Elementary school children with personal cell phones score significantly lower on standardized reading comprehension tests than peers without them, according to a July 2026 UCLA study.
Parents often hand over a first smartphone to keep track of kids after school, assuming a silenced device in a backpack is harmless. New research from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) challenges that assumption by showing a sharp divide between momentary distraction and long-term literacy declines. Published July 23, 2026, in the journal Behavioral Sciences, the study finds that while a phone sitting on a desk doesn’t ruin a quick quiz, owning that phone tracks with weaker overall reading skills.
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data show U.S. elementary and secondary reading scores have slid downward since 2012, nearly a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted classrooms. At the same time, smartphone ownership among 8- and 9-year-old third graders more than doubled nationally from 13% in 2015 to 31.5% in 2021, while sixth-grade ownership climbed from 36.5% to 54%. By late 2024, ownership in the UCLA Los Angeles County sample reached 46% for third graders and 70% for sixth graders.
Lead author Distinguished Professor Patricia M. Greenfield noted that “parents concerned about reading skills should avoid giving children their own cell phones during elementary school.” Harvard scholar Martin West, who co-leads the board overseeing NAEP, also pointed to rising youth smartphone and social media habits as a primary suspect behind international achievement drops, writing simply that “the timing fits.”
Inside the UCLA Cell Phone Study and Latest Developments
Researchers tested 106 third- and sixth-graders in Los Angeles County and found that having a phone present during a short test didn’t lower scores.
Led by Greenfield alongside UCLA colleagues Marola Hanna, Rocio Burgos-Calvillo, and Laura Rhinehart, the research team gathered classroom data between July and December 2024. The sample of 106 students, 51 third graders and 55 sixth graders, was 57% female and linguistically diverse, drawing 42% from English-speaking homes, 30% from Arabic-speaking homes, and 28% from Spanish-speaking homes. Every participant completed two seven-minute reading comprehension assessments from the standardized DIBELS 8th edition battery.
Among the 37 students who brought personal phones to school on testing day, researchers ran a repeated-measures experiment. Kids took one reading test with their switched-on phone lying face-up beside them and a second test after a researcher removed the device from view. Surprisingly, students answered 89% of questions correctly with the phone present versus 87% when the phone was taken away; a statistically insignificant difference.
Naturalistic comparisons across 102 respondents also showed no score gap between the 36% of kids who brought a phone to school that day and the 64% who left devices at home. Third graders averaged 79% comprehension accuracy compared to 89% for sixth graders. Because almost no notifications chimed during the brief seven-minute window, immediate distraction remained low, and Greenfield noted that “anxiety over having one’s phone taken away may interfere with reading comprehension as much as distraction by the phone”—a separation-anxiety effect known as nomophobia.
Related: Most People Have Felt a Phone Buzz That Wasn’t There — What Research Says
Reading Scores and Cell Phone Ownership Background
While a phone on the desk didn’t hurt immediate test focus, simply owning a personal cell phone correlated with significantly lower reading comprehension across the entire sample.
That contrast between short-term and long-term outcomes is the study’s biggest revelation. Greenfield’s team concluded that “distraction may be a cumulative or habit-forming effect as much as an immediate one.” Over months and years, having a personal device in a child’s pocket gradually crowds out deep reading time and fragments sustained attention.
Large-scale neuroscience research supports this displacement mechanism. A two-year longitudinal study by Li and colleagues tracking 12,000 children aged 9 to 13 found that heavier texting consistently predicted less time spent reading books, weaker word-reading mechanics, and smaller brain volume in reading-related cortical regions. When kids trade print pages for rapid-fire screen taps, foundational literacy muscles atrophy.
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A Surprising Twist for Bilingual Families
Children from Arabic- and Spanish-speaking homes bucked the negative trend when using their phones for early texting and gaming.
Although phone ownership correlated with lower scores overall, sixth graders from non-English-speaking households who owned phones scored significantly higher in English reading comprehension the earlier they started texting (r=-.576,p=.04). Playing mobile games on a first phone also correlated with a higher percentage of correct reading responses (r=.42,p=.03) and fewer comprehension errors (r=-.53,p=.005) among kids from non-English-speaking homes. Those positive effects vanished completely for children from English-speaking homes (r=.26,p=.32).
Why would texting and gaming help one group while doing nothing for the other? For students acquiring English as an additional language, English-language text messaging and game menus provide informal, high-motivation reading and writing practice outside the classroom. That real-world exposure to host-country print and digital literacy helps offset the broader attention drawbacks of owning a device.
Scientific and Policy Context of School Phone Bans
Lawmakers worldwide have rushed to ban phones in classrooms, but the UCLA findings suggest school bans alone won’t fix elementary reading declines.
UNESCO monitoring shows 114 education systems, 58% of countries globally, and 20 U.S. states, including California and Florida, have enacted school smartphone restrictions. Yet a Pew survey found that while 72% of high school teachers view phone distraction as a major problem, only 6% of elementary teachers say the same. Because bringing a phone to school didn’t lower test-day scores, Greenfield stated that the data “do not provide an academic rationale for banning phones in elementary school,” though bans still nurture face-to-face friendships and social skills.
Should Parents Be Worried About Cell Phones and Reading?
Because the UCLA study is a cross-sectional snapshot of 106 students, it proves correlation rather than definitive cause and effect.
Skeptics might wonder whether struggling readers were simply given phones first, but the researchers noted that over half the sample owned phones, and parents rarely buy smartphones to reward poor grades. Moreover, phone acquisition came before the reading assessments, satisfying a key temporal condition required to establish cause and effect.
Still, small subgroup sizes and unmeasured variables, such as specific game genres or home sleep habits, mean multi-year longitudinal tracking is essential.
The Smart Screen Verdict for Families
Delaying personal smartphone ownership until after sixth grade remains the simplest evidence-based step families can take to protect childhood reading comprehension.
Classroom bans can stop notifications during the school day, but they can’t reclaim the hours of book reading lost to screens at home. Keeping personal devices out of elementary bedrooms and backpacks preserves the quiet, uninterrupted focus required to build lifelong literacy.
How should families and school districts balance the safety and convenience of early cell phone ownership against elementary school children’s long-term literacy development?
