SEATTLE — The University of Washington released a study on smartphone and social media use in teens.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
In the study, researchers looked at the smartphone habits of teens between the ages of 13 to 18.
On average, teens spend a little over an hour on their smartphones during school hours.
They wanted to see the impact of smartphones on task engagement at school and on overall academic engagement.
The study found that teens spent most of their time on social media apps, with Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat at the top in usage.
They found that how much a household earns per year influences smartphone usage.
Teens between the ages of 16 to 18 from lower-income households used their smartphones more often than their peers.
Dr. Dimitri Christakis, the senior author of the paper and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, commented on the findings: “These apps are designed to be addictive. They deprive students of the opportunity to be fully engaged in class and to hone their social skills with classmates and teachers.”
Dr. Jason Nagata, the lead author and an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco says that this moves the conversation past teens self-reporting the over use of smartphone to real-world behavior.
“Teens are not always accurate reporters of their own screen time. Objective smartphone data gives us a clearer picture of actual use,” said Nagata.
The study points to least 32 states and the District of Columbia have started puting policies into place to ban or restrict cellphone usage in schools.
However, Dr. Christakis believes that these bans aren’t strict enough.
“To date, they’ve been very poorly enforced, if at all. I think the U.S. has to recognize the generational implications of depriving children of opportunities to learn in school,” said Dr. Christakis.
These findings are likely to shape ongoing conversations about smartphone use in schools as educators and policymakers seek ways to keep students off their phones and focused on their schoolwork.