The Amount Of Time Kids Spend On Smartphones During The School Day May Shock You
Behind the door of every middle and high school bathroom in the U.S., you will find the same thing: a kid with their phone out, using their thumbs to scroll or type messages.
Teens feel the same FOMO pull that we do to take out a cellphone and check to make sure that they haven’t missed something, and, just like us, they’ll tap open their screens at pretty much any opportunity: passing time in the hall, a trip to the restroom, a moment in class when the teacher is looking the other way and, almost certainly, whenever they see another kid using their phone. The yearning to scroll is contagious and can spread through a hallway, cafeteria or classroom in minutes.
Educators, parents and even teens themselves agree that this constant source of distraction isn’t great for learning. Increasingly, they’re also concerned that staring at a phone during non-academic times, like lunch, is cutting into time that teens need to spend socializing and building relationships with peers.
How bad is the problem?
A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that adolescents spent an average of 1.5 hours of their 6.5-hour school day on their phone. This represents 27% of the 5.59 hours teens spent on their phones each day overall.
Researchers “recruited a diverse national sample of adolescents, without any knowledge of the cellphone policies their schools had in place,” Lauren Hale, a professor at Stony Brook Medicine and one of the study’s authors, told HuffPost.
Instead of students reporting their own screen time, researchers used a “passive sensing system,” Hale said.
“We could see exactly which apps they were using, for how long and at what time of day. We used this data to home in on smartphone use during the school day,” she added. Fourteen days’ worth of data were included in the study.
Over half of the teens spent at least 66 minutes of each school day using their phones, and a quarter of teens were on their phones for two or more hours while at school.
The apps that teens used most during the school day were messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio and email — suggesting that they’re using their phones to socialize virtually while in a building filled with other teens.
What are the repercussions of this phone use?
Though the study did not attempt to measure the effect of teens’ phone use at school, Hale said that as an educator and a parent herself, she’s concerned about the implications, both academic and social.
“School time is a time for learning, listening, reading, writing and real-world interaction. It’s a time to interact with peers throughout the day, which includes talking, joking, eating, sharing together,” Hale said.
“I’m concerned that if you spend too much time looking down at your device, you are missing out on these beneficial aspects,” she added.
Even when the disruptive calls and texts are coming from loving parents, they come at a price. The incessant possibility of contact can steal opportunities for teens to practice independence.
Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, said one concern is that by “having Mom or Dad in your pocket all day, asking how you are doing, whether they need to intervene with teachers or other students, the child never gets to figure out for themselves how to function as an effective, healthy and empathetic citizen.”
At the same time, Rich said, phones — like the bulky desktop computers that preceded them — are tools that teens need to learn to use, and we all know that kids learn best by doing.
“The fundamentals of using a smartphone can and should be taught in school,” Rich said. “Teach kids to use these tools effectively for what they do well and to turn them off when they are not the best tool for the job.”
It’s worth noting that although phones are a problem at school, most teen phone use occurs outside of school hours. Parents share the responsibility for their children’s at-home use.
“Asking schools to restrict use when it is not restricted any other time in a child’s life is not effective,“ Shari Camhi, superintendent of Baldwin Union Free School District, told HuffPost.
“Schools have not given students smartphones. In many cases, the youngest of children are in possession of expensive and unrestricted smartphones,” Camhi said.
The Baldwin, New York, superintendent, says that the circle of responsibility extends beyond parents. Noting that some of the apps teens access most are social media, Camhi said, “it’s essential to establish stricter regulations when it comes to such channels. Technology companies must be held accountable to the products they market to young people.”
What solutions are possible?
Most parents are unwilling to take phones away from their children altogether. They don’t want their kids spending school time scrolling, but they don’t want their kids to be too far from their phones either.
“Most parents that I talk to unequivocally support a bell-to-bell ban on smartphones in schools,” Hale said.
What a “ban” looks like, however, can vary tremendously from one school to the next. Some kids are allowed to keep their phones in their pockets, backpacks or lockers for the day. Some are expected to “park” their phones in a wall organizer or box in the classroom. Others are given a special locking pouch (Yondr is one company that makes these) that will open only in specific locations or by using a device.
All of these scenarios have their pros and cons. Kids leaving class to text in the bathroom is one issue. Another is not having access to a phone in case of an emergency — which, in spite of its small likelihood, raises the specter of a school shooting situation to most kids, parents and educators.
Rich said he’s found that the majority of parents “want their children to have smartphones so that they can reach each other during the day.”
Some officials are leaving the logistics of cellphone bans up to individual schools. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed legislation for “distraction-free schools” calls for “no unsanctioned use of smartphones and other internet-enabled personal devices on school grounds in K-12 schools for the entire school day, including classroom time and other settings like lunch and study hall periods” — giving schools discretion to decide for themselves what “unsanctioned” means, as well as how they are going to store students’ phones. The bill earmarks $13.5 million to help schools purchase “storage solutions.”
Across the country, schools are trying out a variety of strategies. Folks in our HuffPost Parents Facebook community report success with over-the-door pockets organizers and Yondr pouches, as well as having kids hand their phones to administrators at the beginning of the day. One teacher commented that she asks students to use their phones fairly frequently during class, to take photos of their artwork. Others noted how challenging it can be for teachers to enforce a ban on their own.
“Unless administrators will fully enforce it, teachers do not have a leg to stand on,” one person commented. Others noted that teachers do not enforce the ban evenly and that in some cases a lack of technology (i.e., laptops) means teachers are asking kids to take out their phones to do work in class.
Kaitlin Tiches, librarian at the Digital Wellness Lab, noted the importance of including teachers in these policy decisions as well as listening to their feedback.
“Even the best-intentioned and communicated policies can cause tension between teachers and students, and teachers should be supported throughout the process. Some research has found that teachers had a difficult time upholding a cellphone policy even if they had a part in creating it. Therefore, it’s really important to acknowledge that these policies need to be tested with the understanding that they might need to be refined,” Tiches said.
Students, too, deserve a voice in these negotiations, she added. “It’s so important to understand the needs of all the people who will be affected by the shift,” she said.
“For older students like high-schoolers, being included and really heard during this process could help build community buy-in,” she added.
Another reason to involve kids? They’re usually at least several steps ahead of the game.
One parent commented, “My daughter said that kids put other things in the pouches, like just the phone case and some rocks for weight so it looks like they locked their phones, but they just keep the actual phone with them throughout the day.”
