UCLA study: Phone ownership in children linked to lower score on reading test

Elementary school children who owned cell phones received lower total scores on a timed reading-comprehension test than children without phones in a new University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) study, although having a phone nearby during the test did not hurt performance.

Published July 23 in the journal Behavioral Sciences, the study examined 106 Los Angeles County children in a younger group that was mostly composed of third graders and an older group that was mostly composed of sixth graders. 

After controlling for grade level, researchers found a modest but statistically significant negative correlation between phone ownership and total reading-comprehension scores (r = −.223, p = .026), meaning children who owned phones tended to receive lower scores. This relationship appeared among children from both English-speaking and non-English-speaking homes. The paper did not show how many points lower phone owners scored. 

“It’s ownership of a phone, not the immediate presence of one, that correlates with poorer reading comprehension at the elementary school level,” lead author and UCLA psychology professor Patricia Greenfield said in a July 27 university report.

Phones present, phones absent

Researchers tested 51 children in the third-grade group and 55 in the sixth-grade group between July and December 2024. English was the home language for 42% of participants, Arabic for 30%, and Spanish for 28%. Nearly 59% were tested in public schools, while the remainder were tested in Coptic Christian Sunday-school settings.

The students completed two grade-appropriate, seven-minute reading-comprehension exercises from the eighth edition of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS.

The 37 children who brought phones to the testing site completed one exercise with their powered-on phone placed face-up beside them and another after handing the device to a researcher, who kept it out of sight. Researchers varied the order of the passages and phone conditions. Children who did not bring phones completed the same two exercises without a phone present. 

Having a phone nearby did not produce a statistically significant decline in performance. Students answered an average of 89% of questions correctly with their phones present and 87% without them. 

Children who brought phones to the testing site also performed no worse than those who did not after researchers controlled for grade level.

Researchers could not meaningfully determine whether notifications distracted students because 28 of the 37 children in the phone-presence experiment received no alerts during the brief exercises. The authors cautioned that phones might have different effects during longer assignments or activities involving sustained attention, working memory, writing, mathematics, or ordinary classroom work.

When children began using phones

Among children who answered the ownership question, 46% of those in the third-grade group and 70% of those in the sixth-grade group reported owning phones. The small Los Angeles County sample did not represent children nationwide, and the rates exceeded the 2021 national smartphone-ownership estimates that the researchers cited for children of comparable ages.

Among the phone owners, neither the reported age nor the grade at which they received their first phone nor the age at which they began making calls was significantly associated with their reading scores, according to the UCLA study.

The study produced some exploratory findings in the opposite direction. Among a small subgroup of sixth-grade phone owners from Arabic- or Spanish-speaking homes, beginning to text at an earlier age was associated with better reading comprehension. Earlier access to games on a first phone was also associated with better scores among phone-owning children from non-English-speaking homes. 

The researchers suggested that texting and games might provide those children additional practice with English. But they cautioned that the findings came from small subgroups and require further study. 

School phone restrictions expand across the nation

The study comes as states are increasingly moving to restrict phones in schools. At least 40 states have enacted policies governing student phone use since Florida adopted its first statewide law in 2023, according to a July review by the Education Commission of the States. 

The policies range from requirements that local districts establish their own rules to prohibitions on phone use covering the entire school day. Federal survey data collected in December 2024 also showed that 77% of public schools prohibited students from having phones during any classes, while 30% barred them during all settings throughout the school day.

The UCLA findings, however, “do not provide an academic rationale for banning phones in elementary school,” the researchers wrote, because neither having a phone present during the test nor bringing one to school was associated with poorer comprehension. 

The researchers suggested that school restrictions could still strengthen in-person relationships and social skills.

Concerns about the broader formative effects of early device use have also prompted family-led responses. As Zeale News previously reported, technology executive Terry Gromes launched the Canary Project to help parents reset household digital habits. Gromes argued that parents have “substituted learning and growth patterns with screen devices” and urged families to make phones tools rather than children’s central source of entertainment. 

The UCLA researchers concluded with a recommendation for parents: “The implication is that parents concerned about reading skills should avoid giving children their own cell phones during elementary school.”