Do lockable phone pouches increase academic performance?
November 11, 2026
ANN ARBOR — If having access to smartphones diminishes academic performance, it makes sense to send schools in the opposite direction. But does taking phones away from students actually lead to improved results in the classroom?
According to Brian Jacob, co-director of the Institute for Social Research’s (ISR) Youth Policy Lab, it may not — at least not when schools use one specific approach.
Nationwide, one of the most popular strategies for separating students from their smart devices during school hours is Yondr lockable phone pouches. Students place their phones in the pouch at the beginning of the day and, thanks to a magnetic lock, can’t access them until they leave the school building for the day.
In a recent Insights talk at ISR titled “The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches,” Jacob shared findings on the use of these pouches, and it doesn’t seem to be a slam-dunk solution.
The pouches do one thing for sure: they stop students from using their phones at school. But according to Jacob’s data, which looked at more than 2,000 schools in the 2023-25 school years, additional effects may not be as positive.
“We find that the prevalence of disciplinary incidents in the school increases the first year that Yondr is adopted,” Jacob said. “We also find some suggestive evidence that student well-being declines in the first year.”
Jacob says the disciplinary and well-being numbers rebound after the first year. However, academic performance numbers don’t seem to show a big change after the adoption of the phone pouches. “Overall, we found no kind of statistically significant effect on standardized test scores,” he said.
Interestingly, the authors find suggestive evidence that the effects of pouches may vary by school level. “We do find modest positive gains in high school math but, bizarrely, very small but negative impacts in middle school.”
It points to a complicated relationship between technology and education, especially since, as Jacob points out, students without access to their phones can still find plenty of ways to engage with distracting material, such as by accessing social media on school computers.
“So I think for all of these outcomes, there are reasons to think that the phone bans would not be a panacea.”
Jacob’s full talk, “The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches,” is available below. For more information on ISR’s Insights Speaker Series, click here.