Published March 31, 2025
In the book The Catalyst, Wharton School professor Jonah Berger explores the question of how to change someone’s mind, given that humans are naturally change-averse. He comes to the question from a business background: companies face challenges in getting consumers to try out or switch to their product because we like to stick to the status quo, even when that status quo is detrimental to our well-being or simply not the best choice we could be making. Berger asks, “Why hasn’t that person changed already? What is stopping them?” and then answers it by explaining five key barriers to change. Drawing on the concept of catalysis in chemistry, in which the amount of activation energy needed for a reaction to happen is lowered by the presence of an added substance, known as a catalyst, Berger argues that, likewise, the best way to generate change in people is not about pushing harder or persuading better, but about changing minds by lowering barriers that keep people from taking action.
School bans on the use of cellphones during the day—which have now been implemented in schools and districts in at least 14 states—are one type of recent catalyst that have effectively changed students’ and parents’ minds. A similar pattern has emerged throughout different states, different districts, and even different kinds of schools: a reaction of initial resistance to the announcement of the ban, the school pushing through the point of resistance to implement the ban, and eventually the students and parents embracing and appreciating the prohibition. Other states and communities can learn from these experiences how to better change the minds of the families in their care.
From Resistance to Acceptance
The initial reaction from students where these phone bans have been implemented is uniform shock and resistance: how are they supposed to keep in touch with their friends during the day? At the Buxton School in Massachusetts, which chose to ban phones last year, “some students were really scared,” the Head of School said, recalling how kids anxiously gripped their phones during the announcement in dread. “They couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not have this device that has become a crucial part of every second of their lives.”
Parents are nervous, too. They’re worried they won’t be able to be in touch with their child as needed, especially in the case of an emergency. A 2024 survey by the National Parents Union found that 79% of parents allow their child to bring a phone to school. The most common reasons cited were so that their kids could “use their phone if there is an emergency” (79%) and so parents could get in touch with their children “or find out where they are when needed” (71%). As one mother in New York City, where a ban was being considered, explained to reporters, “my eldest goes to school on his own and picks up his siblings from school. A phone is a necessity.”
Because of this resistance, when a phone ban is first implemented, it can be a bumpy transition.
At a high school in upstate New York, when the ban first took effect, “hallways rang with the sound of kids trying to smash locks and get to their devices.” And at another school in the Bronx, students plotted a protest. Implementing bans is not a smooth and easy transition. But eventually, and across the board, as schools push past the point of resistance, student behavior changes in positive and unexpected ways.
For example, at one high school, Newburgh Free Academy, a high school in New York, students became more engaged in class, and the lunchroom got louder with students playing card games once they accepted the new reality and stopped trying to bust their phones out of jail. While advocates had argued that kids would benefit from a phone-free environment, no one could have anticipated such a joyous return to analog entertainment.
Despite initial concerns, over and over again, state after state, school district after school district, students and parents alike have come to embrace and appreciate the phone bans. Their minds have changed.
How is this the case? What about the ban ends up changing their minds? And are there lessons to be learned more generally about how policies restricting kids’ access to technology more broadly can come to change their minds?
Two of Berger’s recommended catalyst strategies in particular seem to be at work with phone bans are worth exploring further: 1) surfacing the costs of inaction and 2) letting people try it out for themselves.
The Cost of Inaction
Naturally, when considering a change, it’s easy to fixate on the costs of switching. We see clearly what we’d be giving up from our current lifestyle and habits if we did differently. We don’t observe that there may be costs to not switching—that we may actually be suffering by maintaining our status quo because the costs of inaction are normally hidden from us.
A recent conversation captured this for me. A friend was lamenting that she needed to fix the windows on the front of her family’s house. She couldn’t get over how expensive it would be. But when she sat down with her recent bills and realized how much money her family was losing each month on heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer⎯caused by the gaps in the current windows⎯she saw the light. The status quo was costing her family more, she just couldn’t see it. When the costs of inaction were surfaced, it compelled her to bite the bullet and replace their windows.
Phone bans are likewise helping to surface the hidden costs of sticking to the status quo of allowing phones in schools. Initially, parents think, “What if there’s an emergency? What if I need to change the pick-up time?” while kids lament, “I won’t be able to send Snapchats to my friends who have a different lunch period than me.” But once they’re forced to go without, the downsides of their current use become apparent. At Timber Lake High School in Florida, where students started playing pickleball during lunch and hosting board game tournaments, they came to recognize they’d been suffocating from the lack of play and camaraderie that comes from real-life relationships and activity off the phones.
In the L.A. Unified School District, which recently adopted a ban, one student’s reflection to the superintendent captured the lifecycle of the decision-making process: “‘I initially did not like the idea. It was sort of difficult for me, but now, you know, a couple weeks in… I’m OK with it. I feel I can concentrate more and actually get to play more.’” Another student noted how much more she and her friends talk to each other in class and at lunch.
