While districts across Connecticut turn toward new measures to address problem phone use and social media addiction, a new report published by the UConn Center for Education Policy Analysis, Research and Evaluation found that many school technology policies contain dated language, make limited-to-no mention of social media or mental health and “have not kept up with the rapid changes of adolescent digital media use.”
The research is just the first phase in a multi-part Social Media and Digital Literacy Study funded by UConn and the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration that seeks to better understand student relationships with technology and the impact of cellphone prohibitions in schools.
According to an information brief prepared by the governor’s office, Connecticut schools have reported dips in behavioral issues, violence and peer conflicts after restricting phone use during the school day through Yondr pouches, phone lockers and other programs.
At Betances STEM Magnet School in Hartford, Principal Anthony Brooks said the implementation of Yondr pouches in December 2022 corresponded with a 50% drop in office referrals and a 30% to 40% decline in suspensions at the school. The reduction applied to all behavioral and disciplinary offenses, not just phone-related problems.
“The number of referrals and disciplinary consequences as a result of those referrals fell off a cliff,” Brooks said.
“That continues now,” Brooks added. “We have far fewer incidents and it’s difficult to connect it specifically to cellphone use, but if I take a look at the problems that we were experiencing before implementing the pouches and this past year, it’s night and day.”
Collecting data
In February, a study of Norwegian middle schools concluded that smartphone bans reduced bullying rates in boys and girls, boosted female students’ GPAs and resulted in fewer consultations for “psychological symptoms and diseases among girls.”
The findings are significant, but Adam McCready, an assistant professor-in-residence and principal investigator for the Social Media and Digital Literacy Study, said the Norwegian study is “at the forefront of this research.”
“There are other researchers across the U.S. who are also invested in this topic, but the short answer is, we don’t really know a whole lot (about) what the effect of this is on adolescence and their well-being or what the effects are on the educational environment and experience for students and educators,” McCready said.
McCready and his team are working to add to the small but growing body of literature around phone bans.
This school year, McCready said the team is performing a quasi-experimental study on four Connecticut middle schools to measure the impact of restrictive cellphone policies and digital literacy curriculums on school environments, student behaviors and academic performance.
One school will eliminate phone use through Yondr pouches. Another will introduce an eight-week digital literacy curriculum. A third school will implement both the Yondr pouches and the curriculum, and the fourth will serve as the control with no interventions.
McCready said the team will collect data at three points during the school year identifying student social media use and well-being at the start of school, a midpoint during the fall term, and again in June.
McCready said the team’s early hypothesis is that the “bans will likely affect the school environment and shift behaviors.”
“We hear from school professionals, teachers, counselors, etc. that students are using Snapchat or texting or other forms of communication and social media to communicate when a fight’s going to happen, or um when other behaviors are going to happen in school,” McCready said. “Potentially restricting cellphone access might reduce students’ awareness of fights or other altercations.”
McCready said the digital literacy component is also a critical point of study. Right now, he said “we are often just handing children devices” without equipping them with the knowledge of how to be digitally literate and responsible users.
By the end of the study, McCready said the team hopes to have an answer as to whether such education will impact student social media use and online behaviors.
“A year from now, I think I can give you a much better understanding and a data-informed conversation around the efficacy of cellphone-free spaces but also what value, if any, comes from educating students,” McCready said.
McCready said that ultimately, “the data will tell whether these prohibitions on personal devices will actually affect student well-being” beyond the classroom.
“If these students get these devices back at the end of the school day, is it really going to change their behaviors or interactions after school?” McCready said.
Transforming behaviors
If you poll politicians or the general public, most people would tell you that the science is settled — social media is harmful to kids. However, McCready said studies examining the impact of social media on student mental health offer much more mixed and nuanced results.
While research has linked increased screen time to increased mental health issues like loneliness, depression and anxiety, McCready said other studies have found that social media can provide a “space for folks to find community, build relationships and help to actually solidify (personal) identity,” particularly for marginalized communities.
McCready said the negative impacts of social media depend less on how much time a user engages with content, and depend more on who they are and how they use it.
“Usually time spent on a particular application or online in general, (has) not been a great predictor of student mental health,” McCready said “One adolescent … might be able to engage with social media and it has no effect on them. But someone else might engage with the same content, and it might have a greater effect. So it’s just fairly challenging to know what the effects will be, even though the prevailing public narrative is that it’s negative.”
In phase two of the Social Media and Digital Literacy Study, which wrapped up in the spring, McCready said the research team conducted interviews and focus groups to gain deeper insights into the impact of technology on students and their mental health.
In their conversations with teachers, administrators, social workers, counselors, parents and caregivers, McCready said one concept came up very often — addiction.
McCready said that right now, there is not a clear diagnosis for social media addiction, however, McCready said he believes it does exist.
“There are algorithms that are designed to keep adolescents and young people or just any individual online,” McCready said. “If you look at early human development (in) adolescents and early adults, the agency to kind of pull away or say no to these things is more difficult than an adult who is able to do more with impulse control and not give in to the algorithms or these notifications or nudges.”
During phase two of the study, McCready said teachers told researchers they believed device-distracted students “were simply role modeling the behaviors they were learning at home from parents or older siblings.”
McCready said this modeling starts at a very early age. McCready said he can remember his oldest son grabbing at his cellphone and swiping the screen when he was just 1 years old.
During interviews, McCready said parents would say “My child is addicted to social media,” but also admit to “scrolling through Instagram or looking at reels on TikTok” in family settings. McCready said other interviewees would discuss how teachers would be using social media and personal devices in hallways and classrooms.
McCready said these tendencies could potentially work against the effects of school phone bans.
“The analogy I give is being in the 1950s and telling students, ‘Look, you can’t smoke at school, but your teachers are going to smoke at their desk in front of you, and you’re going to get home and your parents and everyone in society is going be smoking around you, but we’re all telling you it’s bad for you,’” McCready said.
McCready said it cannot be left up to schools alone to solve problems around student phone and social media use.
“We really need to look at a more collaborative or community-wide approach,” McCready said.
“We’re socializing children very early about technology use,“ McCready said. “If we want to really change adolescent behavior with technology, we really also need to look at how adults are role modeling and norming these behaviors.”
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