4.6.3: Phone Use Policies in Schools in England

The rate of adolescent mental health problems has been increasing, especially in Western countries (Blakemore 2019). Mental health problems are associated with higher rates of disruptive behavior, school absences, lower educational attainment, and sleep problems (Patton et al. 2016; Colizzi et al. 2020; Finning et al. 2019; Orchard et al. 2020; Zimmermann-Sloutskis et al. 2010; Agnafors et al. 2021). At the same time there has been an increase in the use of smartphones and social media, and these influences have become an important aspect of adolescents’ daily lives (Orben 2020). Many research studies have suggested that there is an association between phone usage, social media usage, and adolescent health and well-being (Sanders et al. 2024). However, this association is not as simple as one might expect. In fact, moderate phone and social media use can be advantageous for many health and behavioral outcomes while at higher levels of use, the reverse effect tends to be observed (Sanders et al. 2024; Przybylski et al. 2020; Yan et al. 2017; Viner at al. 2019; Stiglic and Viner 2019; Roser et al. 2016; Carter et al. 2024a; Carter et al. 2024b). There have been some questions about the strength of some of these associations, and it has been suggested that the weakness of the conclusions from these studies may be due the presence of confounding factors such as gender and age (Orben et al. 2022).

There has also been a growing trend for the use of phones to be prohibited in schools, with the United Nations reporting that one in four countries have laws that that prohibit phone use during the school day in public schools (UNESCO 2023). England has provided guidance recommending prohibiting phones in schools but left the issue of prohibition to the school’s discretion. Therefore, many schools have devised their own policies that restrict phone use. (Randhawa et al. 2024). Restrictive phone policies are based on the popular assumption that prohibiting phone use in schools will improve mental health and well-being, educational attainment, and reduce problematic use and levels of disruptive behavior (Goodyear 2025; Xia et al. 2025; Wood et al. 2023).

One study sought to investigate whether there is an association between school phone policies, adolescent phone use behaviors, mental health, well-being, and other related outcomes (Goodyear 2025). The study focused on comparing schools that do not permit phone use with schools that do. Three main research objectives were of interest to the researchers. The first objective was to determine whether there was a difference in mental well-being, anxiety and depression, sleep duration, time spent in physical activity, classroom disruptive behavior, attainment, and prevalence of problematic phone and social media usage between schools that allow phone use and schools that do not. The second objective was to determine if there was a difference in phone and social media use and duration of use within the school day, and if there was a difference in motives for phone use between schools that allow phone use and schools that do not. The third objective was to determine if there was an association between phone use and mental well-being, anxiety, depression, sleep duration, time spent in physical activity, classroom disruptive behavior, attainment, and prevalence of problematic use (Goodyear 2025).

The study began by considering over 1,300 secondary schools which were inside a 100-mile radius of the study recruiting center located in Birmingham, England. In this region 1,245 schools had restrictive phone policies, and 96 schools had permissive phone policies. These schools were recruited via email and of the restrictive schools 51 indicated interest in participating in the study while 20 of the permissive schools indicated interest. In the end 20 restrictive schools and 10 permissive schools participated in the study. From these schools 817 students at the restrictive schools and 406 students from the permissive schools provided data for the study. The authors of the study indicated that ethical approval for the study was approved by the University of Birmingham’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Research Ethics Committee.

This was a comprehensive study, and many types of data were collected. The observation of interest was the mental well-being of the students as measured using the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, which has been theoretically studied and has been used widely in research projects (Waite and Atkinson 2021). Secondary health and education-related outcomes included measures of anxiety, depression, physical activity, sleep, classroom behavior, academic attainment, and problematic social media use. Observations on smartphone and social media use and motives for social media use were also collected. Finally, demographic variables were collected from each student.

Given the complexity of the study and the data that was collected, the statistical analyses associated with the conclusions from the study were complicated. However, we will give a summary of the results of the study. The researchers found no difference in adolescent mental well-being, anxiety, depression, problematic social media use, sleep, physical activity, attainment, and disruptive behavior between students attending schools that permitted phone use compared to students attending schools that restricted phone use.

However, the observations from the study did indicate that the students who spent longer times on phones and on social media had, on average, lower mental well-being, higher rates of anxiety, depression, disruptive behavior, and problematic social media use, and less sleep and physical activity. Hence, the researchers concluded that the study provides further evidence of the adverse consequences from increased smartphone and social media use. Of particular interest was the fact that while students at restrictive schools did spend less time on their phone during the school day, this did not translate into observable differences in the adverse consequences listed above. The researchers concluded that phone use during the school day probably did not constitute a significant portion of total phone use for the students during the week.

The population of interest in this study is school age adolescents in England or possibly the wider United Kingdom. As a practical matter the researchers could not study this entire population directly. First and foremost, the study was geographically concentrated on an area around the University of Birmingham. It is not clear from the research article why the geographic area was used, but one can imagine that this simplified the process of enumerating and contacting schools for the study. Technically, one can argue that the results of the study should only apply to schools and students in this region, unless one can argue that there is a universality in the observations of these students that goes beyond geographic boundaries and could apply to all schools and students in England or the United Kingdom. Essentially one would need to argue that the social, health, and mental behavior of students in the region around Birmingham should be the same as, for example, the students in the regions around London, Glasgow or Belfast.

The more serious concern with the population of interest for this study is the high percentage of schools that were contacted but chose not to participate in the study. While the study contacted over 1,300 schools, only 30 participated in the study. The issue of the low participation is very closely connected to understanding the population studied. As we discussed above when we considered the geographic region the schools were selected from, one must consider the question of whether those schools that did participate in the study differ in some important way from those schools that did not. If it can be determined that the reason that some schools did not participate is not associated with the social, health, and mental behavior of students at those schools, then it is possible that the population could be considered all the schools from the geographic region. Otherwise, if the reason that the schools did not participate in the study is associated somehow with the social, health, and mental behavior of students at those schools, then the population of interest would be participating schools in the region. Unfortunately, there may be no way of knowing whether such an association exists since no data was directly observed from the schools that did not participate.

The authors of the study addressed the results in terms of the population in their discussion of the applicability of their conclusions by looking at what was known about the schools that did not participate. They conceded that the recruited schools differed in several ways that may impact generalizability of the findings, but concluded that despite some limitations, the results of the study were likely to be applicable across the United Kingdom. Interestingly, the researchers also pointed out that there were also some differences in the permissive and restrictive sample of schools that could cause some confounding problems. However, these differences were specifically accounted for in the statistical analysis. Finally, the researchers noted that there may be other school characteristics that could have an impact on the outcomes, possibly having a confounding effect.