00:00:00
We know the value but also the impact that cell phones have on our kids. And this past year saw numerous school
00:00:07
districts announcing new rules about preventing the use of cell phones by kids, by students during the school day.
00:00:16
With those in place, what does that mean for how the dynamics of the school day are going for students? That research is
00:00:23
being conducted by our guest today, Angela Duckworth, along with a group of her colleagues. It is a phones in focus
00:00:30
study. Angela is professor of operations, information, and decisions here at the Wharton School, as well as
00:00:36
co-director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative. Angela, great to catch up again. How are you? Hi, good to see
00:00:43
you. I'm very happy to have this conversation. Yeah, so this is the second conversation
00:00:48
we're having on this topic as this research continues to develop. Let me circle back for people that didn't join
00:00:53
us the first time and talk about what was the basis behind doing the research into this in the first place.
00:01:00
I'm a psychologist who's been studying self-control and grit and achievement
00:01:05
for her entire career. I'm also a former high school and middle school math teacher. And finally, I'm a mom. I have
00:01:12
two daughters who are now in their early 20s. And for all of those reasons, I felt called really to do a study on cell
00:01:20
phones and in particular cell phones and young people in schools. My own daughter
00:01:25
said, "Mom, you know, this is what you trained for. Like your whole life you
00:01:29
learned to become a social scientist to help kids. So you have [snorts] to study
00:01:32
what's going on with kids and phones and in particular academic and academic
00:01:38
achievement, I should say. When we talk about schools, it's not just academic
00:01:40
achievement. It's also social social development. You know, what effect having phones with you all the time has
00:01:46
on your ability to develop friendships or you know, relationships with mentors like teachers.
00:01:53
Okay, so with these school districts that are obviously changing these rules and trying to make sure that students
00:02:00
aren't relying on their cell phones during the school day, what are we starting to see in terms of how that
00:02:06
daily relationship is working not only with their classmates, but I think with the teachers as well.
00:02:12
We have a survey. It's still live. And so if you're listening to this conversation and you know or you are a
00:02:17
school teacher in a US public K-12 school, you're welcome to take the 5-minute survey at phonesinfocus.org.
00:02:26
Here's what we're learning. We have over 100,000 teachers. That's a significant
00:02:31
percentage of teachers in the United States who have done exactly that. And what we're finding first of all is a sea
00:02:38
change in policy from last year to this year. So even just in the few months that have passed since last academic
00:02:44
year to this academic year, what we're finding is that schools across this country are getting more strict with
00:02:50
their cell phones. They're more likely, for example, to have a bell-to-bell policy, meaning that students at that
00:02:56
school are not allowed to use their phone from the first bell to the last bell. And we're seeing most of that
00:03:02
change happen in, for example, the middle and high schools because elementary schools typically have
00:03:07
stricter policies, so they were already strict. But we're seeing American high
00:03:11
schools, for example, shift to this new stricter policy. Second thing that we're
00:03:16
finding is that the stricter the policy, the happier the teacher. So these teachers, 100,000 teachers, are saying
00:03:24
overwhelmingly that they prefer to teach in school. They're They're more
00:03:27
satisfied teaching in schools that have stricter policies. And finally, when we ask these teachers, "What percentage of
00:03:34
kids, from 0% to 100%, would you guess are on their phones for non-academic reasons during class?" And we we find
00:03:44
that the same pattern is that, you know, in the stricter schools, you know, kids
00:03:49
are of course less likely to be on their phones. And here's one thing I want to
00:03:52
emphasize. It's not just when kids are allowed to be on their phones, it's
00:03:55
where schools let those students keep their phones. You can be a bell-to-bell school and say, "You know what? In our
00:04:03
school you can't use your phone all day, but you can keep it anywhere you want."
00:04:08
And we're finding that that matters. When kids have their phone in their hand
00:04:12
or in their back pocket or even in their backpack, they're more tempted, it seems, to look at their phones than if
00:04:18
it's in their hallway locker, it's in a, you know, centralized place, etc.
00:04:25
Well, and one of the other things that you noted in the most recent tranche of research is that not only do
00:04:31
you have to focus on the potential use of cell phones, but it's also the laptops as well because seemingly so
00:04:38
many students are doing the majority of their work for school on their laptop. I
00:04:43
know my kids are. Right. >> And who doesn't? Right, exactly. And obviously there has
00:04:48
to be a temptation there while you're doing your work on the laptop like, well, I can slide my social media onto a
00:04:55
different screen and have both at the same time. Right. One tab for, you know, doing my calculus and another tab for
00:05:02
like looking up love story. And you know, you know, you know, it's it's um the
00:05:07
co-location of academic work and temptation on the same exact device, you know, literally within pixels of each
00:05:15
other, within a swipe of each other, within a click of each other. You know, the analogy I would give you is it's
00:05:20
like asking kids salad in the middle of a bakery, right? You can do it. But you know, there are a lot of other things
00:05:27
that you would prefer. And I feel the same way about myself. I mean, with no disrespect to my colleagues because as
00:05:34
you know, I love this university with all my heart and soul. But I have to go to boring meetings, right? Who doesn't?
00:05:40
And if I have my laptop, the temptation to stop taking notes on the meeting and to just go peek at my inbox, right?
00:05:49
You know, look up that thing that I was looking up 5 minutes before the meeting.
