- An updated statewide default cellphone ban is now in effect in Utah K-12 public schools.
- A local “science of learning” expert says phone prohibitions in classrooms will not ensure improved student focus.
- Skilled teachers can use both competition and collaboration to improve student focus.
Utah kids will soon be back in class hauling backpacks stuffed with school supplies, textbooks and maybe a few snacks.
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One item they won’t be carrying? Cellphones.
A new law passed by the 2026 Utah Legislature will be in effect when K-12 students go back to school in the coming weeks. The state’s default school cellphone policy now restricts cellphones in school from opening bell to closing bell.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and several state lawmakers — along with many teachers, parents and even a few students — are confident the updated cellphone policy will improve student academics, even while increasing classroom focus and social connections.
Time will tell if Utah’s bell-to-bell cellphone prohibition is working.
Meanwhile, national studies of school cellphone ban outcomes examine only limited elements of student performance and environments. And most cellphone restriction policies in the U.S. are still in early stages.
But one local educator with an extensive background in the science of learning and student success said the early research indicates bell-to-bell cellphone bans are not magic bullets to optimizing learning outcomes in K-12 schools.
In a discussion with the Deseret News, Western Governors University Senior Vice President and Executive Dean of the School of Education Jeff Borden said that banning cellphones at schools “is a fairly new initiative.”
But early research on such policies suggests mixed results, observed Borden.
Low-achieving students from typically low socioeconomic backgrounds, he said, have shown far more academic progress following bell-to-bell cellphone bans than their counterparts from middle and high socioeconomic backgrounds.
Another study found that reading scores improved for fourth and eighth graders.
But classroom factors such as attendance and bullying have shown to be largely unaffected by cellphone bans, at least in the early studies, according to Borden.
“The research does say banning cellphones is a good idea — (but) I don’t know that it’s good as a panacea. It doesn’t necessarily accomplish everything.”
Will Utah students be more focused in class without their phones?
One key outcome that the early cellphone ban research has not adequately determined is whether or not student focus improves, said Borden.
“The measures of learning did go up — and that’s great,” he said. “Test scores went up. But that isn’t necessarily (a measure) of better focus. … I think we’re trying to prove that out, but the studies have been too small. The methodologies weren’t great. And I don’t know that we can claim that definitively.”
Brain focus, from a neuroscience perspective, “comes down to novelty,” said Borden.
For starters, he said, the neurotransmitter norepinephrine is created when students have “just enough of a challenge that they think they can overcome something. They think they can figure it out.”
Generating norepinephrine is both a curricular approach and an instructional approach, explained Borden.
“So getting people puzzles or problems that they believe they can overcome — that is what drives focus from sort of a neurotransmitter perspective.”
No surprise, surveys show teachers are embracing cellphone bans in class. But Borden emphasized that teachers in a phone-free classroom still have to take the next step to promote better student focus.
And while there may be fewer digital distractions, teachers still have to capitalize on engaging their students with “best practices” of instruction and curriculum.
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So what are classroom ‘best practices’?
Teachers must find ways in their instruction to include “desirable difficulties,” said Borden. The challenge is making learning “just a little bit harder than it could be” to engage more parts of students’ brains while increasing focus and motivation.
Borden gives the example of a teacher who tells the students that they are going to be learning fractions. Many of the kids may have already decided they don’t like math. They will quickly lose focus and tune out the teacher.
But a teacher who says that they need help discovering just the right amount of ingredients to make Grandma’s cookies — “a one-third teaspoon of this, a one-fourth tablespoon of that” — will shift the student’s motivation element.
“There’s a focus element that’s changed as they’re trying to uncover the answers that they will ultimately need to figure out in order to know how to multiply, add, subtract fractions,” Borden explained.
With or without classroom phone bans, it’s necessary for teachers to drive motivation, he added. “It won’t always work, and people are different — but motivation is part of the learning equation.
“And it is incumbent on any good teacher to say to a student: ‘Here’s the reason this matters to you.’”
Learning catalysts: Competition and collaboration
Most Utah teachers can’t personalize an instruction model for each individual student. It’s not scalable. But teachers, said Borden, can utilize two seemingly opposite approaches to sharpen focus and learning: competition and collaboration.
“Competition is a great catalyst that motivates people to say, ‘I want to do better than another team, another group, or another person.’”
For others, collaboration is a “best practice” catalyst, said Borden.
The so-called “love hormone” oxytocin is produced when a person believes that they have a network, friend or relationship that is supportive — or collaborative.
“When a person has oxytocin in their system, they are willing to accept the advice of another, like a teacher or a peer,” said Borden.
In fact, one of the allures of a cellphone constantly receiving a steady stream of notifications is that the notification functions almost like a fake hit of oxytocin.
“We’ve got to work as practitioners to connect our students to one another and to ourselves — because when we do that, they start driving oxytocin and then they can learn from us,” said Borden.
And what about AI and student focus/instruction?
Borden said WGU alumni working in the classrooms are reporting that parents are eager for their kids to learn how to use artificial intelligence. They recognize that the technology will be prolific throughout their children’s lives.
But, added Borden, “students primarily use AI to cheat.”
So teachers are searching to find an AI balance in their instruction.
“These AI tools are emerging so fast that nobody knows what to do with them or how to use them effectively,” said Borden.
“So what we’re trying to do, at our school anyway, is to try to find sort of that middle-ground where we can say, ‘I know what the desire is, I know what you’re up against. Here’s how you can kind of bridge that continuum as things evolve.’”
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