At a time when school districts across the country cracking down on cellphone use at school, a new report sheds light on just how addicted K12 students are to their devices, thus validating superintendents’ and administrators’ decisions to implement restrictions. Many leaders might only see such behaviors playing out in one of their one schools. But students’ reliance on their phones is in fact a widespread issue.
The report, published by Common Sense Media, reveals that 97% of 11- to 17-year-olds use their phones during school hours, despite the varying cellphone policies that are in place in schools across the country. Furthermore, a student’s average screen time while in school ranges anywhere from less than a minute to 6 1/2 hours, averaging 43 minutes a day.
According to students featured in the research, they simply find ways to work around their school’s restrictions.
“For my school, we do have a phone policy and we’re not technically allowed to have it out during class, but a lot of people do in spite of that,” said one 10th grader. “And definitely I think if you track kids at my school, their phone usage, you would see them checking their phones, and then checking Snapchat during class.”
Another student said their teachers end up being very lenient, despite what they’re told by their administrators.
“It’s kind of up to teacher discretion,” said one 11th grader. “So at the beginning of the year, they said it’s not allowed, but it’s really up to each teacher whether they allow it in the room or not. A lot of them do.”
How students are using phones during school
While individual habits vary from student to student, one of the more obvious reasons students engage with their devices during school hours is to check social media. Among the 200 students sampled in the study, 126 averaged 15 minutes of social media use at school.
Other uses include:
- YouTube (more than 10 minutes per day)
- Gaming (more than 7 minutes per day)
- Streaming video (less than 5 minutes per day)
TikTok is another problematic app that is grabbing students’ attention throughout the school day. For example, TikTok users are more likely than any other social media app to spend several hours on it per day (upwards of seven hours), including at school.
“You can open it kind of whenever you want,” said one 11th grader. “And even on a short amount of time, you can still watch at least two or three videos.”
Several school districts have already sued TikTok and other social media platforms for the harmful effects they claim they pose to students, including exposure to harmful material and mental health concerns.
Notifications are interrupting students’ days
On any given day, students receive some 237 notifications on their phones. Among them, students engage with nearly a quarter of them per day.
What administrators should know is that nearly one-fourth (23%) of all notifications are received during school hours. Some of the most common deliverers of these notifications include SnapChat and Discord, with some students receiving hundreds of messages each day from these platforms.
School leaders can advise teachers to have students block notifications on their phones during school hours to mitigate distractions, specifically for messaging apps, note the researchers of the report.
“Yeah, for me, I have notifications on for the apps that are messaging apps, but then for the other ones, I don’t have notifications on for YouTube or Instagram,” said one 10th grader. “For me, I don’t like the notifications that just tell you to go back on the app or just something random like that, like an update or something. But the ones I do like getting are the ones that are from the messaging apps. Like if someone sends me a text, I wanna know what it says.”
