In a new study that monitored smartphone data, researchers found that teens (aged 13 to 18) spent an average of 1.5 hours each school day on their smartphones.
The researchers are working to understand not just screen time use by adolescents but the duration and content of that use, particularly during a typical school day (8:00AM to 2:30 PM).
“Unfortunately, too much of the existing research on digital media use relies upon self-reported data. In this study, we were able to objectively assess smartphone use, enabling a much more granular understanding of timing and content of smartphone use,” explains senior author Lauren Hale, professor in the program in public health and in the family, population, and preventive medicine department in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.
Hale continues, “As a public health researcher and a mother of two middle schoolers, I am concerned that too many kids are missing out on both learning and in-person social opportunities during the school day by looking at their phones. School hours are precious.”
Hale led the team that developed the IRB-approved study protocol. The team then hired a survey research firm, Ipsos, to recruit a national sample of participants and complete the survey.
As part of the protocol, nearly 300 participants completed a 15-minute smartphone-based survey and installed RealityMeter to measure smartphone use. Hale and colleagues analyzed the data from the survey and constrained the sample to those who collated smartphone data for two or more school days a week, creating a total sample of 117 eligible adolescents.
In this sample, adolescents’ average smartphone use was 1.5 hours during the school day. Moreover, over 25% of the sampled adolescents spent more than two hours on their smartphones during school.
Excluding Internet browsing, the five most used apps by the adolescents were text messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio, and email.
Hale and colleagues believe the results warrant the need for more similar surveys with larger sample sizes and recruitment that would include a broader segment of society.
In conclusion, they write that “Parents and adolescents may derive benefit from access to phones for communication and learning purposes during school. However, application usage data from this study suggest that most school-day smartphone use appears incongruous with that purpose. The analyses show high levels of social media use during school.”
Their findings appear in JAMA Pediatrics.
Support for this research came from the Della Pietra Family Foundation.
Source: Stony Brook University
