Syntes: Goodyear et al. 2025 — SMART Schools (ATTN-013)

Källa: Goodyear, V. A., Randhawa, A., Adab, P., Al-Janabi, H., Fenton, S., Jones, K., Michail, M., Morrison, B., Patterson, P., Quinlan, J., Sitch, A., Twardochleb, R., Wade, M., & Pallan, M. (2025). School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools): a cross-sectional observational study. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 51, 101211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101211 — peer reviewed, CC BY 4.0.

Full text: Open-access article (CC BY 4.0) read 2026-11-12 from the PubMed Central page (PMC11984610); Crossref DOI checked the same day.

Metadata

• ID: ATTN-013
• Tier: observational
• N / design: cross-sectional; 30 English secondary schools (20 restrictive, 10 permissive), 1,227 pupils aged 12–15
• Population: grundskola-hog, gymnasium (Years 8 and 10)
• Subject: School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools)

Finding (+ comparator)

Comparator: schools that permit recreational phone use vs schools that do not. Primary outcome, mental wellbeing (WEMWBS): no evidence of a difference (adjusted mean difference −0.48, 95% CI −2.05 to 1.06, p = 0.62; mean 47, SD 9). Restrictive schools had lower in-school phone time (adjusted mean difference −0.67 h, 95% CI −0.92 to −0.43, p = 0.00024) and in-school social media time (−0.54 h, 95% CI −0.74 to −0.36, p = 0.00018), but no evidence of a difference in weekday or weekend use overall. Teacher-rated attainment, odds of being below target (reference = permissive): English adjusted OR 1.45 (95% CI 0.85 to 2.47, p = 0.18); maths 1.01 (0.45 to 2.27, p = 0.98). No significant differences on anxiety, depression, sleep, physical activity or disruptive behaviour. Across both policy types, more weekday phone time went with higher odds of being below target in English (adjusted OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.27) and maths (1.18, 1.06 to 1.30).

Mechanism

A school-day restriction can cut phone use in school without cutting overall daily use, so health and attainment may not move if the relevant exposure is total use.

Limits

• Cross-sectional; schools were not randomised and there is no before/after contrast. The authors themselves note that this limits causal claims.
• Attainment is a teacher rating of whether the pupil was below target, not a standardised test score.
• No split of the policy contrast by prior achievement.
• School response rate was low (the sampling frame had far more restrictive than permissive schools; 20 vs 10 were recruited on a 2:1 plan).
• England, 2022–2023, Years 8 and 10 only.

Role for C6 and C36

Limits C6: a contemporary English comparison found no significant difference in teacher-rated English or maths attainment between restrictive and permissive schools, but the design cannot test C6's kill line. Limits C36: no prior-achievement split, and not a causal ban evaluation.

Links

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101211
• PMC: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11984610/
• Relaterade: ATTN-001, ATTN-005, ATTN-006, ATTN-007, DIG-006