Pinterest looks to get ahead of school smartphone ban with new test for teens

While Instagram is telling teens to take a break from the app after an hour-long scrolling session, Pinterest is taking things a step further — in the classroom. The popular visual board app is testing a new pop-up prompt for young users in the U.S. and Canada encouraging them to close the app and turn off notifications during the school day.

According to a report from The Verge, Pinterest said it’s conducting a large-scale test on the pop-up prompt to help teenagers focus on their schoolwork to get ahead of the smartphone bans that are being enforced in schools across North America and around the world. When teens get the urge to scroll through Pinterest for photo editing ideas during class, a prompt will appear on their feed that reads, “Focus is a beautiful thing. Stay in the moment by putting Pinterest down and pausing notifs until the school bell rings.”

The prompt will only appear to minors aged 13 to 17 Monday through Friday during the typical school hours 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Although, the final bell rings a little later than 3 p.m. at most middle schools, and most high schools start at 7:40 a.m., speaking from this author’s experience.

The focus prompt test comes several months after Pinterest CEO Bill Ready voiced his support for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) alongside a few other social media and tech companies, including Snap, Microsoft, and X (formerly Twitter). The bill, which was written to establish guidelines to protect minors from harmful material on social media platforms, failed to pass the House of Representatives last year after critics accused it of enabling censorship.

Pinterest also claims to be the first social media platform to test out the focus prompt on teen users not only to comply with statewide smartphone bans or restrictions in schools — New York passed a law earlier this month to ban the use of smartphones in public schools starting in the 2025-26 school year — but also to promote overall digital wellbeing in students. With that in mind, the company announced to award a $1 million grant to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to fund task forces across 12 U.S. school districts to create policies that help achieve that goal.