Over the past year, U.S. kids spent noticeably less time on their phones at school. On an average school day in September 2026, a child used their phone for 34.7 minutes in the school zone, down from 40.7 minutes a year earlier. Their total time on the phone stayed almost where it was: about six hours a day.
The figures come from anonymized data from Findmykids, a family app that parents use to see where their child is and how their phone gets used. The data covers children in the United States in the same September week in 2025 and 2026. As school phone bans and restrictions spread across most of the country, it shows what happened to kids' phone use both inside and outside the school zone. The school day got quieter, while total screen time stayed the same. What changed was where that time went and which apps took it.
How the Study Worked
Findmykids compared phone use among U.S. children who are currently 9 to 18 years old. A child was included if a parent had saved their school as a place in the app before the observed week and the child's phone logged some app use that week. The comparison covers Tuesday through Friday of the second week of September: 15,152 children in 2025 and 11,112 in 2026. Their app time was converted into average minutes per child per day.
"In the school zone" means the phone was in use at that saved school location. "Outside the school zone" covers everything else, not only the hours after school. The study is observational, so it shows what changed rather than what caused it. The 2026 group is about a quarter smaller, and all the children come from families who use Findmykids, so the numbers describe this group, not every U.S. student.
Key Takeaways
Phone use at school fell by about 15%. The average dropped from 40.7 to 34.7 minutes per child per day. The difference was statistically significant, meaning it is unlikely to be random chance.
Total daily phone use barely moved. It was 366.9 minutes in 2025 and 364.6 in 2026. Use outside the school zone rose by 3.8 minutes, and neither difference was statistically significant, so there is no clear sign that kids made up the lost time elsewhere.
The mix of apps shifted. Across the day, social media gained 20.6 minutes, while games lost 17.5 minutes.
The decline wasn't unique to September. School-zone use was also lower in May 2026 than in May 2025, which makes it hard to credit the September drop to new rules alone.
Phone Use at School Fell by About 15%
For most kids, the phone was a small part of the school day even before this year. The median child used it for 9.6 minutes a day in the school zone in 2025 and for 3.5 minutes in 2026. The share of children with any recorded phone use at school fell from 62.9% to 56%, so in September 2026 more than four in 10 logged none at all. The average of 34.7 minutes is pulled up by a smaller group of kids who use their phones a lot during the school day.
What States Have Banned Cell Phones in Schools?
Florida adopted the first U.S. school cellphone ban in May 2023. By late July 2026, at least 39 states and the District of Columbia required school districts to ban or restrict students' cellphone use, according to an Education Week tally. Some other states encourage or recommend that local districts set their own rules. Most states require a bell-to-bell restriction covering the entire school day, from the first bell to the dismissal bell. Others restrict phones only during class time or don't specify when use should be limited.
That is why trackers give different totals: "ban" covers several kinds of rules. Rules limited to instructional time usually leave passing periods and lunch breaks up to local schools, and details such as where phones are stored often depend on the district
Are the laws behind the drop in the Findmykids data? The data can't say for sure. School-zone use also fell between May 2025 and May 2026, by about 4.6 minutes a day. The September drop of 6.0 minutes is only about 1.4 minutes larger than that, and the difference hasn't been tested. The May decline may itself reflect rules already in force during the 2025–26 school year, or wider changes in apps and habits. What both comparisons agree on is the direction: less phone use at school.
Kids' Total Screen Time Barely Changed
Across the whole day, the average child used their phone for 366.9 minutes in September 2025 and 364.6 minutes a year later.
Part of the explanation is scale. The school zone accounted for only about a tenth of phone time: 40.7 of roughly 367 minutes in 2025, and 34.7 of roughly 365 minutes in 2026. A six-minute cut in that tenth was never going to move the total much. Outside the school zone, use rose by 3.8 minutes, to 330 minutes a day. That rise is small and not statistically significant, so the data shows no clear rebound, though it can't rule one out
Research from England found the same gap. Vicky Goodyear, a professor at the University of Birmingham, led the SMART Schools study, which compared 1,227 students aged 12 to 15 at 30 schools. Students at schools with restrictive policies spent about 40 minutes less on their phones during school and about 32 minutes less on social media. Over a full weekday or weekend day, though, there was no evidence of a difference. The team also found no differences in mental health, academic performance, or well-being. In a Harvard EdCast interview, Goodyear said school phone policies "alone are not enough."
What Changed Was the Mix of Apps
The total stayed flat, but what filled it did not. Across the day, social media grew by 20.6 minutes, games fell by 17.5 minutes (about a third), and video fell by 6.1 minutes. Most of this happened outside the school zone, where social media went from 88.2 to 108.0 minutes a day. At school, games and video both fell while social media inched up and remains the largest single category there. These category figures weren't tested statistically, so they show a direction rather than a proven effect. Even so, they point the same way as the totals: kids' phone time is being spent differently, not getting shorter.
What This Means for Parents
Taken together, the Findmykids data suggests that cutting phone use at school and cutting a child's total screen time are two separate tasks. School rules target the first, and phone use at school has been falling as those rules spread. On their own, school restrictions do not appear to substantially reduce total daily phone use: the classroom is only about a tenth of the phone day, and the other 330 or so minutes happen somewhere else. There is also no clear sign that kids simply make up the lost minutes outside the school zone. What changes is how the day's phone time is spent.
So for a parent, "how many hours" is only part of the answer. The more useful question is when the phone gets used and what it's used for. An hour of messaging a friend after practice and an hour of scrolling at midnight look the same in a daily total, but they aren't the same problem.
This study was built from exactly that kind of picture, and in Findmykids a parent can see it for their own child. The app shows how much time the phone was used on a given day and which apps were in use, next to where the child was, including when they arrived at school. With that in front of them, a family can decide where a phone-free stretch would actually help, such as homework time or the hour before bed. If they settle on one, the app can keep it on a schedule, so the rule doesn't depend on anyone remembering it.
Sources & References
The Findmykids Research Team
- Smartphones at School: What Changed Between 2025 and 2026, Findmykids (anonymized app data, U.S.), 2026
- Which States Ban or Restrict Cellphones in Schools?, Education Week, 2024 (updated July 2026)
- A Federal School Cellphone Policy? Big Barriers Stand in the Way, Education Week, 2026
- Many States Are Banning Cellphones in Schools. Is It Working?, Harvard Kennedy School, 2026
- 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, 2025
- Banning Cellphones: Quick Fix or False Hope, Harvard Graduate School of Education (Harvard EdCast), 2025
