Why million-dollar question about mobile phones in schools is about to be answered

As the first local authority to roll out the use of lockable Yondr phone pouches for pupils across S1 to S6 during the school day, it hopes the headline-grabbing policy will increase focus on learning and “improve wellbeing.” But will it actually work?

Yondr, a US start-up that gained prominence in live entertainment venues, has been pivoting to the education sector. It has sold millions of dollars’ worth of its goods to US schools, and increasingly, British classrooms are in its sights.

In recent months, it commissioned the polling firm, Public First, to survey teachers and parents about the impact of smartphones on learning, earning press coverage that dovetailed with the prevailing cultural mood. Regrettably, however, there has been little scrutiny of the effectiveness of Yondr’s phone-free strategy, and the council’s plans to monitor the pilot – a spokesman told me this would consist of “anecdotal feedback” from teachers and staff – looks unlikely to change that.

Harmful effects?

A paper produced last year by Yondr cited “independent research” which asserted that, in US schools using its pouches, academic success rates increased up to 6.27 per cent, but it’s unclear who conducted the research, or whether it was peer-reviewed. The same paper cites two academic studies on phone-free policies, neither of which focused on Yondr; one even noted that student achievement gains “should be understood not as much as a result of the prohibition of mobile phones per se”, but the enforcement of using mobiles for learning purposes only.

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More widely, there has been little detailed research into the impact of school mobile bans. A September 2024 London School of Economics study found “the results are mixed, with methods being contested and some studies showing no benefits or even harmful effects”, while a University of Birmingham study in February identified no difference in outcomes for students who attend schools that ban smartphones, in terms of mental wellbeing, physical activity and sleep, and attainment in English and maths.

“We need to do more than focus on schools alone, and consider phone use within and outside of school, across a whole day and the whole week,” explained Dr Victoria Goodyear, the study’s lead author.

Preparing children for high-tech world

This is the real challenge, and it is incumbent on parents and wider society to meet it. It is right to restrict pupils’ use of smartphones in schools, but it’s hard to see how an outright ban will address issues that persist outside the classroom.

To that end, the well-intentioned introduction of the Yondr pouches will only be as effective as the wider educational context; schools have an obligation to help prepare children for an ever-shifting, technology-enabled world, and if they can teach self-regulation, responsible digital citizenship, and inform pupils about misinformation and algorithmic bias, the merits of reducing the amount of time spent using devices become easier to comprehend.

But I fear that Edinburgh’s stance, like other outright bans, risks neglecting such a holistic approach, and supposes that the purge itself is a sufficient response to a complex and deep-rooted set of problems.