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Is LAUSD's cellphone ban working? Here's what we know after one semester

A hand places a phone into a box with slits for the phones to fit into them.
A Venice High School staff member stores a student’s phone as they arrive to campus on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025.
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Brian Feinzimer
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LAist
)

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Four months after the Los Angeles Unified School District banned cellphones in its schools, the general consensus among students, teachers and administrators is that there are fewer visible phones during the school day and more interaction between students.

Venice High School math teacher Jessica Quindel said she noticed an immediate change in her students on the day the ban started in February.

“It was almost like you had given them a sugar high, they were bouncing off the walls,” Quindel said.

She offered stress balls and other fidget toys to occupy students' hands and used grant funding to purchase “flexible seating.” Students can choose to sit on a bouncy medicine ball on wheels, a couch, or an intentionally wobbly stool instead of a traditional desk chair.

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“It's a challenge, but it's a good one because it means that kids are not looking at their phones, and instead they're trying to learn,” Quindel said.

At the same time, students and educators say students aren’t necessarily following the rules as they were originally laid out.

“ People still bring their phones to school, they just don't get caught,” said Sophia, a Venice High sophomore. “The more rules you enforce, the sneakier people get. The more you imply that you don't trust students, the more they give you a reason not to trust them.”

Imperfect Paradise Main Tile
Listen 46:11
On February 18th, 2025, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest public school district in the country, implemented an all-day cell phone ban for its students. Now that it’s the end of the school year, we head to Venice High School to see how the ban actually went.

The backstory of LAUSD’s cellphone ban

The LAUSD Board voted in June 2024 to expand the district’s existing phone ban to include lunch and passing periods (“bell to bell”). The policy also applies to smartwatches and earbuds.

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Board members cited rising concerns about the effect of phones and social media on youth mental health, bullying and distraction from classroom instruction.

Two months later, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that requires districts state-wide to adopt similar policies by July 2026. California is one of at least 24 states, as well as D.C., that require school districts to ban or restrict the use of phones in schools.

LAUSD offered schools different ways to implement the ban and set aside $7 million for lockers, pouches and other devices to separate students from their phones. A district spokesperson said in a statement that about half of schools chose to rely instead on the “honor system” and require students to keep their phones turned off and in their backpacks.

It’s unclear how much of the money was spent. LAist requested invoices related to the policy’s implementation in April through California’s public records law, but has yet to receive them.

From the community
  • For the last year, LAist’s reporting on LAUSD’s cellphone ban has been shaped by the experiences of families, educators and students. Our survey is still open if you want to weigh in.

‘It’s a challenge, but it’s a good one’

Venice High School’s 2,300 students were supposed to stow phones in a portable lockers stored in their sixth-period classes.

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Sophia was one of a few students in her class who relinquished their phones initially, but she said she stopped after about two weeks.

“ I don't use it throughout the day — I really don't,” Sophia said. “But I just, I feel safer knowing that my property is like, in my bag.”

She said the phone ban has been more of an inconvenience than anything. She’s in multiple extracurriculars, including the school newspaper.

“ I want to give respect to my teacher, and I'm there to learn. I understand that,” Sophia said. “But during my free time, during lunch and nutrition, when I have the perfect opportunity to send out communications to get stuff that I need to be done, done, there is no reason for me to still have my phone locked in a box.”

Sophia’s average screen time is the same as it was before the ban, about four hours a day.

Parents struggle to control phone use at home
  • Sun Valley parent Norma Chávez said her seventh-grade daughter chose to leave her phone at home rather than lock it in the pouch provided by her school.

  • “ She doesn't use it throughout the day, but now it's like she's starving from phone use when she gets home,” Chávez said. She said she catches her daughter hiding a second screen playing cartoons or YouTube while she’s supposed to be doing her homework.

  • “I'm trying to get her more involved with activities where she has to be outside the house and she can't have the phone,” Chávez said. For example, next year she’s signed up for the Los Angeles Police Department’s cadet program.

