Students will spend 25 years glued to their phones if current screen habits don't change, study shows
The average school, college, or university student spends five and a half hours on their phone per day, which could amount to 25 years of their lives.
And the four per cent who spend nine hours or more on their phone could see themselves wasting 41 years of their lives locked into a screen.
The research, which was conducted by Fluid Focus over the first five months of the year, highlights rates of smartphone usage, the negative impact it has on learning and attention span, and student's desire to reduce it.
Their figures are based on a waking day of 16 hours and 72 years of smartphone use from the age of 11 to 83.
To get their figures, they tracked the screen times of 1,346 middle school/junior high pupils, 198 university students, and 1,296 people at further education colleges.
App genres which dominated the screens were social media, messaging, and streaming.
Screen time averages increased with age - from five hours and 12 minutes for middle school/junior high students to six hours and 12 minutes for university students.
For many students, their phone was the first thing they check when they wake up and the last thing they look at before bed.
Worryingly, 68 per cent of students believe their academic performance is impacted by their phone use.
Despite this self-awareness, around 40 per cent admitted to constantly checking their phone while studying.
Checking your phone seems like a harmless habit, but another study found it can take 20 minutes to regain focus afterwards.
Dr Paul Redmond, who studies generational change, called the findings 'quite stark'.
He was director of student experience and enhancement at Liverpool University in England, one of 18 institutions involved in the research.
He said: 'I think what's powerful is how students feel that it's damaging their academic performance. That awareness that "I could do so much better if I manage this".'
Nearly half of students (47 per cent) said their sleep is disturbed because of late-night phone usage, a figure that rose to 66 per cent for those at university.
Dr Redmond said it was helpful to talk with young people about strategies to manage screen time.
He explained how one new technique they tried out was to put elastic bands around their phones so when they took them out to go on them 'they were made to stop and think about why'.
Lisa Humphries is associate principal at Chichester College Group in England, where some of the 11,000 students across its seven constituent colleges participated.
She said: 'By the time we see them in college, they've had five, six, seven years of living inside their phone. The levels of social anxiety are crippling in the young people we're seeing, and it comes from that whole thing.
'Everyone's living in their bedroom on their phone, and they're not outside, and they're not socializing, communicating. They're not developing those skills to build relationships.'
The report's authors urge schools, colleges, and universities to make digital well-being part of their curriculum and strategic plans.
They even encouraged them to reward students who display healthy digital behaviors.
Another suggestion was to cut university lectures from 60 or 90 minutes to blocks of 30 minutes in order to cater to the new generations short attention spans.
They added the single biggest change a student can make is leaving their phone outside the bedroom up to 45 minutes before they want to go to sleep.
The authors also called for ministers to treat technology overuse as a public health problem and want their to be a public health campaign targeted at Gen Z.
Glenn Stephenson, co-founder of Fluid Focus, said: 'This research is a mirror. It forces us, as a society, to confront an uncomfortable truth: we unknowingly handed powerful, addictive technologies to children during their most formative years - without fully understanding the risks in doing so.
'However, what was great to see, and what should give us all hope, is that students aren't oblivious to the impact - far from it. They're aware, reflective, and increasingly motivated to change.
'Many are already trying. They just need to be met with the right education, the right tools and the belief that change is possible.'
Another study found three quarters of Gen Zs admitted struggling to maintain concentration while interacting with someone and 39 per cent feel a strong urge to look at their device.
Social events (28 per cent), speaking with friends (18 per cent) and parents (17 per cent) are some of the scenarios where the younger generation stop paying attention. And 28 per cent said they are even switching off at work, affecting their productivity.
The study of 2,000 18 to 28-year-olds found that Gen Z will reach for their phone after just two minutes and 15 seconds of talking to someone.
The biggest temptations when chatting face-to-face with someone include checking messages (48 per cent), scrolling social media (44 per cent) and even opening YouTube (18 per cent).
Calls (32 per cent), text messages (23 per cent), and social media mentions (14 per cent) are deemed hardest to ignore.
The research, commissioned by AXA UK as part of the annual Mind Health Report, found 63 per cent admit they struggle with real-life interaction - and 77 per cent use their phone as a form of escape.
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