Survey Brief | September 2026
Rajender Singh
Senior Policy Analyst
Angus Lockhart
Senior Policy Analyst
André Côté
Executive Director
Catherine Amburgey
Mariana Rodrigues
Marie-Pierre Lavoie
Suzanne Bowness, CodeWord Communications
Zaynab Choudhry
Since 2024, every Canadian province has introduced policies restricting cellphone use in K-12 classrooms. While each province has adopted a different approach, these policies share the goal to reduce screen time and its negative impacts on learning and mental health.
The Dais has tracked Canadian attitudes on these policies annually since they began rolling out. The 2026 edition of our national survey measures overall support for school phone restriction policies, the preferred policy approaches among different groups, perceived effectiveness, and parent-reported trends on enforcement and actual phone use in schools.
We found that:
These findings point to a clear window of opportunity to strengthen policies and support in-school enforcement. Public support for phone-free classrooms is high, but confidence in the efficacy of these rules is still lagging. As provinces evaluate their K-12 phone policies, moving toward uniform, full-day restrictions offers the clearest path to improving public confidence and restoring classroom focus.
Across Canada, support for school phone restrictions is widespread and has continued to climb year-over-year since the Dais began measuring attitudes on the issue in 2024. As of 2026, close to 9 in 10 Canadians support phone restrictions in K-12 schools, with nearly 6 in 10 saying they strongly support restrictions (see Figure 1). Levels of support have grown from 2024 (80 per cent), before most provinces had adopted phone restrictions, and from 81 per cent in 2025 (see Figure 2).
As more Canadians have become aware of these policies, the share who say they are neutral on the topic has decreased from 10 to 6 per cent. Outright opposition to school phone restrictions has also dropped slightly, from 7 per cent to 6 per cent.
Question: All Canadian provinces have announced restrictions on the use of mobile phones in K-12 schools. Overall, do you support or oppose phone restrictions in schools?6
Support for phone restrictions extends across Canada, but the largest provinces are the most enthusiastic about these policies. Respondents from British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec voiced strong support rather than somewhat supportive views. Overall, approval in these provinces ranges between 86 and 89 per cent, led by Quebec (see Figure 3). While support remains high across smaller provinces, dropping to 79 per cent in New Brunswick, smaller sample sizes from these regions merit a cautious reading.
Levels of support among parents are comparable to those in the general population. Parents of children aged 10 to 17 support restrictions at 87 per cent—the same rate as the general population—while seven per cent of parents oppose restrictions (compared to six per cent among the general public).
Canadians’ preferences for structured restriction policies, whether bell-to-bell or during instructional time, has grown modestly. Among the general public, support for bell-to-bell policies grew from 34 per cent in 2025 to 40 per cent in 2026. However, restricting phone use during instructional time only remains the most popular overall approach, with support increasing to 47 per cent (see Figure 4). Parents hold the inverse priority, slightly favoring full bell-to-bell restrictions (46 per cent) over instructional-time-only limits (43 per cent).
Support has consolidated behind these two approaches, which together are backed by 87 per cent of the Canadian general public and 89 per cent of parents. This shift reflects declining support for discretionary approaches, with the preference for leaving decisions to individual teachers on a case-by-case basis dropping by nearly half (from 16 per cent to 9 per cent), alongside a drop in undecided respondents.
Question: Excluding special accommodations for students with specific needs, which best describes your preferred approach to phone restrictions for all other students in schools?
Because no province currently tracks or publicly reports school-level phone restrictions, parent reporting provides the only national proxy for how policies are implemented on the ground.
Across Canada, three in four parents report that their child’s school has a clearly defined phone policy, split between 38 per cent reporting bell-to-bell restrictions and 37 per cent reporting instructional-time-only limits (see Figure 5). However, a meaningful 15 per cent of parents say that rules still vary from teacher to teacher, with the remaining 10 per cent reporting no restrictions, other policies, or uncertainty.
