Restricting smartphone use in secondary schools may save time and money for staff, but does not appear to significantly improve students’ quality of life or mental health, according to a study published in . BMJ Mental Health.
Phone use is increasingly restricted in schools around the world. Restricting smartphone access during class hours is expected to reduce distractions, improve behavior, protect students from online harm, and support learning. Some schools don’t allow phones on campus, while others require students to turn off their phones in their bags, lockers, or pouches.
However, the evidence behind these policies remains mixed. Previous research suggests that restrictive policies can reduce phone and social media use during school hours. However, demonstrating widespread benefits for mental health, physical activity, sleep, and academic performance has been more difficult.
To investigate this, a team led by Samuel J. Perry at the University of Birmingham conducted an economic evaluation of smartphone policies in UK schools. The study included 815 students aged 12 to 15 from 20 secondary schools in the main complete case analysis. Thirteen schools had restrictive policies, meaning that recreational phone use was not allowed during school hours, while seven schools had permissive policies, meaning recreational use was allowed at certain times or in certain locations.
The researchers estimated costs from the school’s perspective. This meant staff focused their time primarily on implementing and enforcing phone rules, including monitoring behavior, recording incidents, contacting parents, applying sanctions, and talking to students. We then converted this time into costs using staff salary estimates.
Student outcomes were measured using two health economic indicators. One is quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which combine quality of life and length of life. The other is Mental Well-Being Adjusted Life Years (MWALY), which focuses specifically on mental well-being.
This discovery was surprising in two ways. First, there was little difference in student performance. Compared to permissive schools, restrictive schools had much smaller estimated gains in QALYs and much smaller estimated losses in MWALYs. Both estimates were uncertain and close to zero. In other words, the study found no strong evidence that restrictive policies improve or harm student well-being.
Second, in both types of schools, staff members spent a lot of time managing their phones. For schools with restrictions, this equates to approximately 3.1 full-time employees for the entire school year. Permissive schools had approximately 3.3 full-time staff equivalents. The researchers noted that staff in restrictive schools appeared to spend less time monitoring phone-related activity and performing administrative duties, but more time applying behavioral sanctions for violations of phone rules, such as detention and communicating with parents.
It is estimated that restrictive policies reduce costs by £94 per pupil per year, but this estimate is also uncertain. The researchers estimated that, at commonly used cost-effectiveness thresholds, there is approximately a 90% chance that restrictive policies will be cost-effective when using QALYs as the outcome. When using MWALY, the probability was closer to 50-60%.
Perry and colleagues summarized that “student mental health and well-being outcomes are unlikely to differ between adolescents attending schools with strict or permissive smartphone regulations.” “Restrictive phone policies may provide small economic benefits to schools by reducing the time school staff spends managing students’ phone-related behavior.”
There are a few things to keep in mind. For example, the study is observational and does not track schools before and after enacting restrictive policies, so it cannot prove that the policies caused cost differences. Additionally, cost estimates rely heavily on reports from one senior staff member per school and may not fully capture what staff actually do on a day-to-day basis. Finally, the outcome data are limited to one or two assessment periods and are assumed to approximate school grades, calling into question the internal validity of the study.
The study, “A Health Economic Analysis of Restrictive Smartphone Policies in SMART Schools in England,” was authored by Samuel J. Perry, Victoria A. Goodyear, Miranda Pallan, Peymane Adab, Sally Fenton, Maria Michael, Paul Patterson, Amie Randhawa, Alice J. Sitch, Matthew Wade, and Hareth Al-Janabi.
