We find that student performance in high stakes exams significantly increases post ban, by about 0.07 standard deviations on average. These increases in performance are driven by the lowest-achieving students. This suggests that the unstructured presence of phones has detrimental effects on certain students and restricting their use can be a low-cost policy to reduce educational inequalities.

Louis-Philippe Beland & Richard Murphy

Beland, L. P., & Murphy, R. (2016). Ill Communication: Technology, distraction & student performance. Labour Economics, 41, 61–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2016.04.004