How Using Yondr to Restrict Student Cell Phone Use Affects Student Outcomes

• In Event: No Cells for You: The Impacts of Cellphone Bans on Student Outcomes in the U.S.

Abstract

In the U.S., a growing number of state and local educational agencies are adopting policies and prohibitions to restrict student cell phone use during the school day (Amy, 2025; Prothero et al., 2025; Scott, 2025). In a December 2024 School Pulse Panel survey of U.S. K-12 public schools, more than half of school leaders reported negative effects of cell phone use in school on student academic performance, attention spans, and mental health (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024). One increasingly popular approach to restricting student cell phone use is the Yondr pouch, a lockable (magnetic), signal-blocking device for securely storing a student’s phone during school hours. As of 2025, school districts in all 50 states had purchased Yondr pouches to address concerns about the relationship of cell phone use to student behavior, learning, and mental health (Yondr, 2025; North, 2024). The current research base is lacking, however, in independent assessments of the effects of strategies and policies developed to implement Yondr in K-12 schools.

This paper will present findings from a research collaboration with a large, urban school district that began purchasing Yondr pouches as a tool for restricting student cell phone use in the 2021-22 academic year, including in elementary, middle and high schools. This staggered adoption of Yondr pouches, along with varying policies and strategies for their implementation across schools and time, provides an opportunity to generate rigorous evidence on Yondr’s effectiveness in restricting student cell phone use and improving student outcomes. Specifically, the research addresses two key questions: How does the rollout of Yondr pouches to restrict student cell phone use affect student academic achievement, attendance, disciplinary actions, school climate, and mental health and mental healthcare utilization? And how do Yondr effects vary by policy implementation and subgroups (e.g., grade level, demographics, baseline outcomes)?

Preliminary findings from the empirical analysis will be presented, which relies on the gradual rollout of Yondr in the study district to employ a staggered difference-in-differences (DiD) approach (Callaway and Sant’Anna, 2021) for estimating average treatment effects of Yondr adoption (compared to schools never-treated over the study period and schools treated in an academic year after that period). In addition, insights from original data that are being collected from school principals that purchased Yondr pouches will be shared to illuminate how they are being implemented. These data include key elements of school policies developed to guide and manage Yondr use; training and support received from the vendor; anticipated effects of the Yondr pouches; the nature of feedback received from teachers, students and parents; costs of and barriers to effective use of the Yondr pouches, and innovative or best practices for their use in restricting student cell phone access. This research will generate valuable guidance to states and school districts across the country as they implement and refine policies to restrict student cell phone use in schools.

Author

• Carolyn J. Heinrich, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author