‘Commons’ Founders Say Phone-Free Schools Rob Kids of Agency

Over the past few years, the phone-free schools movement has rapidly gained steam, with states and school districts pushing to limit smartphone access during school hours. As of early 2026, 38 states and Washington, D.C., have restricted or banned student mobile phone usage in K-12 classrooms. Companies like Los Angeles-based Yondr, which offer special magnetic pouches that lock phones away, are experiencing brisk business.

While the policies are almost uniformly popular, a few observers see a downside. The movement “happened so quickly there wasn’t a thoughtful, nuanced approach” to the problem of helping young people manage digital distraction, said Julia Gustafson, a public health expert who spent five years developing school partnerships for Yondr.

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She and partner Shannon Godfrey last year founded The Commons, a technical solution to distraction that they believe offers the benefits of a bell-to-bell mobile phone ban that also teaches students how to manage their digital habits and learn skills that give them greater agency without hiding their devices in a pouch.

On its website, The Commons describes itself as “airplane mode for schools,” creating what amounts to a large geofence around a campus that essentially turns off the Internet during the school day. Schools can “whitelist” sites they need, such as Google Classroom, Khan Academy, Duolingo and the like, but others are inaccessible. Students keep their phones with them, but they must adjust the app’s settings to turn individual apps or games on.

Students who look for ways around the system trigger a notification that offers a “nudge,” giving them the opportunity to turn the apps off. If they don’t, alerts go to administrators, who can easily track down the student and address the issue.

At bell time, the geofence deactivates, said Gustafson. When students walk off campus, it deactivates as well. “It’s tier-one social norming,” she said. “Students are building the skills they need every single day, along with their peers doing the same thing. It makes the right choice the easy choice, by automatically silencing those distractions.”

Godfrey, whose background is in ed tech, said the app helps schools minimize distractions while helping students practice “healthier tech habits,” something bans don’t address. The habits, she said “can transfer beyond the school walls” and help students develop life skills that will be valuable as adults. 

The 74’s Greg Toppo talked recently with Gustafson and Godfrey about what they see as the inadequacy of phone-free schools policies and, in Gustafson’s words, how such policies send “a completely mixed message” to kids about the power of technology. 

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The 74: Let’s talk about the phone-free schools movement. I can’t remember the last time I saw something catch fire so quickly and grow so rapidly. I gather that you folks have a slightly different point of view on this in terms of distraction and keeping kids focused on school.

Julia Gustafson: It’s been simmering under the surface for a long time. People have noticed that there’s something wrong with how people are engaging with their phones, but more importantly, the addictive applications that are on the phones. COVID was a catalyst to people waking up and understanding that there truly is something wrong here. Going beyond that, it’s been a movement, both on a parental level and a school level, because we’re seeing teacher attrition rates higher than they ever have been. How can we support our teachers, and how can we support our students and parents getting intimately involved? 

It always takes a little while for research to catch up, and research has now finally caught up. That being said, the way in which it’s being handled, talking about it as bans and prohibition, is a surrender to not understanding what to do about a truly wide-spanning public health topic. A ban or prohibition is action, versus what we were doing before, which is inaction. But no one has really taken a thoughtful approach to thinking about how we can do this differently, with guardrails to support people’s interactions with phones. 

Shannon Godfrey: My background has been in education technology, and so I’ve seen the positive of when tech is used appropriately in the classroom to aid student success. Julia and I together come in with that thoughtful approach. But when you look at some of the research around neuroscience or behavioral science, adolescents haven’t yet developed the skills for self-regulation, impulse control, attention management. And most of the apps that are competing for their attention are intentionally engineered to make it hard to disengage — and that’s something we know adults struggle with too.

So to Julia’s point, this is really a societal problem and a public health issue. But the difference with adults is that we’ve had time and context to develop coping strategies. We’ve developed systems to manage the distractions, and it’s getting more difficult for students to be able to handle that. 

Our “a-ha” moment [was] having experience helping schools go phone-free, and seeing that the short-term, immediate impact was phenomenal, but really talking with schools about the exceptions [that didn’t work]. How do we start to use tech positively when we’re using Duolingo or mobile optimized apps in the classroom? How do we make sure that students are really developing some of the skills beyond the four walls of schools? We are having a lot of these conversations. We need something a little bit more intentional, and I think that is something tech can solve.

Julia, you used the word “surrender” earlier. I’m guessing that you would say a phone-free strategy doesn’t teach the skills of “saying no” and limiting your time on an app — or even learning about what the app is trying to do. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

Gustafson: When policymakers are addressing demands from both parents and schools, what they’re lacking is that context in which technology is integral for anyone to be successful now, but also into the future. And so when you ban or prohibit something, that’s sending a completely mixed message to the students that the technology is to be embraced and it’s going to make you a leader — but needs to be locked away. Then we need dual-factor authentication to log into our Chromebooks, and so we take out this “prohibited” device, open it up to use the dual factor authentication — but then are bombarded with 200 notifications from Tik-Tok. So boom, this rebound consumption happens, and you’re locked into that as a distraction, vs. going on your phone, using it as the tool that it was designed to be, and being able to move forward.

I was listening to a radio program about phone-free schools the other day and one of the panelists said that if school is a place where we prepare young people for their life after school, there’s only one kind of job where they ask you to put your phone away: a low-paid service job. Do you have any ideas on that?

Gustafson: That goes back to what I was saying at the beginning: Using technology appropriately is integral to someone’s ability to be a leader in today’s society, so it is a huge mixed message when you’re telling somebody to lock a device away throughout the day instead of actually being able to utilize it when there are practical applications — and denying them that opportunity to learn the right time, place and manner to use that piece of technology. And you can think about that for phones, but you can also think about that for tablets and computers, which can be equally distracting during the school day.