Parent-reported phone policies reflect provincial mandates, but with a notable divergence outside Quebec. While 71 per cent of Quebec parents report full-day bell-to-bell bans, reflecting the province's full-day mandate, 29 per cent of parents in the rest of Canada also report bell-to-bell policies in their child's school. Because provincial mandates outside Quebec generally limit full-day bans to younger grades, part of this 29 per cent likely reflects parents of children in elementary or middle schools where those rules apply, as well as students in private schools that set their own policies. It may also reflect individual schools going further than their provincial guidelines require, or differences between parents' perceptions and the formal rules at their child's school.
Question: Thinking about your oldest child’s school, which best describes the phone restrictions at that school?
Opinions are more divided on how well restrictions are enforced than on the introduction of restrictions themselves, and few Canadians express strong confidence in them. In 2026, 45 per cent say enforcement is at least somewhat effective, compared to 41 per cent who say enforcement is ineffective, up from 37 per cent who held the same views in 2025 (see Figure 6). Only nine per cent express high confidence in enforcement, up slightly from seven per cent in 2025.
While confidence in the effectiveness of phone restrictions has grown modestly, it is possible that this results from growing familiarity with the policies rather than a change of opinion among detractors as the share of undecided respondents dropped from 23 per cent in 2025 to 14 per cent in 2026.
Question: How effectively do you think phone restriction policies are enforced in schools?
Diving deeper, parents take a more positive view than the general public—especially those whose children attend schools with bell-to-bell restrictions. Overall, 61 per cent of parents believe enforcement is effective, compared with 45 per cent of the general population. Where a bell-to-bell policy is in place, parents are more than twice as likely to express high confidence in its efficacy (28 per cent, compared to 13 per cent under instructional-time-only rules).
A final measure shifts from public perception to reported behavior in the classroom—what parents say their kids actually do in practice. When asked how often their child used a cell phone during class in the past week, more than half reported at least some use, including 15 per cent who noted multiple instances of classroom phone use each day. Conversely, 38 per cent reported no phone use in class, while 10 per cent were unsure (see Figure 8).
Because classroom phone restrictions are in place across all provinces, any reported use highlights a gap between official policy and daily practice. Furthermore, because these figures are parent-reported rather than direct observations, they represent a conservative baseline of student behavior.
Question: To the best of your knowledge, in the past week, how often has your oldest child used a phone during class time?
Reported classroom phone use also aligns closely with policy strictness. Under bell-to-bell restrictions, parents are more than twice as likely to say their child never used a phone during class compared to those under instructional-time-only rules (57 per cent versus 27 per cent), a figure that drops to 15 per cent under teacher-by-teacher discretion (see Figure 9).
Taken together, public perception and reported student behavior point in the same direction: clear policies matter. While confidence in enforcement remains modest overall, bell-to-bell restrictions consistently correlate with higher parental trust and lower reported in-class phone use compared to restrictions during instructional time only or teacher-discretionary rules.
As provinces evaluate their K-12 phone policies, moving toward uniform, full-day restrictions offers the clearest path to improving public confidence and restoring classroom focus.
1
Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. Bos, “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 2, no. 2 (2017): 140–54, https://doi. org/10.1086/691462.
2
OECD, “Managing Screen Time: How to Protect and Equip Students against Distraction,” PISA in Focus no. 124 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2024), https://doi.org/10.1787/7c225af4-en.
3
Tassia K. Oswald, Alice R. Rumbold, Sophie G. E. Kedzior, and Vivienne M. Moore, “Psychological Impacts of ‘Screen Time’ and ‘Green Time’ for Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Scoping Review,” PLOS ONE 15, no. 9 (2020): e0237725, https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237725.
5
Québec, Ministère de l’Éducation, «Respect et civisme: le ministre Drainville fixe des règles claires pour toutes les écoles du Québec,» news release, May 1, 2025, https://www.quebec.ca/nouvelles/actualites/details/respect-et-civisme-le-ministredrainville-fixe-des-regles-claires-pour-toutes-les-ecoles-du-quebec-62539.
6
Note on translation: The French-language version of this question referred to schools “de la maternelle à la terminale.” This phrasing does not correspond to a Canadian grade level and does not accurately render the English original, which specified “K-12” schools. We flag this difference in wording for transparency, but based on the consistency of responses from Quebec and French-language respondents with the overall pattern, we do not believe this affected results materially.
7