Bans have surfaced other costs that students were bearing outside of the school walls as well. A seventh-grader in a Michigan school district that went phone-free shared:
In seventh grade, I used to spend over an hour getting ready in the morning. I had to make sure I looked perfect. All of my friends had phones, and I just never knew when one of them was going to whip out their phone in class, in the hallway, or in the bathroom and take a picture. Because of this, I felt a constant, daily pressure to look a certain way so that I felt pretty in the pictures. No blemishes. I wanted to look perfect. Now, without phones being used by everyone, the pressure is off. There’s nothing to worry about. I can be more natural. I can finally be me. (emphasis added)
Students find their interactions with classmates to be more genuine and authentic after the ban. “Now people can’t be like: ‘Oh, look at me on Instagram. This is who I am,’” said Peyton Stanley, a 12th grader at Timber Creek High School in Florida, which has gone phone-free. “It has helped people be who they are — instead of who they are online — in school.”
Often unnoticed by students, phone and social media use during the school day have helped drive an epidemic of mental anxiety and social pressure from students over their appearances and behavior at school. Just forbidding phones for a few hours a day has decreased those costs, and now students are free to be themselves and focus on learning instead of their social media perceptions. It’s no wonder that schools that ban phones see improvements not only in academic outcomes but also in student mental health as well.
Concentration and productivity, play and conversation. These were some of the costs of inaction that students were paying by having their phones during school that they didn’t even realize. Take the phones away, and students see for themselves the hidden costs of a world deprived of in-person social interactions and activities.
Parents, too, can now see the costs of the way things were. For my forthcoming book, The Tech Exit, I interviewed the vice chair of the Orange County School Board in Florida, an early district that implemented a bell-to-bell phone ban. When I asked her about parents’ experiences and whether parents came to accept the ban, she told me, “Absolutely. I’ve had a lot of parents tell me ‘thank you for taking it away.’ They’re enjoying the lack of time their child is spending on a phone at school.”
Schools that pushed forward with phone ban policies have been pleasantly surprised that, once implemented, parental resistance mostly dries up, too. Jessica Kelly, a parent in Los Angeles, says that most parents she knows now support the ban. And the “L.A. school board President Scott Schmerelson said he’d received only four recent emails expressing concerns—suggesting to him that most parents were coming around.” At Illing Middle School in Connecticut, which initially experienced objections from parents, four months into the pilot ban, most parents became reconciled to the new phone pouches—or even appreciated them.
There are plenty of potential sources of this parental shift. Perhaps they see their children’s academic performance improving and realize the past performance had been the result of diminished attention and focus in class from phones. Or they see their kids’ moods improve by building real-life friendships rather than “hanging out” on a screen. Many schools and districts have reported these findings, along with major decreases in student discipline issues, like bullying. And what parent wouldn’t be excited about removing the cost of student discipline issues from phones impacting their school environment?
Testing it Out
There’s another key reason why phone bans have been so successful: they allow students to try out the alternative, “test driving” what a phone-free life looks like for the seven hours of the school day. Kids often find they like the break: they feel freer and this experience at school can have ripple effects beyond the school day. Evolving science points to why: staying off the phone for the school day (and, therefore, off social media) can help young brains recalibrate and improve mental health, so that even during after school hours the pull of the phone and its apps is less powerful⎯they have learned to go without.
This would be no surprise to The Catalyst author, Berger, who explains that test drives or trial periods for new products help reduce uncertainty for buyers. It also reduces up-front costs, shrinking the amount of time and pain standing between now and a future experience. Phone bans show kids that they can survive, at least for a little while, without their phones, without swearing off their devices entirely. And students adapt, often quicker than one would expect. LA’s superintendent said there’s a transition period that lasts “about a couple weeks where they have to remind kids constantly” but “then [not having a phone] becomes one more learned behavior. Where you do it for 20 to 21 days in a row, it becomes part of your norm.”
This is consistent with broader research that suggests that it takes the average person about two months to form a new habit. Students’ own reflections bear this out. One senior at Newburgh Free Academy, Sofia Mucci, shared that it simply took some time to break her phone habits. When the ban was first implemented, she’d often reach for her device and find herself grabbing at air. But by the end of the school year, she noticed she was more focused during class and actually enjoyed talking to other students for a change, instead of staring down at a screen.
It isn’t just about the classrooms. Adopting a phone-free policy at school could make it easier for families to minimize or opt out of phones outside of school too, because they see that it’s possible.
The Policy Implications
As with any policy involving kids, it’s important to remember that children, by nature, don’t know what’s best for them, and they lack the maturity to exercise self-control and, therefore, the ability to self-regulate their use of technology. Kids can’t always see the long-term goal of certain rules, particularly when it conflicts with their immediate desires. If it were up to my children they would eat cake for breakfast, candy for lunch, skip naps, and stay up late at night, none of which would be good for them and their development. This is why they aren’t permitted to drive, or drink alcohol, or get married. So why would we trust children’s desires to dictate their relationship with technology and our policies around it?
