The lunchroom at Central High School in St. Paul is loud, filled with students talking across the table or waiting in line to buy hot chocolate at student group stands. But it was not always this lively.

“Last year it was a very common occurrence to just look over to the side and the entire row was just using their phone,” said Kiran Simha, 17, a senior and member of the high school’s student advisory board. “Now, like, everybody’s talking with each other, right? Socializing more, and I think it’s just a much healthier environment and a friendlier environment across the board.”

The difference? A bell-to-bell ban on cellphones and other personal electronic devices.

Cherise Ayers, the school’s principal, said the new “off, off and away” policy that started this school year requires students to keep personal devices powered down, off of their bodies and in their bags from 8:15 a.m. until the school day ends at 3 p.m.

“I’m excited for the change,” Ayers said.

The policy has been effective so far, she added, and well-received by the community at large. It even prompted her to change her own habits with technology use. “I leave my phone in my office all the time now,” she said.

The bell-to-bell ban is not unique to Central High School, or to Minnesota. States across the country are establishing cellphone policies in light of increasing evidence of cellphones’ negative impacts on student mental health, social skills and abilities to learn.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans believe bell-to-bell cellphone bans for middle and high school students would be beneficial for their social skills, grades and behavior in class, according to a 2025 Pew Research survey.

As of this past spring, Minnesota law requires school districts to adopt a policy on cellphone use in schools. The law does not set specific requirements for what those policies should be, but did direct the Minnesota Elementary School Principals Association and the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals to develop a cellphone tool kit providing guidance for schools on implementing different policies and enforcement procedures.

But ultimately the decision is up to the districts and individual schools.

Similar to Central High School, Stillwater Area Public Schools enacted a bell-to-bell ban this fall for all students from the first day of kindergarten to the last day of high school.

“From day one kids showed up and they just knew what the expectations were, and it’s been a game changer,” said Carissa Keister, the chief of staff for the district. “A lot more engagement in learning.”

She added: “I honestly can’t think of a time this year when I’ve actually seen a student with a phone out.”

When the last bell rings, however, that no longer holds true.

Everyone on board for cellphone ban

St. Paul Public Schools, Minnesota’s second-largest district, implemented a districtwide policy in September banning cellphones and other personal electronic devices during the school day. The policy gives high schools the option of allowing students to use phones at some points, such as in the lunch room and while walking between classes.

But Central, which previously allowed students to use their phones between classes and at lunch, found this nearly impossible to enforce. In order for the policy to work, it had to apply to everyone.

“The choice to go with a wholesale bell-to-bell ban, we didn’t arrive at it without a lot of discussion first,” said Lisa Houdek, a science teacher at Central High School.

Staff and administrators spent the summer discussing the policy with the students’ families and the school community. “I think most of the staff were skeptical that we could do it, nervous to even try,” Houdek added.

Enforcing the policy day-to-day also requires special attention to making it apply to everyone equally.

Schools nationally tend to discipline students of color and especially Black students more harshly and frequently than white students for breaking phone-ban policies, Ayers said. “I don’t want anything to at all look like only certain students or some students are getting addressed about their phones,” she said.

If students do break the rules, they have to turn in their devices for the day and get them back at 3 p.m. If students continue to use their phones without permission, their parents or guardians must pick up the devices at the end of the day and, in some cases, the school will develop a contract for students to turn in their devices when they get to school.

But Ayers does not want getting a phone taken away to feel like a punishment. She often carries around mints to hand out to students if she has to take their phones. “Have some encourage-mint,” she said.

And for the most part, the policy has been effective. “They mostly just don’t want to get it taken away, right?” Simha said.

The school sends emails to students’ parents or guardians when devices are confiscated and includes a reminder of the policy, Ayers said. Families often thank them for enforcing the policy or do not respond at all, she said, and while some express disagreement with the policy, those are few and far between.

Students also generally recognize the reasons for the policy, despite some understandable frustration. “I think mildly annoyed is a good way of saying it,” Simha said.

“People like to complain, but I think the overall consensus is that this begrudgingly is better for us,” said Leah Odegaard-Dunning, a junior and member of the student advisory board at Central.

When the school year started, teachers reminded students of the policy at the start of every class period. Ayers said the last thing she wanted was for students to be using their phones and telling her it was because they did not know the policy.

“On the first day of school, every single class I went to had the same slideshow about the phone policy,” Odegaard-Dunning said. “And it was somewhat annoying and then I figured out that now I finally know the phone policy and that’s what it actually took, was me learning it in every single class period.”

But Central also recognizes that a ban on all personal devices does not work for everyone. Some students need accommodations for devices used to track or manage medical conditions.

