UCLA study links phone ownership to lower reading scores in elementary pupils

Primary schools across the United States are increasingly putting pupils’ mobile phones out of reach, banking on quieter classrooms to support better reading.

That assumption was tested head-on in a study of third and sixth graders. Removing a child’s phone during a reading assessment made no meaningful difference to performance, yet simply owning a phone was associated with weaker results.

Psychologists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) carried out the work in real-world settings, including schools and churches across Los Angeles County.

In total, the researchers assessed 106 children, split roughly evenly between a younger third-grade group and an older sixth-grade group.

The children came from homes with different primary languages: 42% spoke English at home, 30% Arabic and 28% Spanish.

More kids now own phones

Phone ownership was common even among younger pupils. In the third-grade group, 46% had their own phone, rising to 70% among sixth graders.

Both figures are higher than national estimates from a few years earlier. In 2021, around 31.5% of third graders and 54% of sixth graders owned a phone; this sample was assessed at the end of 2024.

Phones in sight changed nothing

Children who brought a phone to school sat the same reading test twice. In one sitting, the phone stayed on the desk next to them, switched on and face up.

In the other sitting, a researcher kept the phone out of view. Scores shifted very little: 89% correct when the phone was present, compared with 87% when it was not.

The team also compared those who had brought phones to school that day with those who had not. On that comparison too, reading scores were essentially identical.

The study was led by Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at UCLA.

“The children who brought their phones to school had the same reading scores as children who did not have phones at school that day,” said Greenfield.

“So, it’s ownership of a phone, not the immediate presence of one, that correlates with poorer reading comprehension at the elementary school level.”

Ownership linked to lower scores

To measure reading, the researchers used tests from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), a set of assessments developed at the University of Oregon.

All children read and answered questions on the same short passages, whether they owned a phone or not.

Looking at the full sample, children who owned phones had lower reading comprehension scores than those who did not. The difference was modest but unlikely to be due to chance, and it appeared both for children from English-speaking homes and for those from other language backgrounds.

This part of the analysis was correlational rather than experimental. It cannot demonstrate that phones caused the lower scores, although the team points out that ownership occurred earlier in time.

“We found that there’s no age at which you can give a child a phone that’s better or worse for reading comprehension, so it’s just having a phone at all. That’s true in third grade, and it’s true in sixth grade,” said Greenfield.

Few notifications came through

The researchers initially suspected that notifications would drive any performance drop, reasoning that buzzing or alerts could pull attention away from the passage.

That expectation draws on limits of working memory: a child can keep only so much information in mind at once, and an incoming alert uses some of that capacity.

In practice, however, almost no notifications arrived during testing. Eight of 10 third graders received none, and 20 of 27 sixth graders got none either.

Each test lasted only seven minutes, which left little opportunity for messages and alerts to come through. With so few interruptions, the study could not properly evaluate whether notifications harm reading performance.

Texting early helped some kids

One pattern suggested a possible benefit rather than a cost. Among sixth graders from Arabic- or Spanish-speaking homes, those who began texting at a younger age tended to show stronger reading scores.

That finding was based on just 13 children. Among children from English-speaking homes, the pattern ran in the opposite direction and was too weak to be meaningful.

A similar result appeared for playing games on a first phone in non-English-speaking homes: those children scored higher and made fewer errors.

“If you have a phone and if you’re from a family where English is not spoken at home, it’s better for reading comprehension to start texting earlier rather than later,” said Greenfield.

“In fact, when students from Arabic- or Spanish-speaking homes began to text in second or third grade, by sixth grade they had reading comprehension scores similar to their peers who still did not have phones.”

Anxiety may have masked effects

The team also outlined factors that may have muddied the phone-removal comparison.

For some children, having a phone taken away can trigger anxiety-referred to by researchers as nomophobia-and that stress might have reduced scores in the no-phone condition.

If so, it could have concealed a genuine distraction effect. Anxiety was not measured, so the issue remains unresolved.

The researchers also note that a formal test might not be the best setting to observe distraction, because children are unlikely to look at their phone during an assessment.

The study captured only a single day rather than tracking children over time, and it assessed reading only, leaving writing, maths and attention unmeasured.

Funding came from the Flora Family Foundation, via grants to a children’s digital media centre at the university. The authors stated that they had no competing interests.

Where the team goes next

The researchers expect results could differ for older pupils.

Teenagers receive many more notifications, so the team has shifted towards studying high school students and is evaluating a classroom programme designed to help pupils manage screens.

When it comes to bans, the researchers anticipate benefits that are more social than academic. For reading, a phone sitting in a backpack did not appear to matter; instead, they plan to focus next on peer relationships.