- U.S. adolescents spent more than an hour per school day using smartphones.
- Social media topped the list of most-used app categories, with a mean of nearly 30 minutes.
- New data come amid rapid changes in school phone policies.
U.S. adolescents may spend more time on their smartphones during school hours than their parents would like, according to data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.
Among 640 teens with passive measurement software on their phones, a mean of 1.16 hours was spent using smartphones per school day, reported Jason Nagata, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues.
Social media (i.e. Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat) topped the list of most-used app categories at a mean of 29.98 minutes, followed by video apps (i.e. YouTube) at 14.84 minutes, and game apps (i.e. Roblox, Clash Royale, and Pokemon GO) at 14.72 minutes, Nagata and colleagues noted in a research letter in JAMA.
"School phone policies are changing rapidly, but until now we have had very little objective data on what students actually do with their phones during the school day," Nagata told MedPage Today in an email. "Teens are not always accurate reporters of their own screen time. Objective smartphone data gives us a clearer picture of actual use. This moves the conversation beyond anecdotes and self-reports to real-world behavior."
"Even during school hours, smartphones remain a major part of adolescents' daily lives," Nagata added. "Smartphones can support learning and connection, but without clear boundaries they can also be a constant distraction. Many parents assume phones stay in backpacks during the school day, but our data suggest that's not always the case."
Indeed, data from the ABCD study has previously pointed to a significant association between increases in social media use during early adolescence and lower performance in key areas of cognitive function.
"Although 99.7% of U.S. public school principals report their school has a smartphone policy, few studies have objectively examined smartphone app usage during school," Nagata and colleagues wrote. "This study addresses this by measuring smartphone usage in schools with passive sensing technology in a diverse sample of adolescents."
Higher school smartphone and social app time were associated with later adolescence (16-18 years of age vs 13-15), Black and other/unknown race (compared with white race), and lower household income, Nagata and colleagues reported.
Problematic social media use was positively associated with greater school smartphone time on social media apps, and problematic mobile phone use was positively associated with greater time during school on a smartphone and using social media apps.
In a separate research letter in JAMA Pediatrics that surveyed a global sample of more than 35,000 adults, 76.2% of respondents (mean age 38.9 years) agreed that smartphone access should be banned during school hours. This included 71.3% of U.S. parents, though affirmative responses ranged widely by country, reported Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in Seattle, who was also a co-author on the JAMA study, and colleagues.
The following variables were significantly associated with agreement that smartphones should be banned during school hours:
- Female sex (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.09-1.21)
- Being a parent (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.06-1.20)
- Older age (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.03-1.03)
- Higher life satisfaction (OR 1.02, 95% CI 1.00-1.03)
- Spending more time online than one wanted (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.02-1.26)
"Notably, use of social media was associated with decreased likelihood of supporting bans [OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.76-0.92], but it was counterbalanced by perception of spending too much time online," Christakis and colleagues wrote. "This suggests that it is not awareness of what social media is but overuse of it that might make adults wary of school smartphone availability."
For the study by Nagata and colleagues, total smartphone time was assessed in part of the ABCD sample via a phone app. This data provided apps used during short collection windows for Android devices. Participants were included if they had 2 or more weekdays of data during school hours from select weeks between September 2022 and May 2024, excluding federal and school holidays.
Mean age of the study population was 15 years, almost 60% were male, and about 70% were white, while about 12% each were Black or more than one race.
Limitations included that data only assessed Android users, and that the study did not account for school policy changes from 2022 to 2024, Nagata and colleagues noted.
"Because school smartphone regulations are rapidly changing, future periodic analyses are necessary to understand the evolving relationships between these policies, adolescent smartphone use, and long-term academic outcomes," they wrote.
The study by Nagata and colleagues was supported by the NIH.
Nagata reported receiving grants from the NIH during the conduct of the study. Co-authors reported receiving personal fees from the National Sleep Foundation and the Children and Screens Institute; receiving grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Della Pietra Family Foundation; serving as an expert witness or consultant in social media litigation outside the submitted work; and receiving grants from the NIH during the conduct of the study.
Christakis, who also was an author on the study by Nagata and colleagues, reported receiving personal fees for serving as an expert witness in ongoing social media litigation. A co-author who also was an author on the study by Nagata and colleagues reported receiving personal fees from the National Sleep Foundation, Children and Screens Institute, Idorsia Alliance for Sleep, and HireZon; being an expert witness in social media litigation; and receiving grants from the NICHD and the Della Pietra Family Foundation outside the submitted work.
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