Concerns that phones and social media are harming student learning and youth mental health have pushed school systems across Canada and the United States to restrict student phone use. Are the restrictions working? We asked elementary and secondary teachers in Canada’s largest school district, in collaborative research conducted with Elementary Teachers of Toronto and Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation Toronto. Easy to announce, difficult to implementThis isn’t the first, or even second time the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has attempted to ban phones. In 2007, to combat student texting, the TDSB banned phones from schools. Research at the time found the policy was inconsistently implemented, as teachers who attempted to enforce it received little support from parents and school administrators. The ban was dropped in 2011. In 2019, the TDSB and its provincial counterparts tried again. The outcome was the same: inconsistent enforcement, unsupported teachers and no real classroom change.The new policyIn 2024, the TDSB recommitted to a ban, stating cell phone use is not beneficial to learning and “appears to be creating significant harm to children and teens, in terms of mental health, well-being and academic success.” Under the new TDSB policy, students in Grade 6 and earlier grades must not access their phones for the entire school day. Approaches to handling this varied by school and classroom. For students in Grades 7 to 12, access is restricted during instructional time. Students who break the rules are supposed to hand in their device, with failure to comply resulting in a visit to the principal’s office.Third time’s a charm?So how has it gone this time? To find out, we surveyed 350 secondary and 892 elementary teachers from across the TDSB. Our results, which have been submitted for presentation at academic conferences and will be submitted for publication later this year, revealed a sharp divide between elementary and secondary schools. Over 70 per cent of elementary teachers reported that rules were consistently enforced at their school; only 44 per cent of secondary teachers said the same. And 51 per cent of secondary teachers reported having “a lot” of difficulty enforcing the ban, compared with just 25 per cent of elementary teachers.Much of that gap is due to a lack of support. Twice as many secondary teachers reported feeling “not at all” supported by parents and three times as many felt “not at all” supported by school administrators. One secondary teacher said many parents “want constant contact with their kids;” another said school administrators don’t enforce the rules because they are “afraid of parental opposition.” The result: 70 per cent of elementary teachers were satisfied with the steps their school had taken to address student phone use compared to just 38 per cent of secondary teachers.Phone bans produce benefits when enforcedIn the schools where enforcement was consistent, teachers reported that students benefited. Since the new rules, 75 per cent of elementary teachers said students were less distracted by their phones, 73 per cent said students were more focused on learning, 72 per cent reported less cyberbullying and 68 per cent said relationships among students had improved. For secondary teachers, those percentages were 33, 36, 17 and 33. But in the minority of secondary schools where the rules were consistently enforced, teachers reported the same benefits: “greater engagement” with classmates, “more focus on learning,” and “increased marks.”The benefits of phone bans appear to extend beyond high school. In a second study at an Ontario university, which will be submitted for publication later this year, we examined the phone use patterns of 285 undergraduates who had attended high schools with different policies. We wanted to know whether strict policies build habits that persist, or whether they hinder students’ abilities to manage their own screen time.Our preliminary findings are promising. Students who came from high schools with more restrictive smartphone policies were more likely to display healthy patterns of phone use: infrequent use of their phones around bedtime, in class or while studying. These students were also more likely to use their smartphones for academic and other productive purposes rather than entertainment. In contrast, students from high schools with more lenient policies showed more habitual phone use.However, there was a third group of students, those who displayed the most problematic phone use. These students are seemingly on their phones all the time: scrolling in class, while studying and right up until they fall asleep. For these students, their high school’s phone policy appeared to make no difference.Don’t let history repeat itselfThe TDSB’s history suggests that without clear guidelines and strong support from school administrators, the policy is destined to fail. It has produced real benefits in elementary schools, but hasn’t changed the reality in most secondary schools. Those schools would be better off aligning their policies with their elementary counterparts and adopting bell-to-bell restrictions with consistent phone storage protocols. Consequences for non-compliance must be enforced by school administrators instead of being downloaded onto overburdened teachers. But schools cannot do this alone. Any successful phone ban requires parental buy-in. To prevent compulsive patterns from developing, parents and educators must come together to build healthy phone use habits both in school and at home. For children who are already addicted, parents need access to addiction and mental-health supports. More importantly, instead of treating this as a problem of individual willpower, collective approaches are needed. Read more: School board social media lawsuits: For too long we’ve sought individual solutions to a collective problem Reclaiming classroomsIn response to lawsuits by American state governments, Meta recently agreed to pay damages and change how Instagram operates for children under 18. Several North American school boards have launched similar lawsuits. Along with Canada’s plan to ban social media for children under 16, these collective efforts are necessary to address the harms caused by social media.Young people themselves recognize those harms. In a poll of Gen Z adults in the U.S., 60 per cent felt that social media has had a negative impact on society, while 47 per cent wished TikTok had never been invented. Another study found that while students would need to be paid a considerable amount of money to deactivate their own TikTok and Instagram accounts, they would be willing to pay to get themselves and their peers off these apps. School phone bans can help reclaim classrooms and families’ “digital hygiene” can also play a role. But we must also call on governments to regulate tech companies and develop thoughtful policies that consider the risks associated with different age groups.Sachin Maharaj receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.John Ranellucci receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.