The positive findings from the ban's two-year evaluation are consistent with what proponents predicted. Teacher-assessed student attention in classroom activities improved in 74 percent of surveyed schools. Reported cyberbullying incidents — which typically originate during school hours on school premises — fell 31 percent nationally. Students report spending more time in face-to-face social interaction during lunch and break periods.
The smoking and vaping finding was not predicted by any of the policy models. The Public Health Agency's monitoring data shows a 23 percent increase in reported tobacco and nicotine product use among 15-to-17-year-olds in the two years since the ban — a reversal of a decade-long declining trend. Qualitative research with students suggests a direct causal link: break times previously occupied by scrolling are now experienced as unstructured time that some students fill with substances that provide a similar dopamine response.
The finding has not produced calls to reverse the ban — its overall welfare effects are assessed as positive — but it has generated an urgent secondary debate about what schools should actively provide during phone-free time, rather than simply assuming that the absence of screens would automatically produce healthier alternatives.
"We removed the thing they were doing," said adolescent psychologist Maria Åberg. "We did not replace it with anything. That was the policy's only real mistake."