An exclusive national survey of school administrators shows principals and vice principals are alarmed by how smartphones and social media have transformed school hallways and classrooms.
By wide margins, hundreds of school leaders polled in the survey said they believe phones are having negative impacts on student mental health, making kids tired and distracted, and amplifying conflict and bullying in school communities.
See the full results here, taken from June 24 through July 25, 2024.
David Griffith, the Associate Executive Director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, called the NBC survey results “a loud warning to parents and the public about the perils of smartphones and social media on this generation of young people.”
Ronn Nozoe, the CEO of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), said the survey results underscore the challenges school administrators face when educators must battle smartphones for students’ attention.
“We deal with the fallout from excessive smartphone and social media use, whether that’s an after-school brawl over a mean post or students falling behind because they can’t turn their attention away from the screen,” Nozoe said.
The survey, which was distributed to more than 30,000 elementary, middle, and high school administrators who are members of NAESP and NASSP, also revealed a mismatch between the age at which most kids get their first phone – and the age at which school administrators think they should have a phone. Seventy
Seventy percent of the 550 respondents said kids should be 14 or older before they get phones, but the same percentage estimated most kids get their first device at age 10 or younger.
The largest percentage of principals and vice principals said they believe 16 is the right age for young people to have a phone.
“School principals are sounding the alarm about the negative impact of smartphones on student learning and well-being,” Griffith said.
Matteo Doddo, the Co-Principal of Newburgh Free Academy in New York’s Hudson Valley, said he decided to ban phones during the school day after he and other educators realized the devices were exacerbating conflict.
“It was negative. It was violent. Or it was bullying. It was attacking,” Doddo said. “What we want is for them to be healthy. Not just physically, but socially and psychologically.”
Two-thirds of the administrators polled in the NBC survey said they support using phone lockers or pouches to keep kids from getting distracted by screens during the school day.
The survey results come as policymakers across the country consider statewide restrictions on phones in schools and new rules on social media directed at youth.
In an extraordinarily unified front, the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut sat down for a joint interview with NBC New York, to air their collective concerns about the relationship between smartphones and teenagers.
“This is deeply personal,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul. “I’m the first mom governor in the state of New York. I’ve raised teenagers. I have nieces and nephews who are going through this right now.”
Hochul recently signed a bill that restricts the ability of social media companies to use algorithms that subject kids under 18 to addictive content. She’s also considering a statewide policy that would ban phones inside schools after conducting a series of mental health roundtables.
“You had to draw it all down from these mental health roundtables I conducted and hearing the voices of teenagers who said, ‘You’ve got to help us, you’ve got to save us from ourselves.’ And what they were talking about was the fact that they could not put down their cell phone even during the course of a school day.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said their respective states and localities are also studying the idea of school phone bans.
“These smartphones make us stupid. They isolate you. And that’s really extended a lot of that sense of profound loneliness that came out of COVID,” said Lamont.
As schools consider getting tougher on smartphones, researchers are scrambling to compile more and better research documenting the real impacts of phone use on the teenage brain.
This summer, the New York Times best-seller, “The Anxious Generation,” helped popularize a theory that childhood has been fundamentally “re-wired” by the pervasive use of smartphones.
The book’s chief researcher, Zach Rausch, points to a staggering increase in ER visits for self-harm among teens. He and the book’s author, Jonathan Haidt, argue phones have intensified periods of loneliness and anxiety that have always been a part of early adolescence.
“This is an issue that every family is concerned about,” Rausch said. “When we move our social lives to spend upwards of 5, 6, 7 hours a day on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, it is just not a suitable place to grow up.”
In the psychology community, there is far from a consensus on whether phones are the driving factor in a teen mental health crisis.
Professor Candice Odgers, a quantitative and developmental psychologist at UC Irvine, fears parents and policymakers have been too hasty in framing phones as the primary cause of increased reports of anxiety and depression among young people.
She points to a recent consensus review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine which found, “the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health.”
“I think we’re at the height of a moral panic around this issue,” Odgers said. “The message that’s being sent to the public is that there is a consensus that social media, screen time, smartphones, are uniformly damaging and having a negative impact on our kids. That’s the belief that people have, that adults have, that some young people have, because we’re telling them that. But that is not what the science says.”
Though the scientific impact of smartphone use on the teenage brain is still not fully understood, in June the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, called for warning labels on social media. He argued it would be unwise to postpone action while more research is gathered.
Some parents agree this is no time to wait for further data.
While school administrators across the nation weigh smartphone bans, a movement called “Wait Until 8th” has sprung up in school districts across the country – urging parents to band together in making voluntary pledges to delay childhood smartphone use until kids are at least 13 or 14.
“I think we’re doing a grassroots thing because it’s the only option we have right now,” said Jordan Goldberg, a mother who helps organize a Wait Until 8th group in Montclair, NJ.
“I hope it’s enough for us to keep our kids sort of safe from the stuff that’s out there. But I don’t think it’s sufficient.”
