School Smartphone Policies: How Parents Can Help

Wanting to stay connected with your child is both important and normal as a parent. As more schools implement phone policies, families may find themselves adjusting to new expectations around communication during the school day. These policies are often meant to address concerns like distractions and cyberbullying.  

Dr. Megan Moreno, Co-Medical Director of the Center, recently conducted a study to learn more about parent perceptions of school phone policies. The study, “Parent-Reported School Phone Policies: Prevalence, Components, and Violations,” published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, shares findings about how families communicate at school and how that communication may be connected to school phone policy violations.

The study found that many parents reported contacting their child via their smartphone daily (25%) or multiple times a day (38.5%). At the same time, children were twice as likely to have violated their school policy when parents contacted them more frequently during school hours. 

Over the past few years, more and more schools have adopted smartphone policies to limit phone use during the school day due to concerns about:

• Texting and notifications during classes
• Cyberbullying and harassing
• Multitasking (doing multiple activities at one time online)
• Distracting other students by being off task

With new school phone policies across the country, more students are adjusting to changes in their routine and less contact with friends and family during the school day.

Based on the findings from this research, this parent resource was developed to help parents support their child in following school phone policies while maintaining healthy communication during the school day and planning for emergencies. 

Here are some tips to help you support your child:

Parent-reported school phone policies: Prevalence, components, and violations

Research on school phone policies has mostly focused on the experience of students and educators, so our research team sought to understand parents’ thoughts and perspectives. In Fall 2024, we surveyed 2,500 parents of children ages 10-17. Survey questions covered whether their child’s school had a smartphone policy, how restrictive the policy was, whether their child had violated the policy, how violations were enforced, and how often parents contacted their child’s phone during the school day. We were interested in learning about what factors led to young people getting in trouble for their school policy.

What We Found

• Most parents reported that their child’s school has a smartphone policy, but schools vary in how restrictive their policies are.
• Parents frequently contact their children on their smartphone during the school day, either once daily (25%) or multiple times a day (38.5%).

Children were more likely to have a phone policy violation if:

• They had an ongoing or chronic health condition or disability (47%) vs children who did not (28%)
• Their parents contacted them at school by phone at least once a day (41%) compared to less than once per day (23%)
• Their school had a less restrictive policy (48%) compared to medium-restrictive (31%) or more-restrictive (28%)
• Their school’s policy was new this year (43%) or new in the past four years (40%) vs launched in 2019 or earlier (28%)

Download a PDF version of this resource.

Reference
Moreno, M. A., Owings‑Fonner, N., Salerno, A., Jenkins, M., Williams, E., Zhao, Q., & Eickhoff, J. C., et al. (2026). Parent‑Reported School Phone Policies: Prevalence, Components, and Violations. Journal of Adolescent Health. Advance online publication.