00:05:53
It is so strong. And therefore, we are finding in our data, you know, the same pattern with kids. I
00:05:58
mean, I don't know if it's therefore, but I'll just say that we added a
00:06:01
question this school year. I told you that the survey started last year. We're
00:06:05
um extending it. We added a question, which is what percentage of students do you suspect are doing personal things
00:06:13
like texting or social media from their laptop in class? And a striking one in three students, according to American
00:06:20
school teachers, are currently using their laptops for non-academic purposes during the school day. And as a
00:06:27
professor, again, I love my students. Literally love them. But if I [clears throat]
00:06:33
their laptops in my class, I think the percentage would be similar, you know, if not higher. Yeah.
00:06:39
Um you talked a moment ago about the component of mental health that seemingly becomes very important. And I
00:06:48
think it's a discussion where a lot of people are having it, but maybe it hasn't been fully followed through as to
00:06:54
just how these devices are impacting the mental health, especially of our children whose, in many cases, when
00:07:01
you're in middle school or high school, your brain and your body are still developing at that point.
00:07:06
You know, this generation, so, you know, we all went through childhood and adolescence. And you know, many of us
00:07:11
will remember that that was not the easiest period of our lives. We were developing a sense of of self-concept,
00:07:18
self-esteem, what's my niche, what's my role, what's my status, am I liked, do I
00:07:23
belong here? friends. So we've all been through that period. And we might recall that it was
00:07:31
a fraught period. I mean, it's not at all easy. And one of the things that really
00:07:36
worries me as a psychologist who has worked with adolescents for her career is that now we have this
00:07:42
device that enables you to not look at another person in the eye, to not have conversation, to not get to know
00:07:50
someone. I mean, who enjoys those awkward first opening conversations with another human? Maybe complete
00:07:57
extroverts. But for a lot of us, there is a little awkwardness. And what research is showing, you know, separate
00:08:03
from the study that I just described, is that face-to-face in-person interaction,
00:08:07
particularly among young people, is on a steep decline. I think that is very relevant
00:08:12
to another worrisome trend, which is we are really seeing a crisis in mental health in young people. I'll speak about
00:08:20
Gen Z adults because that's the most documented. As you know, are, you know, really in the same
00:08:26
generation. I mean, this is in some ways the least happy generation that we have
00:08:31
documented in human history. And if you ask the question, "Why?" Like what would
00:08:36
There are, I'm sure, multiple reasons. Political polarization doesn't help.
00:08:40
There's climate change and so forth. But I have to believe that the astronomic
00:08:45
increase in the use of phones and social media have at least contributed to a crisis of well-being in our young
00:08:53
people. How then does it also, and we're talking about this in the scope of the students
00:08:58
and the teachers, but to a degree, and you kind of alluded to it that this is a much larger conversation outside of the
00:09:04
schools, do the parents need to have and play an important role in this process as well?
00:09:10
You know, there is hope. And I know, you know, painting this picture of technology and its, you know, inevitable
00:09:16
march forward, right? The co-location of temptation and virtue in the same device. I mean, it does make you want to
00:09:23
like throw up your hands and say like, well, I'm helpless to to change things.
00:09:28
But I do think there's hope. And the reason why is that we are influenced by
00:09:32
our surroundings. And we are most influenced by our immediate surroundings. So yes, there are macro
00:09:38
cultural trends that you're not going to have a lot of control over. But you do
00:09:43
have control over your local environment. So think locally. For example, if you are a parent, you can
00:09:50
choose which school to send your child to because that school will have a culture. And that school's culture is
00:09:57
going to influence your child's development much more than American culture at large. Same thing for the
00:10:03
home. When we raised our two daughters, my husband Jason and I would often get, as so many parents do, "Well, my
00:10:10
friend's family does it this way. They watch TV all day. Like, they have junk
00:10:15
food. Like, why can't we have Oreos?" And we said to our daughters, "Because
00:10:18
you're a Duckworth, and in the Duckworth family, we do things the Duckworth family way." So, I think every leader
00:10:24
understands this. Every parent at some level has an intuition, but I just want to empower those of us who don't like
00:10:31
the cultural trends and say, "You know what? I'm going to think locally, and
00:10:34
I'm going to act locally." What's the next step then in the research that
00:10:38
you're doing? Obviously, you said that the study is still up and running, and
00:10:42
teachers can take part of it. phonesinfocus.org. What's next? So, we are collecting data through the
00:10:48
end of this academic year. So, just for a couple more months, teachers have an opportunity to share their perspective.
00:10:53
What we're going to do with all of that data is match it. And then, we're
00:10:57
working actually with the National Governors Association, and the majority the vast majority of states are formal
00:11:02
partners in this. So, of the our 50 states um in the United States, and what we're going to do through these
00:11:08
partnerships is match our survey data to records on attendance, to records on standardized achievement test scores. We
00:11:17
also are going to actually look at survey measures of students' well-being and engagement in class. We're going to
00:11:23
take all this data and ask the question, "Which policies in the United States for
00:11:27
cell phones in schools are the best policies with the best uh long-term student outcomes?"
00:11:34
Angela, always great to talk to you about this cuz it's so important. Appreciate it, and look forward to
00:11:38
talking to you again down the road. Awesome, awesome. I love this place. Wharton really cares about impact, and
00:11:43
I'm very, very um privileged, I should say, and grateful to be part of this great university and
00:11:49
doing some of this important work. Angela Duckworth, Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions
00:11:54
here at the Wharton School.