It’s time to ban smartphones in schools

By this time, we are all familiar with the image of some harried schoolteacher attempting to maintain control over a classroom where the majority of students are transfixed by their smartphones instead of the dusty chalkboard. The dangers of social media for the minds of young and old alike has already been well documented, and the amount of time that students spend on their handheld devices is increasing with each new study conducted.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tracked the real-time phone habits of middle and high schoolers and found something that should disturb every teacher and parent. Phone usage appeared during every single hour of the school day, and not a single student in the study went the entire school day without using their mobile phone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the students who used their phones most often also showed noticeably less self-control.

Published in JAMA Network Open, this fresh study monitored the phone habits of 79 students aged 11 to 18 over two consecutive weeks and found the average teen racks up more than two full hours of screen time during school time alone. That’s approximately one-third of their total daily phone use – and over a quarter of the entire school day! But the more disturbing discovery wasn’t how long students were on their phones. The alarming factor was how often the students were reaching for their devices, and how that nervous, knee-jerk habit appears to be linked to concentration levels.

Like infants reaching out for their favorite security blanket, students reached for their phones an average of 64 times during the school day, and those who grabbed their devices most often scored worse on a standard test that measured concentration and self-control. The study shows a link not just between phones and distraction, but between compulsive phone use and the kind of mental discipline adolescents require to learn and develop.