Third- and sixth-graders who owned a cellphone scored lower on reading comprehension tests than classmates who did not, and it made no difference whether the phone was on the desk, in a bag, or at home.
The finding comes from UCLA psychologists led by professor Patricia Greenfield and was published in Behavioral Sciences and announced by the university this week.
The result runs against the assumption behind most school phone policies. If the problem were distraction during the school day, removing the phone should help. In this study, it did not.
What the Researchers Actually Tested
Students at Antelope Valley public schools and Coptic Church schools in Los Angeles County read short passages and answered questions about them. Some had a phone with them during testing, and some did not. All students completed a survey about phone ownership and use. Phones were normally permitted in both school settings.
Researchers found a statistically significant relationship between owning a personal cellphone and lower reading comprehension scores. The pattern appeared in both third and sixth grade.
Two null results matter as much as the main one.
Bringing the phone to school made no difference. Comprehension scores were the same whether phones sat on desks or were out of sight. And the researchers could not test notification distraction at all, because students received almost no notifications during the sessions.
The age at which a child got their first phone also did not correlate with comprehension. "It's just having a phone at all," Greenfield said, describing the absence of any better or worse age to hand a child a device.
That last point is worth dwelling on, because it is the opposite of the advice most coverage of phones and children converges on. This study does not identify a safer age. It reports that the age of acquisition was not the variable that tracked with scores.
The negative relationship held for both students who spoke English at home and those who did not.
Why This Cannot Show That Phones Caused Anything
The study manipulated one thing and observed another, and the difference determines what can be concluded.
Researchers could vary whether a phone was present during testing. They could not assign which children owned phones. Ownership was measured, not randomized, and that makes the central finding correlational.
Reverse causation is a live possibility. Children who struggle with reading may be more likely to receive a phone, whether because parents are seeking something the child engages with, because reading difficulty and device use both track with how a household spends time, or because a child less drawn to books asks for a phone earlier.
Family-level confounding is equally plausible. Phone ownership in elementary school correlates with household income, parental education, the number of books at home, how much a parent reads to a child, whether a child has their own room, and the amount of unsupervised time a child has. Any of those could drive both phone ownership and reading scores without the phone doing anything.
The available reports do not state the sample size, the effect size, or which covariates were adjusted for. Those figures determine how much weight the finding can bear, and they should be checked in the paper itself before anyone treats this as settled.
A further wrinkle reported in secondary coverage complicates the picture: among sixth graders from Arabic- and Spanish-speaking homes who received phones in second or third grade, comprehension scores were reportedly similar to peers without phones. That does not fit a simple dose-response story and deserves scrutiny rather than omission.
What It Reasonably Supports
Stripped of overreach, the finding is still useful.
It provides evidence that school phone bans, on their own, are unlikely to move elementary reading scores. If the association is with ownership rather than classroom presence, a policy that only removes phones during the school day targets the wrong audience. That is a real contribution to a live policy debate, and it is the most defensible takeaway.
For parents, the honest version is narrower than the headlines. This study is one input among many; it cannot tell you that a phone will lower your child's reading scores, and it does not identify an age at which a phone becomes safe.
What it does support is treating the decision as worth deliberate thought rather than default. The researchers themselves suggest waiting until after elementary school, which is a recommendation drawn from an association rather than a demonstrated cause, and parents are entitled to know that distinction when they weigh it.
If reading is the concern, the interventions with stronger evidence behind them are unrelated to phones: reading aloud with children, sustained independent reading time, and access to books at home and through libraries. Those are worth prioritizing regardless of what any household decides about devices.
What Would Settle It
The design that would answer the causal question is straightforward to describe and hard to run: follow children over time, measure reading before and after phone acquisition, and control for family characteristics. Better still, randomize the timing of phone acquisition, which raises obvious practical and ethical difficulties.
Until something like that exists, this remains an association observed in two grade levels in one county.
The confirmed finding is that phone ownership, not phone presence at school and not the age of acquisition, tracked with lower reading comprehension in this sample. The people this most concerns are parents deciding when to give a child a phone and districts writing phone policy. The most reasonable response is to make the decision deliberately, without assuming proven harm. The central uncertainty is whether phones affect reading or whether both reflect something about the household, which this design cannot separate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the study find? Third and sixth graders who owned a cellphone had statistically significantly lower reading comprehension scores than classmates who did not own one.
Does taking the phone away at school help? Not according to this study. Scores were the same whether phones were on desks, out of sight, or left at home entirely.
Is there a safer age to give a child a phone? This study did not find one. The age at which children acquired their first phone did not correlate with comprehension scores.
Does this prove phones harm reading? No. Ownership was measured rather than randomized, so the finding is an association. Reverse causation and family-level differences cannot be ruled out by this design.
What is reverse causation here? The possibility that reading difficulty leads to earlier phone ownership rather than the other way around.
Did the finding differ by language spoken at home? The negative relationship held for students who spoke English at home and those who did not. Secondary coverage reports a more specific exception among some sixth graders that warrants checking against the paper.
What should parents do? Treat the timing decision deliberately rather than by default, and prioritize the interventions with stronger evidence: reading aloud, independent reading time, and access to books.
