New Study Has Bad News About Smartphones and Kids' Test Scores

New research examined just how smartphone usage is affecting children's performance in school and ability to learn.

For over a decade, American students' test scores have continued to decline in comparison to students from other countries around the world. The slide coincides with the proliferation of smartphones and social media in everyday life as teenagers spend much of their time looking at a screen. 

Every three years, the Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year-olds in nearly 80 countries in math, reading, and science and is regarded as the world's best-known measure of student education levels. The most recent report, the first since the outbreak of the pandemic, contained some disappointing results. Americans received the lowest score in math since the test first began in 2003. To be fair, no countries have seen a positive trend in any subject in the last decade. 

PISA points toward the increased use of smartphones as a potential cause for U.S. students' slip in learning. The study found that students who spend less than one hour of "leisure" time on digital devices a day at school scored about 50 points higher in math than students who looked at screens more than five hours a day. 

Andreas Schleicher, the director of the PISA study, claimed that screens in general create a distraction for students at school. Simply feeling distracted by classmates' phone use led to lower scores among certain students. Combine that with the anxiety prompted by being away from their digital devices and you have a perfect storm for students' abilities to suffer. 

If your kids' grades start to slip, you might want to get them a "dumbphone" or hang onto their devices until after the school day.