But other students reported the ban did change their behavior at school.

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Venice junior Chris said that although he didn’t put his phone in the locker, he also wasn’t using it during the school day, for example to play video games during lunch.

 ”I was afraid to get it taken away by my teachers because there was still punishments that you would get if you got caught with it too many times,” Chris said.

Instead, he spent more time talking with his friends and noticed his peers doing the same.

But he has noticed another change: In February, he said his screentime averaged five hours a day. By the end of the school year his phone use had crept up to eight hours a day.

Most of that time is spent on TikTok, but Chris also spends hours in the photos app.

“ I just like to reminisce on memories I've taken with my phone,” he said. Among the nearly 10,000 pictures he’s taken since 2020 are images of his recent birthday party at his grandmother’s home and trips to Brazil to visit family.

Compliance ranges, but teachers report positive results
  • Sadia Aziz, a teacher at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, says the ban seems to work. “Kids used cellphones blatantly before the ban, now they are sneaking them here and there. You don't see a lot of phones in the classrooms. Students are definitely more engaged when the distractions of [the] phone went away."

  • “Cell phones are almost a non-issue on campus now,” said Mike, a Berendo teacher who shared his first name in an LAist survey. “Most students follow the rule to the letter (no phones at all for the whole day, including lunch and recess). Some don't lock the pouch, but they're not taking them out in class and teachers aren't having to police it and that's really all that matters.”

Math teacher Quindel said the support of a district-wide policy has helped her feel less like the “phone police” in her individual classroom, but lunch, nutrition and passing periods remain a challenge, especially given the other responsibilities teachers have.

Two hands hold a gray rectangular pouch with green words that read 'YONDR."
A Walter Reed Middle School student holds the pouch where she is required to store her phone during the school day as part of LAUSD's cell phone policy.
(
Zaydee Sanchez
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LAist
)

“ We have thousands of kids here, and there's not that many adults to be able to intervene,” Quindel said.

Quindel said discussions are underway at Venice as to whether the school will continue trying to require students to store phones at the beginning of the day, or switch to a different strategy.

Students have reportedly found ways to circumvent the phone policy at other schools, for example by storing a dummy phone in the pouch or breaking the locks.

It’s not yet clear on a classroom or district-wide level whether the policy is helping students learn more.

“ I teach data science, so I have a very hard time saying that I have any kind of controlled experiment to say that there's a link between their grades and the cellphone policy,” Quindel said.

But she did mention a few individual cases where students told her that the phone ban helped them focus in class.

A new attempt next school year
  • “The students were all issued pouches, but in practice they are not used and teachers/admin [are] not enforcing the ban at all,” wrote Eagle Rock High School parent Carrie Hansen. “They say they will start [with a] clean slate next year.”

LAist requested an interview with anyone at LAUSD who might be able to speak to how the policy has been implemented district-wide and received a statement from a spokesperson.

“While the district has not completed a formal assessment since initializing our implementation of a variety of phone-free policies this semester, our school sites are reporting improved socialization and engagement during the school days and minimal to no disruption,” the spokesperson wrote.

Listen 23:18
LAUSD banned cell phones in February. So how’s that going?
Mariana Dale joins AirTalk to discuss implementation of Los Angeles Unified's cellphone policy.

Nick Melvoin, an LAUSD board member and major supporter of the ban, said faculty interested in studying how LAUSD schools are implementing the phone ban have contacted his office.

Researchers, including several at Stanford, have launched a national survey to try to better understand how phone bans are being implemented throughout the country and expect to share initial findings before the start of next school year.

“We want the world to see that this is a really important policy,” Melvoin said. “I think we will all, as educators and educational leaders, look back in a few years and be like, how did we ever let cellphones in schools?”

Imperfect Paradise Main Tile
Listen 46:11
On February 18th, 2025, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest public school district in the country, implemented an all-day cell phone ban for its students. Now that it’s the end of the school year, we head to Venice High School to see how the ban actually went.

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