Implementation of phone ban policies in school: A secondary analysis of a phone ban intervention in South Australia.

School-based bans on mobile phones have become increasingly popular, but the influence of ban implementation has not been explored.This study investigated the relationship between two methods (phones stored in personal lockers vs. given to school staff or stored in common lockers) of implementing bans and phone-related (compliance and social media posting) and psychological (psychological distress, positive and negative affect) outcomes.We conducted a secondary analysis of a South Australian phone ban intervention (n = 590).Both schools introduced a ban on phones.In one school, students stored their phones in personal lockers, while in the other, students handed their phones to staff at the student services desk or stored them in common lockers (accessible to everyone).We employed unadjusted and adjusted models with inverse probability of treatment weighting.Compared with students who handed devices to staff or stored them in common lockers, students who stored phones in personal lockers showed higher compliance (OR = 0.20, p < .001)and less frequent social media posting (OR = 2.54, p = .008).The type of ban implementation showed no significant associations with psychological outcomes in the adjusted models ( p ≥ .384).An autonomy-supportive implementation (storing phones in personal lockers) was more effective than an implementation that does not foster autonomy and personal responsibility (handing in phones or storing them in common lockers) in achieving positive phone-related outcomes.This result did not extend to psychological outcomes, suggesting that the ban implementation may not affect adolescents' mental health.