The World Is Pulling the Plug on Screens in School. We Should Pay Attention.
A global policy wave is building
Something is happening in classrooms around the world, and it’s moving faster than most people realize.
In June 2023, fewer than one in four countries had banned smartphones in schools. By early 2025, that number had climbed to 40%. By March 2026, it was nearly 60% — 114 education systems worldwide.
And yet, here in Connecticut, our legislators couldn’t get there. This week, the House of Representatives passed a smartphone ban in schools by an overwhelming margin. Then the Senate declined to take a vote. No debate. No recorded opposition. Just silence.
The world is moving. Connecticut blinked.
I’ll say this directly: if any member of the Connecticut Senate reads this, the evidence isn’t waiting for you. The research is settled, the global consensus is clear, and your constituents’ kids are paying the price for legislative hesitation. There’s another session coming. Use it.
The countries joining this wave of reducing screens during school days aren’t a fringe. They include the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Australia, Norway, China, Israel, and a growing list of nations across Africa and Latin America. South Korea passed legislation that took effect in March 2026, prohibiting mobile phone use during school hours entirely. Here at home, Missouri, Utah, LA Unified, and districts across Oregon are among those taking steps to restrict screens in classrooms — in some cases rolling back years of aggressive edtech adoption.
And as of this week, OPB reported that the Bend-La Pine school board in Oregon passed a resolution directing their district to fundamentally reframe its relationship to technology in the classroom — citing 2026 Brookings Institution research finding that the risks of AI in education currently outweigh the benefits.
I can tell you quite clearly that the students in my classes who had reduced screen times in K - 12 do much better in college than those who are now addicted to screens.
I am always alerted to patterns in my work, and that’s a pattern.
How We Got Here
For two decades, the dominant story in education technology was more. More devices. More platforms. More connectivity. Tablets replaced textbooks. Laptops replaced notebooks. Smartboards replaced chalkboards. Silicon Valley sold schools on the promise that screens were the future, and schools bought in — sometimes literally, at enormous cost.
The results were mixed at best.
OECD data suggests a strong correlation between high screen time and lower academic performance, particularly in mathematics. Research confirms that the presence of cell phones in classrooms disrupts the learning process — and that low-income students are most affected.
Meanwhile, teachers were increasingly spending their time policing devices rather than teaching. A survey in South Korea found that nearly 70% of teachers had experienced classroom disruptions due to student phone use — with some even reporting verbal or physical aggression when enforcing restrictions.
And the mental health data kept piling up. Research from the American Academy of Pediatrics and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt links excessive screen time with increased rates of anxiety, depression, and sleep deprivation among children and teenagers.
At some point, the evidence became impossible to ignore.
What the Research Actually Says
Let’s be clear about something: this movement isn’t anti-technology. Countries aren’t abandoning technology. They’re trying to right-size it. It’s called balance. I’ll be writing a book this summer speaking to life before and after digital and how we can borrow the best from both worlds to live healthier today.
The question being asked globally has fundamentally shifted. It’s no longer “How do we get more screens into classrooms?” It’s “Where are screens helping — and where are they causing harm?”
As the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report has argued, while limiting phone use may help reduce classroom distraction, it doesn’t remove the need for students to learn how to navigate digital environments. Schools remain one of the few places where young people can develop digital literacy and critical thinking — how to assess online information, manage screen time, and understand the risks of digital platforms.
That’s a crucial distinction. Removing phones from a school day is not the same as preparing children for a digital world. Both things have to happen. The mistake the last two decades made was assuming that immersion was preparation.
It wasn’t. It is an epic failure.
I Ran My Own Experiment
This past semester, I partnered with Fluid Focus, a startup out of Ireland, to run a smartphone reduction pilot with 19 digital ethics students at UConn. The premise was straightforward: use their app to program each student’s phone to reduce screen dependency throughout the week, increase analog engagement, and track what happened to attention, connection, and learning.
What I found confirmed what the global data is pointing toward — and then some.
Students came in with wildly different attitudes. Most were resistant, even anxious at the idea. But some were quietly relieved — already aware, on some level, that their relationship with their phone was out of control. The baseline data made that visible in a way that was hard to argue with. Most students initially reported averaging five to ten hours per day on their phones, absorbing hundreds of notifications daily. Do the math across a lifetime and you’re talking about years — potentially decades — surrendered to a screen.
