Boarding Schools and Phone/Social Media Policies 2026
For families exploring boarding schools now, cell phone and social media policies are central to both student life and parent planning. As 2026 enrollment cycles open and tuition rises continue, understanding how schools manage technology in academic and residential settings helps you assess fit, culture, and expectations. This update reflects current costs, evolving policies, recent examples, and expert guidance for decisions in the coming year.
Why Policies Are Evolving
Boarding schools, unlike day schools, oversee students around the clock. That residential context makes device policies more complex. Research increasingly links unfettered smartphone and social media use to anxiety, sleep disruption, distraction, and lower academic focus, prompting schools to clarify when and how devices are allowed. National and international trends, including public school cellphone restrictions and legislative activity, reinforce this focus on concentration and wellbeing.
Cost and Enrollment Context in 2026
While phone and social media policies are often evaluated independently, they intersect with broader planning concerns like cost and enrollment. In the U.S., the average annual tuition for a five-day boarding program is about $55,000 and around $69,000 for a seven-day program, with elite schools frequently above these figures. These averages are likely to rise modestly in 2026 with inflation and staffing cost pressures.
Private school enrollment overall remains a minority of U.S. K–12 students (about 9 percent), and boarding is only a subset of that figure. While national data do not break out boarding specifically, private school participation