Godfrey: We’ve had the opportunity to meet with students and have focus groups. Students are savvy and they’re smart. A lot of times with phone bans, are we saying that students can’t learn self-regulation and they can’t learn impulse control? When you talk with students, they’re saying, “Hey, I want schools to help me learn self-regulation. I just don’t necessarily agree we should pretend the phone doesn’t exist.” And in our focus groups, we have students come back and say, “Why is it so wrong if I believe the phone is my device of choice? Maybe it’s the only thing I can afford. Maybe it’s just what I’m used to using because they’re so sophisticated now and just readily available. But if I’m using it for academics, and I choose the academic app or to upload my Google Classroom or to submit an assignment or a chat in Google Classroom, why can’t I use my phone for that if that’s the appropriate time? Why can I use my computer in class but not my phone? If you’re helping us learn time, place and manner, then why is the phone so wrong?” You’re almost saying one thing but then asking them to do another. 

Let’s talk about The Commons: If I’ve got a game on my phone that doesn’t need Internet access, I’ve got access to that as well. What’s your thinking on that?

Gustafson: We do track the amount of time students are spending on that on their phone during the school day, so if a student downloads a game that doesn’t need Internet access, we can see on the admin dashboard that Greg has spent two hours on his phone today. That’s a little odd. Let’s go check in and see what the scoop is. So that’s one of the ways that we can try to prevent students from doing that. And then I’ll also just add that The Commons isn’t the school’s cell phone policy. This is a measure that gets inserted into the school cell phone policy to just help make it easier for that right time, place and manner, and for students to comply with it. So if I’m sitting there playing a game for two hours on my phone, I’m sure that someone is going to notice that, and that’s when that policy comes into play.

Turning off the Internet, for lack of a better term, seems like a smart move — with obviously these other sites whitelisted for school use. I guess somebody might squint and say it’s kind of the same thing as putting a phone in a pouch. What’s the difference?

Gustafson: The pouch doesn’t have any guardrails. So if a teacher decides, “Hey, everyone, take out your phone for Duolingo” in language class, it’s unfettered access all over again. You might get 100 notifications. It all comes back. But with The Commons app, you have the guardrails up at all times. You don’t actually need to lock a phone away. You don’t need to spend time taking a phone out of a pouch or getting it or retrieving it, plus it constantly has guardrails on so the focus can always be on the task at hand.

Can you dig in a little bit more deeply? What are students learning?

Gustafson: Behavioral economics really is the science about making the right choice the easy choice, by helping people make decisions that are ultimately the best for them. And so in the case of school, it’s being able to stay off of distracting applications. 

What are you actually learning to do better using this app?

Gustafson: We just interviewed some teachers right before the holiday break. What they were saying is, “We see that students just have more control over their phones. They’re not fiddling with them as much. They have better impulse control.” And that’s a huge win. We talked about behavior change. So much of this is an impulse for people to reach out to their device without actually understanding that they’re doing it until they’re already in their phone. If we can start controlling those impulses and allow people to develop the skill set of controlling their phone use when their phone is still next to them — because that’s the skill they’re going to need when going into college or their career — that’s a huge win for us.

Godfrey: We’re giving them a feedback loop. They’re taking their real device — they don’t have to lock it away and pretend it doesn’t exist — and learning how to manage it in the wild. Our students are recognizing that when I set foot on campus, this is time to put our phone away. It’s sometimes that subtle nudge I need, but it’s helping me build this habit. It’s helping me remember, “Yep, this is school time. This is my time to engage, my time to learn, my time to focus.” 

And it’s been phenomenal. I’m getting better grades, and I’m playing with kids during recess, and we’re checking out basketballs, and I’m noticing my peers are interacting with us, and we’re paying attention to the teachers.

So the phone is sitting in front of me. I don’t have to put it in a pouch. I don’t even necessarily have to put it in my backpack. Yet all the things that I would use it to have fun with aren’t there. They essentially aren’t working. So how am I learning impulse control? 

Gustafson: Because of all the addictive apps on the phone that people are hardwired to reach out to it, even if it doesn’t buzz, even if it doesn’t do anything, sometimes even the sight of it — it’s now wired in my brain that the minute I have a sense of boredom I’m pulling out my phone to cure that boredom. By reducing all of the fun and addictive apps on it, we’re actually helping rewire the brain to not want to continue. 

So it’s saying, “In certain conditions, this phone is not the same kind of machine.” 

Gustafson: If for eight hours during the day when they’re at school, we’ve shifted their brain to understanding that this is a boring device and they have control over it — they have impulse control over that device — they’re now having the awareness to practice those same skills outside the walls of the school. 

One of the appeals of a phone-free school is that it’s very clean and easy for the adults. If every kid’s phone is in a bag, I don’t have to worry about it. What The Commons is doing, in a sense, could make life more complicated for certain adults, having to chase down the kid who’s on Tik-Tok, or using some site they shouldn’t be. 

Godfrey: It’s interesting. From our experience and talking with schools, we see that a lot of programs with pouches roll out really successfully at the beginning, but then there are damages to pouches happening, or students faking a phone into the shoe rack. They’re working the system. Our schools are spending more energy playing Whack-a-Mole, and as those inconsistencies continue to creep up, the fidelity of the program starts to go away. And as the fidelity goes away, students are realizing that they can get away with it. And so then they do.

With our schools, what we’ve been able to do for the first time is actually help focus our administrators on where to put their attention: Where are students actually struggling with being able to put their phone down? Are these students who actually need more support and intervention? And when we also look at grades, attendance and some of these other data points and factors, if the phone is traditionally a root cause to a lot of these problems, how do we really support that student before they get off task and have a greater risk of not graduating?