Then something shifted. Not dramatically, not all at once, but it shifted. Students reported sleeping better. Feeling more connected to the people around them. In class, conversations deepened. Eye contact came back. The work improved. And this was already a high-performing group with strong critical thinking skills and real opinions. It still got better.
What struck me most happened after the pilot ended. Some students drifted back toward their old screen time averages — that’s human nature. But the awareness itself didn’t leave. Rarely did I have to say “screens down.” A notification never hijacked a class discussion. A phone call never interrupted us. Not once. That’s not a coincidence. That’s what happens when young people are given permission — and structure — to be present.
Here’s what I also want to say plainly, because I think it gets lost in the policy debate: this generation wants help. They want adult leadership. They want someone to build an environment where their mental and physical health actually matters. Yes, they push back — they’re supposed to. Rebellion is in the DNA, and we were no different at their age. But beneath the resistance is something that looks a lot like relief when someone finally draws a line.
They know what’s happening to them. It’s part of why they distrust corporate America as deeply as they do. They’ve grown up as the product, and somewhere along the way, they figured it out. It’s our job to lead. And you can be sure — when it’s their turn — they’ll change things. I’ve seen it in that classroom. I believe it.
The Harder Question
Here’s what the policy debate mostly sidesteps: Why are kids so dependent on these devices in the first place?
Smartphone bans in schools may prove beneficial in the short run, but they ultimately don’t address the underlying issue — technology companies deliberately designing their services to be as addictive as possible, particularly to children.
Banning phones at school doesn’t undo six hours of TikTok before bed. It doesn’t undo the algorithmic engineering that has turned a generation’s attention into a revenue stream. It’s a necessary first step, not a solution.
The real dilemma — and this is the one I keep coming back to — is that we’re asking schools to fix a problem that platforms created and governments permitted. Teachers are being handed a mop while the pipes are still leaking.
Some worry that pushing to remove technology from schools will keep students from becoming tech literate, or that removing all screens may limit opportunities for individualized instruction. Those concerns are legitimate. But they’re also being used to stall decisions that are long overdue.
There’s one argument I hear constantly: “I need to be able to reach my kid during the school day. It’s about safety.”
I understand it. I really do. We live in an era where that fear feels completely rational. But let’s be honest about what this argument actually produces — because on closer inspection, it falls apart on every level.
First, if there’s a genuine emergency at school, the last thing you want is your child staring at a phone. You want them focused on their teacher, following direction, getting out safely. A device in that moment is a distraction, not a lifeline.
Second, parents reached their children during school emergencies for decades before smartphones existed. It was called the school office. It worked. We didn’t lose an entire generation to unreachable children — we just had to trust the adults in the building. That’s not an extreme ask.
Third, if both of those feel too rigid for your situation, there’s a middle path: give your child a phone with no internet access. No apps. No social media. Just calls and texts. They’re sometimes called “brick phones,” and they’re making a quiet comeback — among celebrities, intentional parents, and yes, even royalty. The point isn’t to cut off communication. It’s to cut off the feed.
Your child does not need to be on the internet and social media during a school day. That’s not a radical position. That’s a baseline.
Digital literacy isn’t learned by scrolling Instagram in algebra class. It’s learned through structured, intentional engagement with technology — which is exactly what an unmanaged device in every pocket prevents.
What This Means for the Rest of Us
This global wave matters beyond K-12 schools. It’s a leading indicator.
When more than half the world’s education systems independently arrive at the same conclusion — that unmanaged screen access during learning is harmful — they’re not just making a school policy. They’re making a statement about attention, about human development, and about what we owe the next generation.
The platforms won’t regulate themselves. We’ve proven that. So the question falls to the rest of us: parents, educators, policymakers, and frankly anyone who cares about what kind of thinkers and citizens we’re raising.
The world’s classrooms are starting to draw a line. The question is whether we have the courage to hold it.
John Murphy teaches digital ethics and media literacy at the University of Connecticut. He writes about technology, power, and what it means to stay human in a digital world.