Children, Cell Phones, and Reading Comprehension

Background: In the last several years, reading scores have significantly declined among American students. Are cell phones to blame? There is a dearth of evidence at the elementary school level. Objectives: Our most basic question was whether acquisition of a phone would be negatively related to reading comprehension performance for third- and sixth-grade children. More specifically, would notifications or the mere presence of a phone reduce the concentration required for optimal reading comprehension performance? Method: Our sample of 106 children included 55 children in an older 6th- grade group and 51 children in a younger 3rd-grade group. The sample was linguistically diverse: English was the home language for 42%, Arabic for 30%, and Spanish for 28%. The experimental procedure used a repeated-measures design: Participants who brought phones to school the day of the study took a grade-appropriate reading comprehension test with their phone next to them, a different one without their phone nearby or in sight. Participants who did not have a phone with them took the same two tests. All participants filled out a short survey about phone ownership and use, plus a few demographic questions. Results and Conclusions: Whether or not children had their phone in sight next to them did not make a difference for their reading comprehension. Nor did reading comprehension differ for students with or without phones at school the day of the study. This absence of short-term effects contrasted with the presence of long-term relationships: Possessing a personal cell phone was significantly associated with lower reading scores across the whole sample. However, for participants from non-English-speaking homes who had their own phones, reading comprehension was significantly better the earlier a child began texting and had access to games on their phone. For children from English-speaking homes who had their own phones, neither early mobile game access nor earlier initiation of texting was associated with better reading comprehension.