‘It’s not often you get a standing ovation with applause when you announce something at a staff meeting,’ Principal Pete Balas said of the phone ban.

At Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., students have been on their best behavior. In the past year, there have been fewer suspensions and a dramatic decrease in the number of physical altercations.

Principal Pete Balas’s explanation? A total ban on phone use during the school day.

Wakefield implemented the phone ban at the beginning of the last school year, voluntarily electing to serve as a pilot school in Arlington Public Schools’ (APS) cellphone-pouch program, which was expanded this year to every high school in the district.

At Wakefield, Balas and his team are taking a “bell-to-bell” approach to the cellphone ban. At the beginning of the school day, students place their phones in locked pouches, which remain on their persons but can be opened only by school employees.

“My staff love it, overwhelmingly, and it’s not often you get a standing ovation with applause when you announce something at a staff meeting,” Balas told National Review.

The students haven’t been quite as thrilled. Not only are phones restricted during class time, but also during passing periods and lunch.

“Students are not happy about it, and I understand why,” Balas said. “It’s an addiction.”

The forced detox period that kids experience at school has translated into a better classroom experience, teachers tell Balas.

News of the positive results is spreading across the country.

For the 2025–26 school year, 26 states and the District of Columbia have implemented cellphone bans in schools, with some establishing partial bans and others completely removing phone usage from the school day.

Many states, including Virginia, have passed laws regarding cellphone usage in schools. In May of this year, Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed legislation codifying the “bell-to-bell” phone policy across the state.

“Bell-to-Bell Cell Phone-Free education has been benefiting students, parents, teachers, and administrators across the Commonwealth since last summer. By signing these bills, our statewide policy will be the law,” Youngkin said in a statement. “School should be a place of learning and human interaction — free from the distractions and classroom disruptions of cell-phone and social media use. Our students will learn more and be healthier and safer.”

Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of the book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, began sounding the alarm on phones in schools several years back, to remarkable effect.

Haidt has traveled the country evangelizing educators and parents against child phone use and has explained in a spate of articles exactly why internet-enabled phones have proven so damaging to kids.

“Now the iPhone isn’t just a tool; it is actually a tool of mass distraction,” Haidt told the New Yorker. “And we’re adults — we can deal with it. We’ve dealt with television. Most of us might feel like, If I got a handle on this, I could get some more work done. But adult mental health did not tank. The story for teens is completely different.”

Haidt’s crusade seems to be working: While 76 percent of U.S. adults support banning phones during class, 44 percent support full-day bans, like the phone policy at Wakefield. Support for full-day bans has increased from last school year, from 36 percent reported last fall, according to a Pew Research poll.

Even advocates of increased technology use in schools see the benefit in depriving kids of unstructured time on smartphones during the school day.

Nhon Ma, CEO of Numerade, a hybrid AI learning platform, is dedicated to incorporating AI into the educational experience. Numderade’s mission is to provide an AI learning program that is pedagogical in nature, meaning students learn with the help of AI, rather than AI giving the student the answer. Ma, however, supports banning smartphones.

“I think the school ban is actually the right approach to acknowledge that smartphones, and just technology, in the class and in school needs to be addressed, meaning that the way students are using smartphones in classes or on the school premises, it’s really not for educational purposes,” Ma told NR. “It is used for checking on your notifications from TikTok or Instagram. A lot of that’s happening, and that specific behavior actually is detrimental to the learning process.”

Balas and Ma agree that students need to become proficient in using various types of technology given the digitized world they’ll inherit.

“You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are technologies on smartphones and also on laptops, within a class, that actually can be very helpful on an educational basis,” Ma said. “For example, personalized tutoring that companies have built that aligns to pedagogical strategies does actually help in ensuring that students are progressing in their studies.”

Balas explained that every student at Wakefield uses a school-provided MacBook, so even with the cellphone ban in place, students are still able to use technology appropriately in the classroom.

While there are many benefits of removing phones from the classroom, Ma notes that when technology is used correctly, and specifically when students can appropriately wield the power of AI, it’s vital to help students grow and learn.

“The reality too is that as students grow into adulthood, they’re going to have to learn how to use AI, partner with AI, and see how it can be leveraged for their own benefit in their own careers, versus fight against it,” Ma said. “So in terms of focusing on, ‘How do we ensure our students become their best selves?’ AI is definitely a piece of that.”

When it comes to phone bans, one of the most commonly expressed concerns among parents is that their child won’t be able to contact them in an emergency. The same Pew Research poll previously cited found that parents were split on whether phones help or hurt student safety. While 37 percent of respondents thought that banning phones would have a positive effect on student safety, 23 percent said there would be a negative effect.

“Their concerns were mostly around ‘How do I access my child if there is an emergency?'” Balas said. But in many cases, having a school administrator mediate between a parent and a child during a stressful situation at school is most effective, since children often relay inaccurate information about what’s taking place. And of course, if there is a genuine emergency, school administrators can get in touch with parents.

While kids will ultimately graduate into a world defined by technology use, Balas is happy that Wakefield students are allowed to remain kids just a bit longer.

“It feels like we’ve stepped back in time,” Balas said. “Kids are playing Uno and Jenga. I’ve had to increase my budget to buy games.”