Cellphones are poised to become a bigger problem for elementary schools as a significant percentage of young children now have their own personal devices.
More than half of kids have their own personal tablets before entering kindergarten, and 1 in 4 have their own smartphones by age 8, according to a report from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that conducts research on youth technology use.
The results could serve as a bellwether for elementary school leaders and teachers who may soon find themselves in the same position as educators in middle and high schools who are struggling to manage students’ cellphone use during class. A growing number of states and school districts have created more restrictive cellphone policies in schools in response to those frustrations.
Chase Christensen is the superintendent of Sheridan County School District 3 in Wyoming and the principal of the district’s elementary school. The middle and high school students in his district struggle with the issues educators often blame on cellphones, such as weakening social relationships among students and distractions in class.
But he doesn’t see those problems in his elementary school yet. Kids there, if they have cellphones at all, tend to have relatively low-tech versions that can’t do much beyond texting and calling. (The Common Sense Media report found that among children who are 8 and younger and have a cellphone, 79 percent have a smartphone that can go online and use apps, 19 percent have a smartphone that has limited access to the internet and apps, and 3 percent have very basic phones that lack features like touchscreens.)
But if smartphone ownership increases among his youngest students, Christensen thinks elementary schools might be better positioned to deal with the cellphone problem than secondary schools. One big reason is because elementary teachers have the same kids for the entire school day.
“If a kid shows up with a phone, they tell them to go put it in their locker, and they do because elementary teachers are also far better at contacting parents if there’s an issue, and they’ve got better relationships with parents,” he said. “When kids get to middle and high school, they have a teacher that tells them to put their phone away, but then 50 minutes later they get another chance to have their phone out. If teachers aren’t all on the same page, things aren’t being enforced across the board, it’s just a nightmare.”
The findings of the Common Sense Media report also underscore the need for digital and AI literacy education to start in early elementary school, experts say.
Nearly 40 percent of parents of 5- to 8-year-old kids report that their child is using artificial intelligence to learn school-related material.
“These digital literacy conversations are generally happening much later than when children are being exposed to the internet, when they’re being exposed to media, when they’re getting their devices,” said Supreet Mann, the director of research at Common Sense Media. “I’m of the opinion that the more we can educate kids and parents about healthy media habits, about what quality content looks like, and what appropriate amounts of time spent engaging with that content are, the better.”
The report’s findings are based on a nationally representative survey of 1,578 parents of children 8 and younger, including those not yet school age, conducted in August 2024.
Beyond formal instruction on how to navigate digital spaces and fast-evolving technologies, educators, like all adults, play an important role in modeling healthy tech habits for students, such as not spending every spare second scrolling on their phones, said Mann.
Teachers should also take a hard look at their school day to see if they can find opportunities to cut back on or minimize students’ screen time, she said. Although screen time remained flat compared with data collected by Common Sense Media in 2020, parents are still reporting that their children ages 5 to 8 are spending an average of 3.5 hours on screens daily.
For example, Mann said, teachers don’t need to have students watch a video that leads them through physical exercises to move their bodies or get the wiggles out.
“We can play music and do the same thing,” she said. Then students are “looking at one another, and they’re looking at their teacher, and they’re not looking at the screen. While I understand that teachers have a lot going on, and I completely respect the need for technology to help support the learning that’s happening, I also think that we can look for alternative ways to teach some of this.”
Some children use cellphones to calm down when they are angry
Young elementary students’ technology use could affect their social-emotional and academic learning, experts point out. For many young children, their attachment to cellphones and tablets goes beyond entertainment and communication, the Common Sense Media report found. The technologies are actually used as tools for emotional regulation. Seventeen percent of parents of children 8 and younger said their kids use personal devices to calm down when they are feeling angry.
Furthermore, 25 percent of parents of 5- to 8-year-olds say their kids are watching or playing on a mobile device to fall asleep most nights. Research shows that screen time before bed negatively affects children’s sleep—which, in turn, can hurt their mental health and ability to learn in school. Pediatricians recommend that kids get off screens at least an hour before they go to bed.
Finally, the report found that as the use of personal devices such as smartphones have become more entrenched in young elementary kids’ daily routines, reading among this age group has declined. In 2020, 63 percent of parents of children ages 5 to 8 reported in a Common Sense Media report back then that their children were reading, or were read to, daily. That percentage dropped to 52 percent in 2024.
Christensen hopes that as more research becomes available on the effects of cellphones on kids’ learning and well-being, cellphone use among elementary kids won’t rise.
“The fact that it’s reaching the attention of our legislators, I hope that we’re headed in the other direction rather than seeing more and more of it,” he said. “Maybe we’ve hit the peak and we can be on the way down? Maybe that’s hopeful, though.”
