Do School Phone Bans Reduce Cyberbullying? What the Research Shows

A cruel message during second period, a screenshot shared to three group chats by lunch, a student in the counselor’s office by fifth period: phones let bullying follow students through the school day. Do phone bans stop it? The evidence is mixed. A Norwegian study found bullying fell after middle schools banned smartphones, and educators in New York and South Australia report fewer incidents. But the largest U.S. study, of schools that locked phones in pouches, found no clear change in students’ perceived online bullying. Here is what each source shows.

How Common Cyberbullying Is

• • 16% of U.S. high school students were electronically bullied in the past year, including through texting and social media; the rate was 21% for girls and 25% for LGBTQ+ students (CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2023).
• • About 58% of students ages 13–17 have been cyberbullied at some point, and about 33% in the previous 30 days, in a nationally representative 2025 survey (Cyberbullying Research Center).

Much of it happens outside school hours, which matters for what a school ban can and can’t do.

How Phones Carry Bullying Into the School Day

• • Photos and videos taken in school of classmates, shared before the bell rings
• • Anonymous messages and group chats that target a student without a name attached
• • Pile-ons where a single post draws mocking comments within minutes
• • Exclusion from group chats, visible to everyone in the room
• • AI-edited images and fake messages made to humiliate a classmate

A ban removes the phone from the room for those hours. It doesn’t remove the group chat.

What the Research Says

The educator surveys and the government figures are self-reported and come from the bodies that introduced the bans; the Norwegian and U.S. studies are independent research with comparison groups. Read together, they suggest bans reduce in-school incidents more reliably than they change how bullied students feel online.

What Schools Report After Removing Phones

• • Fewer incidents during the day: 60% of New York educators saw less bullying and cyberbullying (New York Governor’s Office).
• • Better social connection: 80% of the same educators said students’ social connections improved, and about 60% of New Hampshire educators said students’ social skills improved (InDepthNH).
• • More time to step in: without phones in hand, a conflict is less likely to spread across the school before staff hear about it.

What a Phone Ban Doesn’t Solve

A school ban covers the school day. Evening group chats, weekend pile-ons and anonymous messages sent from home are untouched, and South Australia’s own data show most of the incidents it tracks happen off site or outside school hours. Schools that treat a ban as their whole anti-bullying strategy will be disappointed.

What a ban does do: it takes the school day out of the equation for a few hours, and it stops the hardest kind of bullying to escape, being targeted online while sitting in the same room as the person doing it.

Pair the Ban With These

• • Digital citizenship lessons on how online behavior affects others
• • Anonymous reporting through tools such as Sandy Hook Promise’s Say Something or STOPit
• • Restorative practices that resolve conflicts through conversation
• • Social-emotional learning aligned with CASEL’s framework
• • Parent education on the apps students use and the warning signs of cyberbullying

Enforcement Decides Whether the Ban Exists

An unenforced “phones away” rule does little: in a 2026 USC survey, more than half of teens at schools that restrict phones during class said they don’t follow the rules (The 74). In England, bans that weren’t widely followed produced no significant academic gains (LSE), and the same logic applies to bullying.

We make LockedIn, one way to enforce a ban, so weigh this accordingly. At Screen Time schools, the apps the school blocks, such as social media, lock automatically while the phone is on campus and stay locked until the last bell; at Guided Access schools, students lock in with a triple-click (a tap on Android). The dashboard flags workarounds such as a new unapproved phone or a deleted app, and students can always call home or 911. It doesn’t reach a second phone that never had the app, or what happens after school. For every option, see the enforcement guide.

Sources

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2013–2023 (PDF) (2024)
2. Cyberbullying Research Center, 2025 Cyberbullying Data (2025)
3. Journal of Human Resources, Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health (Abrahamsson) (published online March 11, 2026)
4. National Bureau of Economic Research, The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches (Working Paper 35132, Allcott, Baron, Dee, Duckworth, Gentzkow and Jacob) (April 2026, revised Sept. 2026)
5. Office of the Governor of New York, Governor Hochul Announces Successful Results of New York’s Nation-Leading Phone-Free Schools Policy (June 1, 2026)
6. South Australia Department for Education, Wellbeing data shows positive effects of mobile phone ban (July 24, 2025)
7. InDepthNH, School cellphone survey indicates ban is effective (New Hampshire Department of Education survey) (July 29, 2026)
8. The 74, Study: 98% of Teens Attend Schools Limiting Cellphones, but Most Still Use Them (USC Understanding America Study) (Jan. 28, 2026)
9. London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance, Ill Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance (Beland and Murphy, Discussion Paper 1350, PDF) (May 2015)

Researched and written by the LockedIn team (co-founders Brian Ohebshalom and Noah Fakheri). Sources checked October 12, 2026. Spot an error? Email hello@lockedinapp.co.