Abstract

Recent years have seen mounting evidence of a substantial deterioration in adolescent mental health across the Western world. Among the potential drivers of this decline, the rapid proliferation of smartphones and social media has attracted increasing scrutiny. This research examines a prominent policy response to such concerns: mobile phone bans in schools. It employs a difference-in-differences research design, leveraging the staggered rollout of bans across Australian states beginning in 2020. This natural experiment enables causal estimation of the impact of an abrupt halt in smartphone use during the school day. Event study estimates suggest that phone bans yielded modest improvements in student mental health, though these effects are small in magnitude and emerge only in later years. Additional evidence on individual mental health dimensions largely points to negligible effects. However, male students show improvements in their capacity to engage in social activity.