\n<\/p>\n
Teenagers spend more than an hour on their smartphones during a typical school day, mostly on social media apps, concludes a new study.<\/p>\n
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, on Jan. 5, found that 13- to 18-year-olds spent an average of 70 minutes on their smartphones during the school day.<\/p>\n
Social media apps accounted for the greatest share of students\u2019 smartphone use during school hours, with teens spending nearly 30 minutes per day on these platforms, the study found. Video and gaming apps followed, with nearly 15 minutes each.<\/p>\n
At least 33 states and the District of Columbia require school districts to ban or restrict students\u2019 use of cellphones in schools, according to an Education Week tally. In current legislative sessions, a few states are looking to strengthen or expand existing restrictions, while others are looking to establish them for the first time.<\/p>\n
Kurt Seiler, the principal of Independence High School in Independence, Kan., said the findings aren\u2019t surprising, but they\u2019re still concerning.<\/p>\n
Kansas is not among the states with existing cellphone restrictions, but Seiler\u2019s school has a policy that says students are only allowed to use their phones during their 30-minute lunch period or the five minutes between classes. So if Seiler were to generalize the study\u2019s findings to his school, that would mean students are on their phones during parts of instructional time, too.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s time that \u201ctakes away from engagement. It takes away from learning,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kansas lawmakers recently introduced a bipartisan bill that would mandate districts to restrict student cellphone use during school hours, including lunch and passing periods.<\/p>\n
The researchers wanted to understand how much time students spend on their phones and what they\u2019re using them for during school hours, said Jason Nagata, the lead researcher of the study and a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.<\/p>\n
They used data from the nationwide Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a longitudinal project following thousands of preteens to understand their brain development. As part of the ABCD Study, some teens agreed to have their phone use analyzed.<\/p>\n
Teens were asked to install an app on their phones called the Effortless Assessment Research System. Between September 2022 and May 2024, the app collected data on the time students spent on their phones and which apps they were using.<\/p>\n
The researchers found:<\/p>\n
(Because of challenges in analyzing the numbers by app, the study\u2019s findings only include data from Android phone users, according to the researchers).<\/p>\n
\u201cAssuming you have seven hours in a typical school day, 70 minutes is one-tenth of that,\u201d Nagata said. \u201cIn general, kids should be actively engaged in class, so I do think it\u2019s a significant portion of the school day in which kids are on their phones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some people have argued that smartphones can be used for educational purposes, but Nagata said the findings show that students rarely use the devices for education or productivity apps.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s possible they were using some of this phone time during lunch or recess or breaks,\u201d said Nagata, who is also a pediatrician at Benioff Children\u2019s Hospital in San Francisco. \u201cBut I still think it\u2019s important that kids, during breaks, have time to rest, to have face-to-face social interactions with their peers, and also just be outdoors and physically active.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schools and districts should ensure they have student buy-in for any policies about smartphone restrictions, Nagata said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeenagers are very tech-savvy,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they don\u2019t believe in the policy, or if they don\u2019t see how it might help their learning or well-being, there are often ways they can get around the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seiler, the principal of Independence High, said principals also need to ensure that the whole school is implementing the policies consistently and that teachers have the support they need, not just to police the policy but also to have lessons so engaging that kids won\u2019t feel the need to check their phones.<\/p>\n
Teens also need more than a policy, Nagata said. They need to learn the skills to manage and balance their technology use, because after high school, they\u2019re unlikely to live and work in environments that have phone bans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily that teens are doing anything wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cThese technologies have addictive features that are built into the system, that promote engagement, that are designed to keep us on them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teenagers spend more than an hour on their smartphones during a typical school day, mostly on social media apps, concludes a new study. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, on Jan. 5, found that 13- to 18-year-olds spent an average of 70 minutes on their smartphones during the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1154,334,2848,1928,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-41733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-phones","9":"tag-school","10":"tag-spend","11":"tag-teens","12":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}