Focus on

School Cell Phone Policies

For more than a decade, cell phone use and restriction in schools has been a locus of debate in hallways, school administration offices, and parent organizations. Adults and youth alike struggle with how cell phones may shape the school experience and impact connections with the people around them. Thanks to a grant from Young Futures, here you’ll find real stories from schools that designed and piloted phone policies with, rather than for, students; our research brief summarizing the impact of phones in schools and the effects of bans; and practical pilot ideas, protocols, and research-based, equity-centered ways to elevate student voice and co-design phone policies with your school or district.

Free Cell Phone Policy Toolkit for Schools + Districts

This school cell phone policy toolkit is designed to help school and district leaders understand a community-driven process for co-designing a school or district policy. It includes an overview of the Challenge Success School Change Process and real stories and examples from the three participating schools.

It is intended for everyone in school communities who is grappling with the complex nature of creating phone policies: administrators leading the process, teachers who help implement and enforce policies day-to-day, and the students, families, and community groups who need to be part of the conversation. Rather than a single model for schools to adopt, this is an assembly of learnings from three schools that approached the same challenge in three different ways.

Download the Toolkit

The Young Futures Call Me Maybe Challenge

Young Futures (YF), a project of the New Venture Fund, works to make the digital world an easier place to grow up. After a Youth Listening Tour found that phones in schools is a thorny issue with no one-size-fits-all fix, YF launched the Call Me Maybe Challenge to fund solutions that meet schools and students where they are. In 2025, Challenge Success was awarded a grant to fund three schools through a 2025–26 School Partnership focused specifically on cell phone policy. Challenge Success was uniquely positioned to bring a community-driven change process, centered on student voice, to the complex task of designing phone policies in schools.

The three schools selected for the project brought unique circumstances, strengths, and cultures to the same challenge. Throughout the 2025-26 school year each school worked with Challenge Success to move through the School Change Process. While each school’s journey was different, they created policies grounded in the Challenge Success levers for change: center student voice, co-design with the community, and use research-based, equity-centered strategies. Drawing on tools such as the SPACE Framework for School Change, each school made significant progress toward their goal of having a student-centered cell phone policy ready for fall 2026.

how we approach school improvement

levers for sustainable school change

Center Student
Voice

We center the student experience in the change process and engage students as co-designers.

Co-Design with the School Community

We partner with school communities to redefine student success and focus on well-being, engagement, and belonging

Use Research-Based, Equity-Centered Strategies

Our work is grounded in data and research-based practices to support continuous learning and improvement for all learners.

Research on School Cell Phone Policies

The data on classroom use bears this out: 72% of U.S. high school teachers consider cell phone distraction a major problem in their classrooms, a concern that extends to 33% of middle school and 6% of elementary school teachers (Hatfield, 2024).
School leaders see the same pattern from the front office: 53% report that cell phone use is negatively associated with students’ academic performance, and 72% and 73%, respectively, say phones are linked to poor student mental health and attention spans (National Center for Education Statistics, 2025) — potential indicators of eroded engagement and well-being in the classroom and beyond.
The toll isn’t only academic: excessive cell phone use has also been shown to be associated with increased rates of anxiety and depression among adolescents (Coyne, et al., 2019) — a reminder that how much students use their phones is deeply tied to their overall well-being.

Download the Research + Toolkit

Download our FREE Student Stress & Coping Brief!