“It’s a big school,” Ayers said. “We’ve got like almost 1,700 kids that are moving around at one time and it can cause anxiety and people want noise canceling for that or music during work time in classrooms, and we allow that as long as it doesn’t require the use of your cellphone.”

Students are allowed to use school phones to contact their families in case of emergency — one of the main concerns of a bell-to-bell ban — and also have access to email.

Cellphone impacts on mental health

Besides concerns over students’ declining focus in class and academic performance, mental health stands at the center of efforts to curtail cellphone use in schools. Multiple studies have linked students’ excessive cellphone use to increased anxiety, social isolation and depression, which Minnesota’s cellphone tool kit highlights as part of the “why” behind these bans.

“It was really about the research showing us that our kids are struggling with anxiety and depression and a lot of that can be attributed to things like social media use and just constantly having that distraction of a phone in your hand,” Keister said.

She added: “I wish we would have done this a long time ago.”

Research linking cellphone use with decreased class participation and lower academic performance is also among the tool kit’s key points of rationale.

A 2023 U.S. surgeon general’s advisory warned against social media’s negative impacts on children, especially given how central these platforms are to young people’s lives. For children between the ages of 12 and 15, spending more than three hours a day on social media doubled their risk of experiencing mental health symptoms such as depression and anxiety, according to the advisory.

“If every student in the school said, ‘I disagree with this policy, I think it’s wrong and stupid,’
I would still do it because I believe the research and I believe that people would get to a place … where they see the benefits of it,” Ayers said.

Learning to talk with each other

For Central, the ban was also an attempt to address the negative effects the COVID-19 pandemic had on students’ social and academic success.

“They seemed so withdrawn from one another and from engagement with what was happening around them, and now I see them kind of coming back out of it,” Houdek said.

A 2025 Gallup poll found that 45% of parents of school-aged children reported the pandemic had harmed their children’s development of social skills, and roughly half of these parents said their children continue to struggle socially.

“After COVID they didn’t know how to talk to each other,” Houdek said.

For some students, keeping the phones away makes connecting with others outside of the classroom easier, as well. “The universal sign for ‘I don’t want to talk to you’ is having your headphones on and looking at your phone,” Odegaard-Dunning said. “And the fact that students can no longer do that, it makes everyone a lot more approachable.”

This rings true for Stillwater Area Public Schools, too, especially at the lunch table. “They’re sitting there talking to each other, there’s not a phone in sight,” Keister said. “The cafeteria is loud and it’s noisy and kids are talking and it’s amazing to see because that just wasn’t our reality in the past.”

Technology autonomy

While Central’s bell-to-bell ban has been relatively well-received across the board, some students wished they had greater autonomy over their personal devices, whether to figure out how to use technology responsibly on their own or simply because they do not want school staff to be able to take their devices.

“Whenever we do conduct surveys, we’ll get all sorts of responses and we always relay those to Principal Ayers,” Simha said when asked about the student advisory board’s role in the policy. “So the administration is being made aware of the general opinions of the students.”

Enforcing the policy is not always easy, either. Ayers said the ban is like a stop sign. Most people will follow it, but some do not pay attention and others do not care.

“With kids that you don’t know, like, if I try and take somebody’s phone in the hall, it’s nearly impossible,” said Melissa Chaffee-Johnson, a social studies teacher at Central High School.
“If I don’t know who that child is, they just look at me and keep walking.”

Minneapolis Public Schools takes slightly a more lenient approach with its cellphone policy, stressing the importance of teaching students to use personal technology responsibly to prepare them for life in college and future careers as technology continues to dominate the professional world. High school students can use personal electronic devices during the school day and in class when permitted by the teacher and middle school students can use their devices during the school day upon request.

But others like Central High School and Stillwater Area Public Schools have found giving students the school day to be away from their personal devices has been beneficial.

“The policy is really about the phones just being away and giving kids that six-and-a-half hours of distraction-free ability to just sit down and learn,” Keister said. “But we certainly throughout our school experience have conversations with kids about being responsible digital citizens and what it looks like to use technology in a responsible way.”

When the last bell rings

By 2:58 p.m., several students at Central High School stood on the carpet by the front door looking at their phones as they counted down the final seconds of the school day. When the last bell rang, phones and earbuds started to populate the halls as students walked out the door.

Those who had to turn in their phones during the day lined up by the door to collect their confiscated devices that spent the remainder of the school day in the cellphone drawer.

More phones were pulled out of backpacks and pockets as students walked to the buses pulled up outside. But for others, the ban has influenced these after-school habits.

“I’ll, like, forget to check my phone,” Simha said.

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This story was originally published by MinnPost and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.