As an increasing number of states and school districts move toward banning cell phones in the classroom, the issue remains unpopular with Michigan lawmakers, despite the practice’s proven successes improving student learning and behavior.

“What I saw was a noisy lunchroom, which I loved, because it meant my kids were talking,” Tomlinson Middle School Principal Kristen Kajoian said, describing how the school improved following a classroom cell phone ban. “It was because there was no phones in the lunchroom.”

Kajoian told Bridge Michigan the change also led to more completed assignments and better attention in class.

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Melvindale High School junior Leyla Lopez pointed to similar benefits in her school.

“You get to hang out with (friends) and get to know each other more,” she told the news site. “It’s different when you use your phone at school because you’re always on your phone.”

Michigan teachers and students in schools with cell phone restrictions largely echoed findings from a Central Michigan University study of more than 600 high school students that found increased learning through school and homework when smartphone use declines.

Another from researchers at the New York Institute of Technology and California State University that examined cell phone use among college students showed students who did not use cell phones had better comprehension, lower anxiety, and more mindfulness than those that did.

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The research, along with trial runs in schools across the country, are convincing lawmakers in some states to consider statewide cell phone bans as a means to improve student learning and reduce behavioral problems that have increased in many places since the pandemic.

“Gone are the days where a child can escape a difficult situation after the school day,” MacDonald Middle School assistant principal John Atkinson explained to Chalkbeat Detroit in 2022, shortly after the East Lansing school required students to turn off their phones during the day. “Now, students endure unimaginable social or emotional distress because they cannot escape it. It’s not just the mean post or picture, it’s all of the ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ that are equally painful… . Can you imagine how painful that would be for a 12-year-old?”

Currently, only Indiana, Florida, and Ohio have banned cell phones statewide, while lawmakers in New York, Oklahoma, and Missouri are considering the same, Bridge reports.

In the Great Lakes State, legislation sponsored in 2022 by former Rep. Gary Eisen, R-St. Clair Township, to adopt a statewide ban never made it out of committee, despite the potential to regain student learning lost from government-imposed school closures during the pandemic.

During Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s tenure, fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress plummeted from 32^nd nationally in 2019 to 43^rd in 2022.

As it stands now, only about 41.6% of third-graders are proficient in reading, a figure that’s at 16% for black third-graders, or more than 10% behind students still learning English at 26.4%, according to 2022 data.

At the current pace of recover, according to one analysis, it could take students decades to return to pre-pandemic proficiency in reading.

Despite the obvious need, Plymouth Democratic Rep. Matt Koleszar, a former teacher, told Bridge he “would be uncomfortable with a state mandate on (cell phone bans in classrooms) as no two communities are the same.”

Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, described the proposal for a statewide ban as “one of the worst ideas that we could come up with as legislators” because it’s a “cultural learning issue where kids are gonna have to learn how to deal with these distractors at some point in their life.”

No Michigan lawmakers have introduced a school cell phone ban in the current session, according to Bridge.

While parents and teachers have expressed mixed feelings about a statewide ban, with some concerned about infringing on local control and contact during emergency situations like school shootings, most seem to acknowledge that implementing some guardrails is necessary.

“Are teenagers making the smartest decisions about cellphones? No, they’re not,” Sarah Giddings, teacher and mother of two in the Saline School District, told Chalkbeat. “They’re using it as a distraction device like adults do. The difference is they don’t have the self-control to say, ‘This is affecting my work. I need to put it down,’ like an adult would.”

In states where lawmakers understand that and have taken action, the results speak for themselves.

“The learning change in the classroom is remarkable. Students are engaged because they’re not getting notifications in their pocket,” Sarah Speight, a Boone High School ninth-grade English teacher, told the Orlando Sentinel after Florida implemented a statewide ban.

“I don’t know … what went into making up that rule, but I can tell you that the result of it on a very wide scale has been extraordinarily positive for (students’) mental health from an anecdotal perspective,” Edgewater High School Principal Heather Kreider told Education Week.

A study from Common Sense Media examining smartphone data of 200 students found 97% of 11- to 17-year-olds use their phones during the school day, with the amount of in-school screen time ranging from less than a minute to 6.5 hours, with a median time of 43 minutes.

The study found students picked up their phones a median of 51 times per day, though pickup amounts ranged from two to 498 times per day, K-12 Dive reports. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows 91% of schools banned nonacademic use of phones during the 2009-10 school year, a figure that declined to 66% by 2015-16, before rebounding to 77% in 2019-20.