Results revealed students aged 10 to 13 years spent over 45 minutes on social media apps during school hours.
Adolescents who have smartphones at school spend nearly an hour each school day using them, with most of the minutes on social media, according to a research letter published in JAMA Network Open. The analysis was based on passive monitoring data from more than 11,000 students.1
Researchers analyzed de-identified smartphone activity records from the Aura app, a parental monitoring tool, between September 4, 2024, and February 10, 2025. The sample included 6564 students aged 10 to 13 years and 4818 students aged 14 to 17 years. Data collection excluded Thanksgiving week and the late December holiday period. To be included, students needed at least 2 weekdays of activity data between 8:00 AM and 2:30 PM.
Across more than 622,000 user-days with recorded weekday activity, 71% included at least some smartphone use during school hours. Of this group, 61% accounted for students aged 10 to 13 years and 86% for students aged 14 to 17 years. On days with some reported activity during a 24-hour period, youths spent a mean (SD) of 58.4 minutes (64) on smartphones during school hours, representing 15% of the school day and 33% of the total mean weekday smartphone use (2.9 hours; 32% for students aged 10–13 years; 33% for students aged 14–17 years).
There 875 students (8%) who spent more than 2 hours per school day on average. Overall, of the nearly 1 hour students spent on smartphones in a school day, they spent 46.6 of those minutes on social media apps during school hours. Students aged 10 to 13 years spent 42.4 minutes on social media while those aged 14 to 17 years spent 55.9 minutes on social platforms. These numbers represented most smartphone usage during the school day (73% for students aged 10–13 years; 74% for students aged 14–17 years).
Results highlight the differences between age groups, as younger students used the device and in turn social media platforms less than older adolescents. These results are lower than data previously reported, which could be related to the fact that 94% of users had time limits or app restrictions on their devices via the Aura app. This was compared to 22% of youths (26 of 117) in a previous study.2
The authors emphasized that these results do not capture how device use was distributed across the school day or whether it occurred during instructional time versus breaks or lunch periods. They also noted that the lack of demographic data limits understanding of how the findings might apply to different student populations.1
The study had limitations, according to the authors, which included the exclusion of days with no recorded smartphone use, which may have influenced estimates, and the absence of information on school-specific device policies. The authors called for future studies to examine more diverse student populations, assess the role of school rules in shaping smartphone use, and explore whether usage patterns differ during class compared with non-instructional periods.
"This cross-sectional study found that when adolescents had their phones at school, they spent nearly an hour per school day on smartphones, with most of this time on social media," the authors concluded. "The results extend prior work indicating that smartphone use during instructional hours, especially social-specific use, is not trivial."
References:
