Kids are spending a lot of their school days on their phones

Kara Alaimo is a professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University and teaches parents, students and teachers how to manage screen time. Her book “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Take It Back” was published in 2024.

When kids head off to school, most parents probably assume they’re not spending much of the day on their phones. New research suggests that’s not true.

Adolescents spend an average of 70 minutes of their school days on their phones, according to research on American 13– to 18-year-olds published Monday by the journal JAMA.

That time is “literally during the school day when children and adolescents should be in classes” focused on learning and schoolwork, said Dr. Jason Nagata, lead author of the research letter and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

And that’s just at school. Previous research shows that’s merely one slice of the 8 ½ hours teens spend daily on screen-based entertainment.

A lot of earlier research has asked teens to self-report their screen use, which could be unreliable if they don’t want to admit using phones at school, Nagata said. This latest research relied on an app that tracked how much time the adolescents spent on their phones and what platforms they used.

The teens spent most of their phone time during the school day on social media apps such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, the study found. They also spent an average of nearly 15 minutes of each school day on gaming apps and almost 15 minutes on video apps such as YouTube.

Young people sometimes say they need their phones to help with schoolwork, such as checking a calculator or looking up information online — but the apps they actually used at school “are highly unlikely to be related to school assignments,” Nagata said.

While most schools have policies restricting phone use, the study suggested teens are finding ways to evade the rules.

The study only tracked Android users, so it’s possible iPhone users have different phone use habits, Nagata said.

The data of 640 adolescents was collected from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study using certain weeks from September 2022 to May 2024. It did not account for rapidly changing phone policies at schools over that time, so Nagata suggested that more analysis will be needed to track the relationships between smartphone use, the new policies and academic outcomes.

Don’t blame children for using phones at school. They’re designed to hook kids and have “addictive qualities,” Nagata said.

Instead, help youngsters figure out how to resist them.

Start by talking to your kids, because they’re more likely to follow rules if they help create them, Nagata said. They also need to learn skills for handling technology responsibility themselves as they grow older.

The best solution is for kids to leave phones home or lock them in pouches when they get to school, he said.

I’m an advocate of leaving phones home. As I’ve said before, parents often think their kids are safer with phones, but that unfortunately isn’t true. In the event of a school shooting or other emergency, they’re better off paying attention to their surroundings and following instructions — not calling you. And if kids are scrolling while crossing the street to get to school or connecting with a predator on their phones, they’re clearly less safe.

If kids don’t leave their phones home or locked up at school, they should turn their phones off or put them on “do not disturb” mode. They’re more likely to interact with their phones if they receive notifications, Nagata said.

How can we convince kids not to use phones at school?

Focus on what they’d get by putting them aside rather than what you’re taking away, said Melissa Greenberg, a clinical psychologist and director of the Princeton Psychotherapy Center who was not involved in the study.

You can try putting phones away for a couple of hours as a family and talk about how you feel afterward, Greenberg said. “Do you really feel like all that happens is that you miss it, or do you get to enjoy other things? Do you get to feel more present? Do you get to really focus on a conversation with someone? Do you feel some freedom from all those notifications?”

Chances are that kids will see the value in phone-free time. “Most people I talk to who take digital breaks feel like there’s benefit in it,” she added.

For kids who want to succeed in school, you also can explain how phones may hurt their performance. “If you’re always distracted and not paying attention, you’re not likely to do as well in your classes,” Nagata said.

His previous research found that 9- to 13-year-olds who used social media more got lower scores on vocabulary, reading and memory tests two years later.

Also explain how using social media at times such as at recess and in the hallway can interfere with their friendships. Relationships and social skills are best fostered face-to-face by seeing and reacting to people’s expressions and body language. You can’t necessarily build the same kinds of meaningful connections online, Nagata said.

The way parents use their phones is “one of the biggest predictors of adolescent phone use, or screen use in general,” Nagata said.

So parents, pay attention: Model the behavior you want your child to learn.