the wellbeing benefit assumed by policymakers was not visible where it should have been most visible [s1].

The useful reframing is that the lever and the outcome may be mismatched. If the harm concentrates in problematic, all-hours use [s2], a policy that changes only school-hours use is aimed at the wrong part of the day. That is consistent with this site's earlier coverage that the average association between social media and adolescent wellbeing is small, and that measurement is where the Australian age-restriction law will stand or fall.

This article describes evidence and is not advice on how any school or family should manage phone use.

Sources

• 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, 2025-02-04
• Prevalence of problematic smartphone usage and associated mental health outcomes amongst children and young people: a systematic review, meta-analysis and GRADE of the evidence — BMC Psychiatry, 2019-11-29