Schools across the country have taken action to ban student cellphone use in recent years, with the hope of stopping bullying and improving America’s increasingly poor academic performance . Now, new research examining the practice at over 40,000 U.S. schools between 2019-2026 shows there have been benefits - but maybe not as many as lawmakers had hoped. While locking phones in pouches throughout the day helped kids cut back on phone time, test scores did not rise and there was “little evidence” that it helped with online bullying, attendance or attention in class, the paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, showed. Within the first year of bans, suspension rates also increased by 16 percent and student well-being fell, the researchers wrote in the largest study of its kind. However, over time, students saw their well-being rebound: reinforcing the idea that getting kids off phones may improve mental health.…