Many teenagers experienced their parents yelling at them for being on their phones too often. However, Lauren Hale, a professor within the department of family, population and preventative medicine and a core faculty member in the public health program at Stony Brook University, suggests that parents might have a point.
The findings were published on Feb. 3 in a JAMA Network Pediatrics Research Letter titled “Adolescent Smartphone Use During School Hours.” The results show that adolescents spend an average of 1.5 hours each school day on their phones.
In order to understand the behavioral patterns of adolescents and their smartphone use between the ages of 13 and 18, Hale and the other researchers hired a research firm called Ipsos, which helped them recruit national participants to complete a survey.
“It was actually surprisingly difficult to collect the data since we wanted a national sample, and we needed to figure out a way to measure people’s phone use,” Hale said.
Nearly 300 participants took a 15-minute survey on their smartphones and installed an app called RealityMeter in order to track their smartphone usage. Hale and her colleagues limited the results to the participants who collected smartphone usage data for two or more school days a week.
Not only did the results conclude that adolescents use their smartphones for an average of 1.5 hours a day, around 25% of the sampled students also spent more than two hours on their phones at school. Students at school most used apps were text messages, Instagram, video streaming, audio and email.
“I really wasn’t surprised, but the problem is that I believe it is too high and that kids should use school time for learning and social opportunities,” Hale said.
Hale states that it will take a lot of effort to reduce the time students spend on their smartphones.
“Smartphones are designed to keep your attention, and it’s so easy to be entertained,” Hale said. “Whereas paying attention to a teacher or a social experience can be more challenging, so it is easier to default to your phone.”
The next step is addressing the excessive phone usage during school hours. Dr. Gina Mathew, Hale’s post-doctorate mentee who worked with her on the study, believes that schools and parents should not allow students to have phones in school.
Mathew stated, “Effective solutions would be for school districts to place a ban on smartphone use during school hours, or for parents to confiscate them before school.” She is not the only one with this opinion, as government officials believe the same thing.
Many schools and educators are considering banning the use of smartphones in school. Gov. Kathy Hochul recently released a report titled “More Learning, Less Scrolling,” detailing her findings and recommendations about reducing phone usage in schools.
Hochul’s report finds that phones negatively affect students’ creativity, attention and mental health. She assured that phone bans would not compromise student safety, as schools would be able to create policies to accommodate students.
“Governor Hochul supports individual school districts taking steps now to address smartphones and other personal internet-enabled devices to better promote positive learning environments,” according to the report.
The report also states that limiting smartphone usage is a starting point for building in-person connections and can help improve students’ mental health.
But for researchers such as Dr. Hale, further research on phone usage among adolescents is needed to fully understand its effects.
“This is just one relatively small study, and we want to continue to follow not only smartphone use patterns throughout the school day, but also the whole day, and understand the consequences of phones on mental health, sleep and physical activity so that kids can thrive,” Hale said.
