New research using a sample of North Carolina middle and high school students found that they spend two to three hours of their school day on their smartphones. The study was published in JAMA Network Open this week by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill's Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development.
"The most shocking finding to us was the sheer amount of time students are on their devices during the school day," said lead researcher Eva Telzer, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-director of the Winston Center.
WUNC News' Education Reporter Liz Schlemmer spoke with Telzer.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Liz Schlemmer: The study found that adolescents are spending two to three hours on their phone a day at school. What else did you find that was concerning?
Eva Telzer: We found not only that they're spending just such a high amount of time on their smartphones during school hours, but they're spending about 20 minutes of every single hour during the school day on their devices. So it's not just during recess or lunchtime or passing periods, but every single hour of the school day, they're spending about a third of that hour on their device.
Can you explain how you tracked this?
We took objective data from their devices. So this doesn't rely on them retrospectively telling us how much time they're on their devices, but it is taken directly from their phones. For 14 days, we collected data from every hour of the day for 24 hours a day, and we could extract how much time they're on their device at every hour of the day. [...] We are focusing on the school hours, so from approximately 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
What were some of the differences that you found between high schoolers and middle schoolers?
We looked at middle schoolers and high schoolers in this study, and the high school students are spending significantly more time on their devices than the middle school students.
You are a neuroscientist, and you found that this phone use during school also had an effect on cognitive control. What do you mean by cognitive control, and how are you measuring that?
The high school sample came into the lab and completed this experimental task. This allows us to look at their ability to inhibit [and] engage in cognitive control. Our prefrontal cortex, for example, is the area of the brain in adolescence that's very important for helping teenagers to control their impulses, to slow down, to think carefully.
What we find is that adolescents who are engaging in more pickups on their phones throughout the school day, they show lower cognitive control. They're less able to inhibit and engage in that top-down prefrontal cognitive control that's so important for their ability to focus and pay attention, and this likely has impacts on their learning and ability to engage in the classroom.
You were sampling these students before the state law passed restricting cell phone use in schools. Do you have any plans to retest this after this law?
We're collecting data across time, because just in January, North Carolina passed these policies to implement in the classroom and school environment. The way this is implemented in schools varies, and so our hope is to try to unpack which ways that schools are implementing this work the best. What are the implications on students' learning? Are there any downsides to them, and how are schools and students engaging in these new policies?
We are actively collecting data. Currently, we have collected data on the first wave across nearly 2,000 students across North Carolina, and so we will have emerging data soon.
