Illinois lawmakers just passed a bill banning students from using cell phones in class. It’s now one of more than 35 states to restrict cell phones and other devices in schools.
In his budget address earlier this year, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker said everywhere he goes, parents tell him one of their deepest concerns is the impact of social media on their kids.
“There’s real harm being done, and it’s interfering with our ability to give children the most productive educational environment possible,” said the governor. “It’s time to get cell phones out of the classroom.”
This spring, the state’s school cell phone bill passed easily with bipartisan support.
Illinois’ school cell phone bill goes into effect in the 2027-28 school year.
How will Illinois’ school cell phone ban work?
Jessica Handy is the executive director of the education advocacy group Stand for Children - Illinois. It just released a guide for schools now creating a cell phone plan.
“We think," she said, "this is one of the most impactful policies that we can pass right now."
Handy says “bell-to-bell” bans are the gold standard. It means no phones from the first bell of the school day to the last.
Illinois’ new legislation is not bell-to-bell. It bans phones — as well as other devices like earbuds and smartwatches — during instructional time. Handy says individual school districts can choose if they want to allow their students to use their phones during passing periods and lunch or go fully bell-to-bell.
As of last year, 25 states had bell-to-bell bans.
In Illinois, the plan includes specific exceptions for students with medical needs, disability accommodations, and English-language learners in some cases.
The legislation also forbids school districts from handing students out-of-school suspensions or expulsions if their sole infraction is getting caught using their device. If the student is using it to engage in other kinds of misconduct, that level of discipline can be applied.
Stand for Children’s guide outlines the options schools have. They can have students lock their phones in magnetically sealed pouches, store them in centralized cell phone lockers, or leave them in their regular lockers.
“We see," said Handy, "that the places that it's working the best are places that have secure, centralized storage of phones."
That’s easier for smaller schools where students come through the same set of doors. Many schools purchase the magnetic Yondr pouches, but it can be pricey, often $25 per bag, plus around 25% of them have to be replaced every year because they’re lost or damaged. But Handy says the concept of the bag is more important than the brand.
“An envelope would work too,” she said. “There are other ways you could store a phone in a pouch without making that investment if it seems too costly right now.”
Do school cell phone bans actually work?
On average, teenagers spend about an hour of the school day on their smartphones, mostly scrolling social media. If the goal is for students to be on their phone less, studies show they are; phone usage can drop significantly.
Handy says the benefit of that is pretty straightforward.
“This has the potential," she said, "to really increase learning time for free, essentially."
But do bans lead to better academic outcomes? Nationally, research shows minimal test score difference, although it’s only been studied a few years.
A small district in northern Illinois banned phones two year ago. How’s it going?
Hinckley Big-Rock is a small district in DeKalb County. It was one of many Illinois districts to roll out cell phone bans over the past few years. They just finished year two with a bell-to-bell ban.
“If you get caught with it," said superintendent Jessica Sonntag, "it goes to the office, you pick it up at the end of the day. If you get a second shot, the parents have to pick it up. If it's a third offense, then it's a student-specific consequence we work out with parents on what's going to change that behavior.”
In two years, she says they’ve only had two students get to that third level.
Sonntag says their policy has been a success.
“We've seen so many less disciplinary issues, more positive social interactions,” she said. “Kids are more outgoing, the hallways are louder, they're full of energy, the lunchroom is active.”
They extended their lunch period to allow students to play basketball in the gym or walk outside. Board games like Battleship have had a renaissance; even Tech Decks, the finger skateboards that were a staple of the early 2000s, have made a comeback.
But Sonntag knows just because they’ve seen a drop in office referrals and failed grades, correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
“Is there really any correlation between cell phones out of school and academic performance?" said Sonntag. "Maybe I can't point to that specifically, but what I will say is: when kids are less distracted, they have an opportunity to take in information. They're more ready to learn.”
She says they’re also seeing fewer mental health challenges. Nationally, initial research shows that after cell phone bans student well-being dips but then bounces back the year after implementation. Same thing for school discipline.
Sonntag heard stories from other schools about how tough the transition could be but says it went smoothly at Hinckley Big-Rock.
“It shifted so quickly,” she said. “The kids adapted so quickly. The environment started to change and be more positive so quickly.”
She says they’re fortunate to be so small that it was easier to implement and communicate with parents.
Like many districts, they used a grant to purchase magnetically sealed Yondr bags for middle and high school students to lock their phones in. She says it cost them around $12,000.
Sonntag says some parents now use them at home too.
“We put some locks throughout our community, like the Yondr bag unlock mechanisms," she said, "and told parents, like, you can use them however you want.”
The superintendent said their teachers are 100% behind the move, but it’s forced them to make some unexpected changes in the classroom too.
“Our teachers have said they had to relearn to teach bell-to-bell,” she said. “That's pretty vulnerable for them to say, because in the past if they finished their lesson, they would say ‘We’ve got a few minutes left, you guys can take out your phones,’ and they couldn’t say that.”
At this point, she says they have no regrets about their policy. In fact, cutting back tech has gone so well, they’re not stopping at phones.
The pandemic supercharged the number of school districts going “1:1,” meaning they give each student a tablet or laptop — usually a Chromebook — to use during class and often take home.
Sonntag says Hinckley Big-Rock is considering turning back the clock. They may not give students Chromebooks anymore and instead go back to how many schools operated 10+ years ago: a cart of laptops they can wheel to classes if they need them.
Year one of a ban at one of the state’s largest districts
U-46 in Elgin is the state’s second-largest school district. They just finished their first year with bell-to-bell bans at all seven of their middle schools.
Heather Hodal is the assistant principal at Abbott Middle School. One of the differences she also noticed right away was a louder hallway and lunchroom.
“Students bringing decks of Uno cards," said Hodal, "because now they have to interact with each other at lunch and play games with each other, [bringing] stickers."
But she says the impact has been much deeper than a few extra card games.
“Teachers were saying all year long, this year just feels different,” she said. “It just feels better.”
She says students were more engaged in class, paying closer attention, and having more discussions.
You might imagine that more engaged students playing closer attention would mean they were performing better in class too. It’s still early, but they say every school saw growth in math and English-Language Arts in year one.
“The most drastic [change] this year," she said, "was in behavior, which I would hope long term would lead to those even greater academic changes."
There were fewer fights and a big drop in cell phone-related infractions.
To implement their bell-to-bell ban, U-46 also bought Yondr pouches. Students could choose to lock up their phone in the bag or just leave it in their locker.
The district — even just the middle schools — is much bigger than Hinckley Big-Rock. Hodal says they had to make sure their communication was consistent across schools.
Cell phone bans make some parents anxious. How will they get in touch with their kids if there’s an emergency? It’s an understandable worry in the age of mass shootings. She says it made it all the more pertinent to explain why they were doing this.
“We hosted basically like an open house Q&A type of night with parents," she said, "going over the whole policy. They could bring their students to that. I think that intentionality made for a better process.”
As the school year got started, it helped that anytime a kid asked to use a phone, either their own or a school phone, they were allowed to use it. By the end of the year, Hodal says many kids had important phone numbers memorized for the first time.
Her advice for schools just figuring out their policy now: stay consistent — consistent in how you explain it to students and their parents, as well as the expectations and consequences.