That’s particularly true because digital technology is inherently addictive by design, with its dopaminergic effects, from bright screens and constant notifications to infinite scroll and recommendation algorithms that personalize the feed by learning from the user. This design overpowers human rationality. If even adults can’t act rationally when it comes to tech, why should we trust kids, knowing they lack self-control?
The success with school phone bans, despite initial resistance, raises the question of if there are lessons from the experience worth considering for other policy measures related to children and technology. Social media, smartphones, and other interactive screens have proven particularly harmful to children’s health and development⎯especially to their mental health over time, emotional regulation, brain development, and ability to focus and pay attention, to name a few. Yet kids remain glued to their phones and apps. Are there other areas where those in charge of tech policy should push through protests to help address these hidden costs?
The most important lesson is that policy changes do have the power to change people’s minds. The success of school phone bans, as well as the explanations above as to why initial resistance should not deter action but rather be pushed through, should lead us as a society to consider other beneficial policy solutions that would restrict children’s access to harmful digital technology for their good.
One possible solution to a bubbling crisis would be a nationwide age restriction on social media for minors, as Australia has recently done. Similar to age restrictions for tobacco, alcohol, firearms, or even driving a car, Congress could impose a higher age limit for social media—such as 16 or 18 years old. This would collectively push social media out of childhood. And while there would be major uproar among teens at first, evidence suggests that, once freed from the grips of social media’s dopaminergic effects and the constant social comparison and feedback that breed anxiety and depression, teens would eventually come to appreciate the change. They would be compelled to forge friendships in the real world and socialize in person with each other in more humane ways that would be better for their flourishing and well-being.
Government intervention is particularly helpful in this case because the social dynamics created by social media create collective action problems, making it nearly impossible for kids or parents to act alone. It should be no surprise that there is initial resistance from teens because their entire social environment has come to revolve around social media and smartphones. Their relationships with each other are mainly mediated through smartphones. If you walk the halls of a school that allows phones, you will find each teen staring down at their own screen. Individually abstaining from the technology could lead to social ostracization—and no parent wants their child to be weird. A top-down policy approach can solve this collective action problem by changing the social environment and, in doing so, change people’s minds about the policy. Once no one has the tech, there’s no reason to fear missing out.
Moreover, approaching these policies as solutions to collective action problems would mean that parents would no longer have to individually fight battles with their children⎯or pressure from society⎯to give their child social media or risk their child’s social isolation. The same way buying cigarettes is restricted, kids’ social media use could be, too. It provides a collective solution to keep all kids safe, not just those with involved and informed parents. And it empowers all parents because they no longer have to be the “bad guy” standing between a child and an app all their peers have. It simply becomes a non-option for every minor under a certain age. And states don’t have to wait for Congress to act. Florida, for example, has already passed a social media ban that prohibits these companies from allowing minors under 14 years old to have accounts (and requires parental consent for minors aged 15 to 16 to have accounts).
Opponents will say that this means kids will lose out on the benefits of social media and others will point to legal concerns that it will violate the First Amendment. But it’s worth noting that any “benefit” to social media, like receiving news or information and staying in touch with relatives and friends, can all be found elsewhere in the real world, in ways that are much better for children, or even elsewhere online, other than social media. And whatever benefits there may be, they are far outweighed by the risks. Surely there are “benefits” to kids driving cars. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your kid drive himself to and from school and soccer practice. But the risks and dangers of children operating vehicles far outweigh any benefits. The same is true for kids and social media.
As to the First Amendment, age verification can now be done anonymously and easily, so age restricting social media will not burden adults’ access to speech. And as for children’s more limited right to free speech, this would be a time, place, and manner restriction, limiting a certain manner of speech for children: the medium of social media. To withstand a First Amendment challenge, time, place, and manner restrictions on speech must be content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and leave open ample alternative channels for communication. Banning kids from social media would satisfy all three because it would not be regulating certain kinds of content, the government has a significant interest in protecting kids from harm, and it leaves open other alternative channels for communication, like email, texting, calling, or even video calling or other messaging apps.
The bottom line is when it comes to digital technologies that undermine human rationality and agency— particularly for vulnerable, developing brains—it is necessary, at times, to take a top-down policy approach to wrest these technologies away from children and teens in order for them to experience a better, richer life. Until the screens are taken away and kids are forced to look up, we will never recognize how much our digital addiction is costing us.
Clare Morell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she directs EPPC’s Technology and Human Flourishing Project. Prior to joining EPPC, Ms. Morell worked in both the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice, as well as in the private and non-profit sectors.
