Un Año Sin Móvil: Estudio de Caso sobre Políticas de Prohibición y su Influencia en el Rendimiento Académico

The presence of mobile phones in secondary schools is a subject of ongoing debate among various educational stakeholders. Spanish national regulations allow autonomous communities to establish their policies regarding mobile phone use, with some delegating this responsibility to individual schools, enabling them to set their own rules. Prohibition has become the predominant measure. This study aims to analyze the effects of prohibition policies on academic performance within an educational institution. To this end, data from a public secondary school in a town in Asturias (Spain) were examined over two consecutive academic years: 2022/23 (regulated use) and 2023/24 (prohibition). The analysis includes an examination of the perceptions of students (N = 284), their families (N = 234), and teachers (N = 43) regarding academic performance following the prohibition, as well as an assessment of students' final grades over the two academic years (N = 553 and 547, respectively). The results indicate that the prohibition has not led to an improvement in students' grades, although families and teachers perceive the measure more positively than the students themselves. These findings call into question the effectiveness of prohibition as a strategy for enhancing students’ academic performance.