Study: Students spend a third of their school day on their phones, without strong cellphone policy
A new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers insight for schools trying to curb cellphone use in schools.
By Emily Walkenhorst, WRAL education reporter, Posted 9:23 AM Mar 9, 2026 Updated 1:26 PM Mar 9, 2026
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Students spend hours on phones at school, study says
A new study shows students in schools in states without firm cellphone policies spend a third of their school day on their phones.
The results detail the magnitude of a problem education leaders, politicians and advocacy groups have been attempting to solve in recent years, as bipartisan concern has shot up over the impact of cellphones and social media apps on young people.
Researchers with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied the cellphone use of middle and high school students at different points from 2021 through 2024. They studied iPhone users, specifically, and gained access to the phones’ screentime data.
They found students spent an average of 20 minutes every hour on their phones, largely looking at social media and entertainment apps, said Eva Telzer, a professor in the university’s psychology and neuroscience department. Telzer is also co-director of the university’s Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development.
The results were associated with students having less “cognitive control.” In other words, they had less control over their minds for tasks such as regulating thoughts or emotions or effectively working toward goals. Adolescent students who are more frequently checking their phones showed poor cognitive control in a separate experimental task the researchers conducted outside of school.
“So they are showing these impairments in the way that their minds are working, which is going to interfere with their ability to engage and learn in the classroom,” Telzer said. Those could worsen academic performance and can have long-term impacts on children’s developing brains, scholastically and emotionally, she said.
North Carolina law now requires school boards to have strict device policies, including cellphones, tablets and other wireless communication devices.
WRAL reported last year that schools have for years reported having policies restricting cellphone use but that many people said those policies were ineffective.
The policies and approaches were generally not as strict as the new state law requires and were often enforced differently classroom-to-classroom. Students told WRAL News that inconsistency was confusing and led to resentment among some students who preferred one approach over another. School leaders said they believed consistent, administrator-backed approaches were more effective.
Many schools were in the middle of changing their approaches.
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