We’ve all experienced the unpleasant shock of being bluntly told on the first day of school that we could no longer use our iphones or any other “internet enabled” devices. Gone are the days of checking the time on our apple watches, texting our friends between classes, and checking notifications during lunch. Now MHS staff are mandated to confiscate phones on sight. Checking the time on the wrong device has the potential to land you in detention. And we can’t even complain because all of this is mandated by state law.
But this policy didn’t come from nowhere. In fact, the New Jersey Commission on Effects of Social Media Usage on Adolescents was actually established in 2023 to investigate the effect of social media on teens and only recently issued their report in September 2025. In the executive summary of their reports they declare that after extensive review of case studies, parent testimony, and survey data gathered by Rutgers they have determined that social media “poses serious risks, from cyberbullying and addictive use patterns to privacy threats, sleep disruption, and mental health decline”. Legislative supporters of the bill heralded it as a bipartisan effort to end classroom disruptions and protect adolescents from the scourge of social media. Specifically, the entire New Jersey legislature which passed the bill with an overwhelming majority in the House (63-3) and the Senate (37-0).
It’s hard not to be skeptical. I mean assuming cell phones do cause problems from cyberbullying to sleep disruption a school cell phone ban would hardly root out those problems. So I took the liberty to review the sources cited in support and the quantitative data boils down to roughly this: extensive cell phone use is correlated with lower academic retention, cell phone bans tend to result in a decline in reports of bullying and mental health visits and increase the standardized scores of lower achieving students the most. For reference, a study done on adolescents in England (Beland & Murphy 2016) recorded the increase in scores to be rough 14.2% of a standard deviation. In terms of an SAT score that would be equivalent to an overall score increase of around 30 points, which isn’t massive but significant given the minimal effort applied.
So I must begrudgingly admit that there are some apparent benefits from cell phone bans. Even keeping in mind that the study populations were not derived from the US, New Jersey, or Millburn, and that correlation is not causation, it is likely that there is some truth to the fact that cell phone bans have resulted in comparative benefits for student welfare, academically and mentally. Therefore, considering that cell phone bans are low effort to implement and have been consistently shown to have a positive impact, it is not unreasonable that the New Jersey legislature chose to make them a standard statewide. Perhaps they are unnecessary for millburn specifically. Perhaps we will not see any comparative benefit and will have nothing to show for this minor annoyance. Either way, the cell phone ban did not just spawn in out of thin air, has significant empirical backing, and is an easy policy to implement compared to the benefits it could offer, so it is not irrational to implement it.
