How Phone-Free School Days Enhance Learning

Upper Schoolers utilize secure pouches to store their phones during the school day.

I once worked at a school where the administration introduced a policy that assigned faculty and students to a specific cafeteria table during lunchtime, to deepen relationships between teachers and boys who might not work with each other very often. While designed to strengthen community ties, this thoughtful, carefully planned policy failed spectacularly because it didn’t account for the emotional realities of those expected to follow it. At lunch, students and teachers alike were looking to do their own thing, to be with friends, and to take a break, not participate in mandatory “family-style” interactions. To that school’s credit, the administration almost immediately relaxed the lunchtime requirement.

Such is the peril of introducing any new school policy and I could fill a dozen blogs describing initiatves that I have attempted at Browning where our best laid plans, in the words of Robert Burns, “go oft awry.” But there is one place where we have skirted Burns’ well-placed caution: Our school’s restriction of smartphone use in the Middle and Upper Schools during the school day.    

Smartphones are an unprecedented distraction in school spaces, as even a cursory glance at the evidence proves: A study from last January found that the average American checks their phone 144 times per day, with members of Gen Z (11 to 26 year-olds) being the most likely to check their notifications; Canadian research suggests that prohibiting mobile phones in schools increased test scores among 16 year-olds by 6.4% of a standard deviation, with particularly profound effects for low-achieving students; UNESCO’s 2023 Global Monitoring Report revealed that it can take the teenage brain up to 20 minutes to refocus on a learning task after having been distracted by even minimal smartphone use, such as a text. Given the volume of research available, the decision to take smartphones out of student hands while classes are in session seems like the most obvious of measures.

Good intentions and conscientious preparation cannot assure that a plan will succeed; indeed, what is “obvious” in planning may become anathema in execution. Collecting phones or putting them in lockable pouches during the school day could be annoying for faculty, frustrating for students, or distressing for parents. While ours is a community of good cheer, there are no emotional guarantees when new policies are introduced.   

I can't say that every Middle or Upper School student is thrilled to hand in his phone or have it pouched upon arrival at the Red Doors; what is clear, however, is that the removal of smartphones has produced a bevy of positive developments for our boys and our mission. Class sessions begin more seamlessly, as students are not laboring to reset their focus after having checked their phones between classes. Boys are not receiving texts and alerts in their pockets and bags that—even if silenced—create dozens of buzzy micro-distractions during the day. Students and their families alike are not caught in a loop of text and calls about school, which endows the boys with trust and gives them a platform for exercising responsibility in their own learning and interactions. Classes are no longer disturbed by lengthy trips to the bathroom, which had become a de facto phone-checking zone for some students. Our school is now characterized by greater student focus, less technological distraction, and stronger interpersonal connection. In a world that too often tends toward alienation, disengagement, and polarization, this is no small thing.

To be sure, deep learning and authentic engagement did not cease with the introduction of the iPhone, nor does our nascent policy surpass the talents of our students and the commitment of our faculty in terms of producing excellent teaching and learning. But smartphones were surely a stone in the shoe, a bother that would not allow our boys and our teachers to stride as effectively as they otherwise would. Removing this stone has clearly smoothed out our in-class focus and interpersonal presence, and our best-laid scheme has emerged in a way that benefits our relational teaching, supports our institutional values, and allows our students and faculty to walk—or even run—unencumbered toward the realization of our mission.