And just to show how (US) universal this idea is becoming, a Texas law banning cellphones went into effect at the start of the school year.

This happened at the same time a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms would have went into effect but was temporarily blocked while it works it's way through the courts [0]

[Texas educators praise new school cellphone ban] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/10/texas-cell-phone-ban...

[0] https://apnews.com/article/ten-commandments-bill-texas-schoo...

> how (US) universal

I praise you for not defaulting to US-defaultism, which is quite common on HN, but this really seems to be universal. There are also regulations like this in Scandinavia, France, Germany is talking about it.