With K-12 schools back in session across the nation, millions of students are adjusting to a new learning environment — a cellphone-free classroom or, in some cases, a phone-free school day. Lawmakers in several states are pushing for such restrictions.

Florida led the way last year by passing a law that prevents the use of personal wireless devices, including smartphones and earbuds during class time. Orlando County Public Schools has banned any smartphone use during the school day. Other states that have enacted laws of varying restrictiveness include Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and South Carolina, with more legislatures considering similar bans on phones in classrooms.

The two major reasons for the bans are increasing disruptions to student learning caused by personal tech and concerns about student mental health, which skyrocketed during the prolonged COVID-19 school closings.

Cellphone focus issues can go beyond mere distraction to a much more concerning rewiring of the adolescent brain, damaging students’ ability to concentrate in a more lasting way. This is another reason to encourage phone-free learning environments.

In his book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt reveals that between text messages, social media and other apps, young people’s phones average 192 alerts per day. If sleep time is seven hours a day, that equates to “11 notifications per waking hour, or one every five minutes.” For some heavier teenage phone users, that can average one interrupting notification every minute of every day.

As Mr. Haidt points out, while it may be hard for adults to concentrate, the adolescent’s ability is far more hindered as the brain’s frontal cortex is still developing. These vibrating or chiming and visual notifications are the “never-ending stream of interruptions — this constant fragmentation of attention — takes a toll on adolescents’ ability to think and may leave permanent marks in their rapidly reconfiguring brains.”

The result of allowing constant distractions and interruptions to the developing brain is a “confused, dazed, scatterbrained state,” American psychologist William James wrote, long before the internet was developed and could be carried around in one’s pocket.

Today, staying focused is much harder as the phone and internet provide endless opportunities for the mind to abandon the current thought or task for another and flit around from one thing to the next — at near lightning speed. And when it comes to notifications, there can be a dopamine release, which entails powerful addictive ramifications.

Furthermore, Mr. Haidt explains that “smartphones and other digital devices bring so many interesting experiences to children and adolescents that they cause a serious problem: They reduce interest in all non-screen-based forms of experience.”

All of this is problematic to children’s lives and hinders their ability to excel academically and engage with their peers during the school day. The negative consequences of this kind of overstimulation don’t stop at the schoolhouse door.

If kids can’t manage to focus, they won’t have the will or the patience to work through a cognitively challenging problem for long periods of time. They won’t be able to memorize information to the degree they should when their ability to concentrate has been compromised. And paying attention to directions and staying on task, abilities older generations took for granted, may be taxing activities well into adulthood.

Cultivating children’s attention should be one of education’s primary aims. With smartphones in classrooms, though, kids get used to fragmenting their mental worlds and never acquiring the capacity to deeply attend to any one problem or subject. How can students be expected to read and study the classics or engage in stimulating discussions when educators are competing with TikTok videos and Instagram in the classroom?

Mr. Haidt challenges readers to consider whether we sometimes need to protect children from harm even when it inconveniences adults.

Cellphone bans in schools may be less desirable for parents who want to directly reach their child during the school day without going through the school receptionist. But the trade-off of allowing cell phones during school hours deprives students of the focus needed to learn at their full potential. In addition, there is no evidence that having phones in school makes students safer in emergencies, such as a school lockdown. Security experts note that phones increase the danger during such an event since students might fail to listen to instructions, and phones give off vibrating and other sounds with illuminating screens.

K-12 education must be about teaching children valuable information and skills, but it is also about helping them learn how to see and pay attention to the world around them. Education leads the mind’s eye upward, away from the self and toward others, while smartphones pull the eye downward. Education focuses and deepens the mind, whereas smartphones fragment and distract.

The future of students’ minds is at stake. Schools are responsible for ensuring high-quality learning abounds and students are on task, focused, engaged, and stretched intellectually. Students cannot afford the convenience of noneducational communications and entertainment to be allowed to compete at the expense of their education.

This article first appeared in The Washington Times.