- - Defense bill bans K-12 students from using cellphones on military bases

ARTHUR JONES IIDecember 18, 2025 at 6:00 PM

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Defense bill bans K-12 students from using cellphones on military bases

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) -- the signature defense policy and spending bill -- will ban cellphones for K-12 students attending schools on military bases. The bipartisan provision, focused on improving learning outcomes for children of U.S. servicemembers, was sponsored by freshman Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind.

The NDAA, a $900 billion must-pass defense bill, takes a major step towards reducing distractions for tens of thousands of students, according to the REFOCUS DoDEA Act. The provision is co-led by Banks and his Armed Services committee colleague Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. Their committee has federal jurisdiction over the schools on military bases.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Banks said the key provision has national security, recruitment, and retention implications.

Kids who have smartphones by age 12 have higher risk of depression, obesity: Study

"We invest in them [our troops], we train them, we pay them, and if they serve in the military for ten or 12 years and decide to get out because their kids are going to a crappy school, that's a national security issue," Banks told ABC News.

"It's a retention issue," he said, adding, "We've got to do something to address it and improve it."

Thomas Toch, the director of FutureEd -- an education policy center at Georgetown University, said cellphone bans can be a “necessary step” to improving educational outcomes for students, including those on military bases.

There are over 65,000 students at 161 schools in U.S. military bases in 11 foreign countries, seven states, and two territories (Guam and Puerto Rico), according to Banks.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images - PHOTO: Sen. Jim Banks leaves a meeting with banking executives at the Capitol Visitors Center, Dec. 11, 2025.

Banks, a U.S. Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, told ABC News that military families are interested in improving schools on base and have been pushing for change.

"It's frustrating for them," Banks said, adding, "It's the only option for them, so they want Congress to do more to focus on improving the DoDEA schools."

Banks said he believes the U.S. is in a military recruitment crisis that the Trump administration has been addressing broadly at the Department of Defense, but cracks in the military base schools' education systems have driven families away from serving.

"This is one small step that I think will have a big outcome, but hopefully we'll draw more attention to how these schools are operated and what we can do to improve them," Banks said.

Here are the states banning cellphones in schools and what it means for students

The defense bill, titled the "Restoring Our Educational Focus on Children of U.S. Servicemembers at DoDEA," passed 77-20 in the Senate on Wednesday. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Thursday.

The Department of Defense now has a one-month window to address how it will implement the bans.

"Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Director of the Department of Defense Education Activity, shall prescribe regulations prohibiting the use, during the school day, of smartphones by students in schools operated by the Activity," according to the bill text.

After the vote, Slotkin contended Congressional leaders have a "responsibility" to work in a bipartisan fashion to help parents with the best cellphone ban guidance.

"It is better and healthier for kids not to be looking at their phones while they're trying to learn," Slotkin told ABC News. "It's the first step in a bigger movement to banning cell phones in all K-12 schools across the country."

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters - PHOTO: Sen. Elissa Slotkin questions witnesses during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the administration's deployment of the National Guard across the United States, Dec. 11, 2025.

Student smartphone usage continues to be one of the most contentious issues for school communities. While many states have at least partially banned cellphones in the classroom, some are still leaving those decisions to their local education agencies, according to a data analysis conducted by ABC News this fall.

Overall, Indiana and 19 other states (including D.C.'s public schools and the Virgin Islands) have completely banned wireless communication devices -- including personal phones or tablets -- for the entire instructional day.

There are, however, exceptions for students with disabilities who have individualized education programs. Banks and Slotkin's proposal to ban smartphone use on federally run K-12 DOD campuses also includes medical exceptions.

Meanwhile, student disengagement remains one of the most pressing problems in education since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to some education experts.

At the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee's State of K-12 Education hearing in September, Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Martin West said that smartphones are a key driver of mental health challenges, a distraction from learning -- both inside and outside of schools -- and a deterrent to reading.

Schools that banned phones saw surprising results beyond fewer distractions

However, one of the top concerns for some parents and families is their ability to contact their children at school in case of an emergency, especially with the influence of recent school shootings. School leaders previously told ABC News that students should not be on their cellphones during a school emergency and Slotkin argued that there's growing concern about children having 24/7 access to them.

"There's a whole bunch of technology issues that parents are worried about," she said. "Cellphone access is just one of them, but there's a real passion behind figuring out the right way forward for our country."

For Banks, the issue impacts his three daughters, who are in middle and high school back home in Indiana.

"They're so much better off without cellphones in their classrooms," Banks said. "Taking their cellphones out of the classroom and eliminating that as a distraction is good for them."

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Source: “AOL Breaking”