26 states just passed laws trying to recreate this exact classroom. The largest study on the results dropped two weeks ago.
Stanford, Duke, Michigan, and UPenn tracked 4,600 schools that locked student phones in Yondr pouches. Three years of data. Test score improvement across all subjects: close to zero. Attendance change: close to zero. Self-reported attention: unchanged.
The phones are in locked pouches all day. The kids still can't focus.
Here's what makes the data interesting. The UK ran this experiment in 2013 and saw a 6.4% test score bump, with the biggest gains among low-achieving students. The US ran it a decade later and got almost nothing.
The difference is exposure length. UK students in 2013 had smartphones for about 6 years. US students in 2024 had them for 17. One group got interrupted early. The other had already built the habit architecture.
The one metric that did move: by year three, student well-being improved. Grades stayed flat. Focus stayed flat. Attendance stayed flat. But the kids felt better. Turns out the phones were making them miserable even when they weren't hurting their scores.
This video looks calm because it was filmed before the thing that would make calm impossible had arrived. 26 states are now learning that confiscating the device doesn't reverse what the device already did.
“It’s weird seeing people just chilling without their phones”
High school in 2000s: