New report reveals smartphones ARE bad for you (but not the one you're thinking of)
Recently published reports suggests that smartphones (in schools) may not be as damaging as many believe... but if you sit and think about it too long, they can be.
Lo, what’s this? A new and extensive study into the impact of smartphone bans in schools was published and made headlines this week, despite the fact that it clearly states banning phones in schools doesn’t do anything! It’s honestly quite refreshing to see.
I guess when the paper is published in something as credible as The Lancet and includes over a thousand students from dozens of schools (with varying degrees of smartphone restrictions), then it’s a lot harder to dismiss. And for once, the fact that going against conventional wisdom gets more attention is applied to the matter of Smartphones and young people.
However, while it would be very easy to just point at this study and say “THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING!” (I wrote a whole book on this), it would be hypocritical of me not to apply the same sort of critical analysis that I do with articles and studies that don’t support my existing viewpoint.
What is the Lancet study actually saying?
It might be tempting for some to see the reports of this study and leap to the conclusions “Science says smartphones are harmless for children!” But that’s wrong. To put it as succinctly as possible without losing important nuance, what the study actually says is:
If you measure the mental health, wellbeing, and educational achievement of students who attend schools with strict rules and restrictions regarding the use of smartphones, and compare these with the same measurements, taken from like-for-like students (in terms of age, sex, background, ethnicity etc) who attend schools which have little to no smartphone rules and restrictions, you don’t find any notable differences”.
So, to be clear, this study does not say that smartphones are (or aren’t) harmful. What it does say is, whatever effect smartphones may (or may not) have on young kids, preventing them from using their phones in school (or not) via the use of rules of varying strictness and scope, seemingly makes no difference.
Why wouldn’t school smartphone bans make a difference?
Many people take it as read that reducing children’s smartphone exposure in schools would lead to better wellbeing and educational outcomes. This study suggests that’s not the case. Why not?
One straightforward explanation put forward by the researchers is that the amount of time the typical kid spends on their phone in school is actually a relatively minor percentage of their overall smartphone us, the bulk of which occurs outside of school hours.
So, in-school bans and restrictions aren’t really making much difference to use of, and therefore the impact (if any), smartphones on the wellbeing of young people.
The educational aspect is a more intriguing one. You’d at least assume that those school kids who don’t get to use their phone in class would have better grades and test performance than those who have unrestricted phone access in class, purely by dint of being less distracted?
I confess I can’t argue with the logic of this. But the results are what they are. I suspect there are many things at work here. Here are a few suggestions:
All schools included in the study were in England, which, at present, has no specific laws or legislation regarding phones in schools, just advice and guidelines. A school having a ‘no smartphones in class’ rule doesn’t mean it’s rigorously enforced. Likewise, just because a school has no rules regarding smartphones in class, individual teachers could still be imposing such things in their own class environment? such factors could mean the in-class exposure to phones in ‘rules’ and ‘no rules’ schools is not so different after all.
There’s ample evidence to suggest that phones can support learning, rather than inevitably disrupt it. Of course, there’s evidence which supports the opposite conclusion too. That’s why this issue doesn’t suit soundbites and simple answers. But if phones in class can be both helpful and detrimental to learning, then ‘they don’t make any overall difference’ is a reasonable outcome for this study1.
Any issues with the study itself?
No study is perfect, even if it does tell you what you expect to be true2. And this one is no exception.
To be fair, most of the issues with the study were raised in the paper itself, as is standard practice for any respectable research. These include
A bias towards schools with smartphone restrictions as opposed to those without any: Schools which had rules about smartphones outnumbered schools without rules by 2:1 in the study. In fairness though, the former are far more common, and the researchers did flag up that they factored this in when selecting schools. Still, a 2:1 sampling ration taking in over 1000 students should be enough to reveal any significant differences in wellbeing etc.
A one-size-fits-all approach to variable rules: Many schools adopt an approach where the rules around smartphone use change as the students get older. E.g. 14 year olds have more access than 11 year olds. This was not a variable considered by the study. Similarly, schools which have designated times for smartphone use, or designated areas, were lumped together in the ‘has rules’ column. Similarly, the variable strictness and scope of the rules didn’t really factor into calculations either.
There are no doubt many good and practical reasons for all this, but it’s still something to keep in mind.Difficult students excluded? Among the reasons students weren’t included in the study (e.g. being absent, not responding), there was also whether they were in isolation or individual behavioural coaching, things like that.
A more cynical take on tis could be “students who are far more likely to have mental health issues were excluded from this study into whether phone use causes mental health issues”.
A fairer explanation is that such students simply weren’t accessible to researchers for safeguarding reasons. But could it have affected the results? Perhaps. Especially if such students were in schools with stricter phone rules. This isn’t made clear.Self-reporting: Efforts to track phone use via specialised apps apparently didn’t work, so students ended up self-reporting their phone use, wellbeing, mood etc.
While this is a well-established approach, there are issues with self-reporting as a research metric, particularly with subjects as subjective and nebulous as mental health.
And if you’re a student in a school where it’s known the teachers and authorities in charge discourage phone use, you may well be less inclined to be less than 100% honest when an unfamiliar but serious-seeming adult asks you how often you use it in school. If this happens often enough, it’ll affect the data.
One deeper concern I have with the study, though, is the implication the researchers give that they have preconceived notions about smartphones being bad for kids, and are maybe even disappointed that they didn’t demonstrate this via the research.
The researchers are very clear that they did find a connection between smartphone use, especially if it’s problematic use, and worse mental health outcomes; it just isn’t something affected by school smartphone rules/bans. Granted, this isn’t something we haven’t seen already. There’s definitely a link there.
The issue is, it’s correlational, not causative. In plain English, yes there’s a link between kids using their smartphone too much and having worse mental health, but we don’t know if worse mental health is a result of using a smartphone too much, or using a smartphone too much is the result of having worse mental health.
As I’ve said countless times, when you’re in the grips of poor mental health, your phone can be a lifeline, a way of staying connected and supported when you don’t have the spoons to leave the house, a way of regulating for the neurodivergent etc.
As far as I can see, this latest study doesn’t include anything that would establish, conclusively, that excess phone use causes mental health issues, and not the other way around… but the authors certainly act like it does! There’s a strong vibe of “…but something must be done!” r.e. the ‘dangers’ of phones. They just admit that school bans aren’t an effective ‘something’.
Although, if someone genuinely believes that smartphones harm children, but still publishes a study that strongly argues against that conclusion, then I’d say that makes it more credible, not less.
So, phones aren’t bad for young people?
Not quite.
Another report from this same week, that didn’t get quite the same amount of attention, came via the CEO of GameTop, who issued a press release warning people not to spend too long playing games on their phone while sat on the toilet, because it’s bad for your health.
It’s hard to argue here, because sitting on the toilet for too long doing anything can be bad for your health. But you’re logically more likely to do that if you’re absorbed in something like a game on your phone.
Why do I reference this fairly obvious bit of marketing content? Partly because I like the approach of “Head of a gaming company tells people ‘stop gaming so much!’”, because it echoes the point I made just now.
But partly because it reveals that, if you want to focus on the ways in which smartphones affect health, there are more straightforward ways of doing it than deep-research into poorly-defined and speculative mental health effects.
Logically, if you’re spending most of your time sat staring at a phone, you’re not doing any of the more physically beneficial things you could be doing instead. And that’s less than ideal, health-wise. Especially if you’re young and still physically developing.
It also neatly mirrors the way that much of the current discourse around phones basically involves sitting around waiting for a load of ‘unpleasant stuff’ that isn’t actually coming.
And finally, if your kid is sat ‘on the throne’ too long playing games, it would be ridiculous to campaign the government or schools to do something about it. Ultimately, if they do have genuine concerns, it’s down to the parents to intervene in this personal issue, not pass the responsibility onto someone else.
If you are a parent or teacher who wants to know more about the interplay between kids, phones, schools, and relationships, you should definitely check out my new book, Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What To Do About It
It’s worth noting that this study differentiated between ‘phone use’ and ‘social media use’, which many don’t. Even so, it didn’t seem to make a difference.
Especially then, if we’re honest.