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Schools And Families Must Respond To Latest Research - The Impact of Phones on Cognitive Function And Emotional Self-Regulation

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I want to raise an issue that has been prevalent in the media over the past two months and I suspect will resonate with many Mulgrave families. The issue relates to phone and screen use and the impact this is having on teenagers worldwide. Social media, the U.S. surgeon general wrote in an advisory this year, has a clear, evidential link to the growing mental health crisis among teens in North America.

According to a recent piece in the Washington Post built on a 14-country study by UNESCO, smartphones have “an almost entirely negative impact in schools: Educators and students alike note they can fuel cyberbullying and stifle meaningful in-person interaction”.

We have heard similar reports before but the following additional piece of information demands new consideration by all schools as this goes beyond just the social-emotional concerns: “UNESCO found that the mere presence of a mobile phone nearby was enough to distract students from learning.” 

So what we have now learnt is that once students are engaged in certain types of mindless scrolling, watching reels or ‘skim surfing,’ it can take at least 30-40 minutes for individuals to recover and refocus to learn effectively. 

In other words, there is a lingering, detrimental impact on the ability to engage the prefrontal cortex and employ executive function skills following the kind of phone or screen use many young people engage in during breaks or lunchtime. If we add to this any time spent on phones before classes begin in the morning then you can begin to appreciate the significant negative incremental impact on learning during a normal school day

"It’s a big issue,” said Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University who has researched the impact of cellphones on student performance. “They lose anywhere between a half and whole letter grade if they are allowed to consult their phones...”

The CBC, Washington Post, and international UNESCO report are now advocating an outright ban on bringing cellphones to school and suggest that parents should welcome and support this move.

Why Do Children Need Phones?
Forty-three percent of 8-to-12-year-olds own a smartphone, as do 88 percent of teens 13 to 18, according to the 2021 Common Sense Census. Obviously, most children do not buy these phones themselves so this raises the challenging issue of parents insisting on “the need to remain in contact with their children: to arrange pickups and dropoffs, keep track of their whereabouts or otherwise be in touch.” The Washington Post article challenges this parent view of the right to be in continuous contact with a child during the school day. Research suggests that “it’s safer for students to focus on their surroundings during a crisis, not devices.”  Equally, there is a view that having students use their phones to request that parents drop off forgotten items or assignments undermines the consequential development that emerges from suffering the impact. Furthermore, the article continues: “if there’s a true need to communicate with home, there’s always the option of using the school office’s landline, as students have done for decades.”

The other significant finding in the UNESCO report highlights that “after more than 15 years following the first iPhone launch in 2007, there is still a lack of robust data to suggest that (mobile phone) digital technology inherently adds value to education.” Much of the research that does exist was funded by private companies trying to create a market for their own digital learning products. 

To be clear here, this is not a critique of the needed digital literacy and citizenship education that comes with having students use designated digital devices, where appropriate, for learning. Students need to be equipped to deal with the technology that is ubiquitous and required as a life skill. What the report challenges is that digital technology in itself enhances learning beyond norms. This resonates with our Mulgrave policies that have been built on research such as the SAMR model that discourages using technology as simply a substitute and only recommends use if there is “redefinition or augmentation”. The exciting developments in AI and Chat GPT clearly fall into these ‘enhancement’ categories and Mulgrave will always be a leader in promoting these effective uses of technology for all of our students. 

The Dilemma
Here lies the dilemma as we all can appreciate. The social psychologists hired by social media and tech companies to artfully hijack our attention using ‘dopamine hacks’ that render us all powerless in the face of teasing reels and endless click bait, are themselves undermining the positive power and potential of technology when used educationally.

Unfortunately, the phone or screen accessed recreationally is damaging both cognitive and self regulatory capacity to such an extent that all other potential advantages are eclipsed. 

As a school, we have to balance the tension between allowing students to make choices developmentally whilst at the same protecting them from their choices when we have evidence these decisions are more often than not, negative. In addition, experts are clearly broadcasting that a technology designed to be addictive does not allow for developmental opportunities for effective self management for the majority of young people. 

Clearly this issue is not just about the phone, or about social media; it’s about the broader way we think about what we want for our students, how we parent our children - and also, what we think the job of schools is.

This is a common tension in education and here is my personal view on the matter: Ask yourselves the same question as adults and parents…Do we feel our own attention is often hijacked by our phones? Do we know that we frequently fall down distractive screen holes? Do we recognise that our own capacity to self regulate and pull ourselves away from screens has become very difficult? If we find it very hard and recognise the impact on relationships, sleep, capacity to focus and concentrate then can we reasonably expect young people with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes to self manage?   

Those of us old enough to remember life before easy hand held screen access to wifi and the aggressive techniques of marketing divisions to actively ‘steal our attention’, probably have a heightened sense of what we and our children are ‘losing’ in this new reality. (See the link below life without phones.) This links to our values driven school aims. We are trying to grow young people as connected human beings who care about the planet and pay close and mindful attention to the natural and societal world around them. We want students to develop deep and authentic relationships with one another and others. This means talking to each other, moving out of the comfort zone of immediate social groups, and developing confidence in relating to different types of people.

The obvious massive potential of technological communication advantages is often suffocated under the weight of distractive reels and entertainment banality. In other words, when we see our students on their phones during breaks and lunchtimes do we really think they are utilising the amazing multi-modality potential of internet communication that could enable them to make new connections across the school or even globally?

Now What?
UNESCO, with no skin in the game or any reason to create the usual media moral panics about the advent of new technology, concluded by calling for a ban on smartphones at school no matter what age the user, and recommended it worldwide. Countries that have already adopted such policies have seen positive results; reductions in bullying in Spain and improved academic performance in Norway and Belgium*.

Anyone determined enough, can use their school laptops or iPads to access social media, reels, clips, etc. This is not simply a phone issue. However, it is important to follow a principle in educational decision making that has been hugely influential in my own career: “don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good”. We believe it will be easier to identify students using a laptop/iPad device for social scrolling during breaks and lunch times than with phones. In addition our laptop/iPad approach is well researched and effective in class when developed in collaboration with the teacher, something the UNESCO report recognises and supports - the distinction between structured and managed technology versus the phone free for all.

Another option that has been successfully trialed in parts of the UK, Spain, and Australia is a policy whereby phones are allowed on campus but kept locked away until the very end of the school day, therefore allowing students to see notices from parents that give a time or place for pick up or any other arrangement. This might help us bridge the gap between logistical benefits and learning focus.

What do you think?

Links to the articles referenced:


*An analysis of data from Spanish schools showed that schools that banned smartphones showed an increase in PISA scores of up to 1 year of learning (Beneito & Vicente-Chirivella (2022)). In primary schools, absence of smartphones has been associated with lower levels of conflict between students and higher student satisfaction (Cakirpaloglu, 2020). Phone bans have been shown to improve outcomes in the UK (Beland & Murphy 2015)