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7th February 2025
10:27am GMT
That's according to the authors of a study on school phone bans, who say they are "surprised" to see that it has had very little impact on school children.
Education Minister, Norma Foley, confirmed the €9 million spend on phone pouches for school would be going ahead.
There was major backlash over the hefty cost of these phone pouches when they were first announced and these latest finding are fuelling even more backlash.
According to the lead author of the study, Dr. Victoria Goodyear, metal well-being, physical activity levels, sleep and classroom behaviour were all unaffected by school phone bans.
“What we found was that school phone bans did now lower the overall time adolescents spent on their phones,” she told Newstalk.
“They lowered it by a small amount of time, but this was not enough to change their overall levels of use.”
Despite the fact that these phone bans reduced the time students were spending on their devices by around 40 minutes, this has made little difference as most still spend up to six hours on their phones a day.
The study also found that the more time spent on devices, the more negative the impacts are on young people's mental well-being, physical activity, sleep, school performance and behaviour.
Dr. Goodyear said: “I think what we’re suggesting is not that necessarily we’re against phone bans or that phone bans don’t work.
“What this is suggesting is the phone bans alone are not enough to tackle the negative impacts.
“We can’t put all the responsibility onto schools and think that the issue with phones is going to be resolved by just blocking them in schools.”
She went on to say: “If it’s delaying sleep or it’s reducing physical activity as well then that’s a bigger concern.
“The more active you are, generally the more happy we are, the better sleep you get, the happier you are.
“I think they all play into how we might address these negative impacts of phones and social media.”
