As a society we debate the impact of computers and smartphones on our children. There are three related but different issues:
- The significance of computer-use in schools
- The impact and control of smartphones in schools
- The impact and control of smartphones in the home
Computers in schools
If you ask parents what they would like schools to teach their children, IT skills come near the top of the list. And in terms of teaching any subject in school computers can sometimes seem better than teachers or pen and ink: the computer is more dynamic than a whiteboard, more colourful, and you can embed short films in your lesson.
In maths, particularly, you can run adaptive programmes which teach the child at their own pace – different children in the room on computers learning at different speeds. If you get a question wrong, the computer programme guides you through your mistake. This is what teachers have always tried to do but struggle to manage in a class of 30.
Computers are very often useful for children with special needs including those who find it hard to write.
Many schools have an online platform on which their teachers set homework, saving hours of homework setting in the classroom. Teachers can store their perfect notes online – so pupils do not need to waste time making notes. Pupils can upload answers to the platform so the teacher does not have to spend hours collecting in the work.
Despite these advantages, not everyone agrees with the using computers for teaching. Do computer-based lessons, including use of AI, make for effective learning? Research suggests they are not better than a teacher in a classroom. The experience of online teaching during the Covid pandemic 2020-22 told us that younger children cannot concentrate long enough on a screen and older children were often distracted by other things they could find on the computer. Covid online teaching also revealed that many parents from low income families cannot afford internet access or computers which is why the attainment gap between their children and other more fortunate families widened.
When children first use a computer for learning it is motivating because it is a new experience. But that does not last long. Clark and Felton (2014) identify many problems with digital learning….they found that pupils do not concentrate but flutter from one piece of seemingly interesting information to another. There is no evidence for increased motivation. Just because pupils are ‘engaged’ it does not mean they are learning anything.
The tech companies have developed online teaching programmes but these are often ‘teaching through games’ – good fun but not that effective in terms of teaching.
Too many children in schools have their attention divided between the teacher at the front, the material on an interactive whiteboard and material on a tablet computer on their desk. This divided attention makes it less likely the pupil will learn.
More and more parents and schools in England are becoming concerned about the amount of time children are spending in front of screens of any sort. Some schools, like the Heritage School in Cambridge, have become popular because the school will not allow computers or devices. They have found that pupils concentrate better and once they banned screens their GCSE results shot up.
Another issue with digital media – both computers and smartphones – is the damage done to eyesight (Godwin, R., 2025). Concentrating on anything close to your face is bad for your eyesight.
A recent report in the British Journal of Ophthalmology found that the global myopia rate doubled between 1990 and 2023. The causes of short-sightedness in children are lack of time spent in daylight and spending too much time looking at screens. The standard advice for children is the 20/20/2 rule: for every 20 minutes of near-work spend 20 minutes focussing on something in the distance and spend two hours outside each day. It is when you add computer-based schoolwork to use of smartphones and video games that the problem emerges.
But what about making notes using a keyboard? Scientists have discovered that handwriting trumps typewriting as a boost for the brain, urging teachers to ensure that penmanship remains a core part of teaching even as tablets and laptops become more commonplace in the classroom.
A study by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Van der Weel, 2024) showed that the skill and concentration needed to form the shapes of letters while writing with a pen or pencil sparks a far greater range and complexity of connections within the brain than simply tapping the correct keys on a keyboard.
The researchers fitted 36 university students with electroencephalogram brain sensors to measure brain activity. The students were asked to write words in cursive using a digital pen on a touchscreen. They were then asked to type the same words with a single finger on a keyboard.
The findings suggest that visual and movement information obtained through precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen contribute extensively to the brain’s connectivity patterns that promote learning.
This also explains why children who have learnt to write and read on a tablet can have difficulty differentiating between letters that are mirror images of each other, such as ‘b’ and ‘d’. They literally haven’t felt with their bodies what it feels like to produce those letters.
The study said: “We urge that children, from an early age, be exposed to handwriting activities in school to establish the neuronal connectivity patterns that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning.”
University students may find it is better to take notes by hand while learning, but may wish to switch to a computer when composing longer pieces of work. There is evidence that students learn more and remember better when taking handwritten lecture notes, while using a computer with a keyboard may be more practical when writing a long text or essay.
Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) also found that students required to use computers to make notes in a lecture were less effective than those using pen and paper. Students who took their notes by hand tended to understand and remember the lecture better than those who had typed. Pupils who make notes by hand find them more memorable than pupils who read notes from a screen.
So what is the conclusion here? The conclusion is that many teachers make good use of computers in their classroom. But schools need to consider the cumulative effect of screen-use if all teachers are teaching through screens and they need to question whether on-screen notes are harder to memorise than hand-written notes. For secondary-age pupils especially, memorisation of what they have been taught is a fundamental part of education.
As far as parents are concerned, schools should make the point that children will be taught how to use computers but the amount of time they are reading screens will be limited.
Smartphones
12-15-year-olds in the UK spend an average of 35 hours a week on their smartphones – the equivalent to a fulltime job. This leaves little time for exercise, hobbies and relationships that enable us to learn the life skills we need as adults.
In 2024 Jonathan Haidt published his influential book The Anxious Generation about the impact of smartphones on the mental health of children and young people. Many head teachers have concluded that smartphones are the source of much unhappy behaviour in schools including bullying, anxiety and inability to concentrate. Children playing with phones at night get less sleep and this, too, impacts their mental health and learning. Pupils would always be better off reading a book than accessing the internet, which is both corrupting and addictive. Many children spend many hours a day on their phones and this is a waste of time – there are better things they could be doing.
Luca Cerniglia et al (2020) proved that the use of digital devices as smartphones and tablets at only 4 years old is related to lower academic achievements at 8 years of age.
Have a look at the research evidence yourself, such as Dr Rebecca Foljambe’s incredible website https://healthprofessionalsforsaferscreens.org/
In 2024 the large Ormiston Academy Trust started to phase out smartphones in school. Parent groups like Smartphone Free Childhood have formed in some schools to work together to refuse their children smartphones. Mobile phones have already been banned from schools in several countries, including France, Australia and China.
Adrian Ward et al (2017) brought college students into a lab and randomly assigned them in three groups: those who left their phone outside the lab, those who kept their phone in a pocket or bag, those who had their phone on the desk next to them. They were then given cognitive tasks to measure memory and intelligence. Those who did best left their phones outside, those who did worst had the phone on the desk, with the rest with pocketed phones in the middle. So even having a smartphone in your pocket reduces your ability to concentrate.
Smartphones lead to bad behaviour – cyberbullying, filming teachers and each other, apps which allow “nudification” where photos of real people are edited by AI to make them appear naked. They are corrupting because of the pornography and the lies pedalled on social media sites. The internet is the habitat of men seeking to groom younger girls.
What can we do about this? Schools need clear rules which are rigorously applied. Many schools have banned smartphones or require pupils to hand them in at the start of each day. Eton issues younger pupils with old-fashioned Nokia’s so they cannot access the internet.
But schools banning smartphones is inadequate if parents allow their children access to these devices outside school. Parents have to be determined, responsible and brave. Organisations like Smartphone-free Childhood encourage parents to form groups which will not buy their children smartphones – see their website. Parents themselves must not use their smartphones at mealtimes and generally stay off their phones when their children are around. Treat smartphones like alcohol and cigarettes – they are similarly addictive and damaging.
How old should a child be before they are allowed a smartphone? 16 is ideal because younger than that, the mental health consequences are too great.
By Professor Barnaby Lenon, Dean of the Faculty of Education at The University of Buckingham
References
Cerniglia, L., Cimino, S, Ammaniti, M., 2020, What are the effects of screen time on emotion regulation and academic achievements? A three-wave longitudinal study on children from 4 to 8 years of age, Journal of Early Childhood Research, Volume 19, Issue 2
Clark, R. and Felton, D., 2014, Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (2nd ed).
Godwin, R. 2025, Generation Specs, The Telegraph Magazine, 22 February 2025
Haidt, J., 2024, The Anxious Generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness, Allen Lane
Mueller, P and Oppenheimer, D (2014) The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand over Laptop Note-taking, Psychological Science, 1-10
Van der Weel, , F and Van der Meer, A., (2024) Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom, Frontiers in Psychology vol 14
Ward, A., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., and Boz, M., 2017, Brain drain: the mere presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2).
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