As Barrington families weigh how and when phones belong in backpacks and bedrooms, new research is sharpening the conversation. A study published in JAMA reports that preteens who used increasing amounts of social media scored lower on reading and memory tests in early adolescence than peers who used little or none — a pattern researchers and outside experts say could matter for classrooms and homework routines here.

What the study found

The analysis, led by pediatrician Jason Nagata of the University of California, San Francisco, drew on the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, one of the largest ongoing projects following thousands of children as they grow. The team examined data on more than 6,000 participants who were 9 to 10 years old at the start, surveying social media use annually and administering learning and memory tests every other year.

Researchers grouped kids by how their social media use changed as they aged:

  • About 58% used little or no social media over the next few years.
  • Roughly 37% started with low use but reached about one hour per day by age 13.
  • The remaining 6% spent three or more hours daily by age 13.

On cognitive assessments — including an oral reading recognition test for reading and vocabulary and a picture vocabulary task matching images to spoken words — score differences emerged. Children who reached about an hour a day by 13 scored roughly 1–2 points lower on reading and memory tasks than non-users. High users, at three or more hours a day, scored 4–5 points lower on average.

“What was notable actually to me and perhaps surprising was that even the low [increasing] social media users, so those who had about one hour a day by age 13, did perform on average 1 to 2 points lower on the reading and memory tasks compared to the non-social media users,” Nagata said. “So those who had the highest social media use have lower scores, but even the low users had smaller differences in their cognitive scores.”

Psychologist Sheri Madigan of the University of Calgary, who wrote an accompanying editorial, called it a dose–response pattern. “That really speaks to the dosage effect of these [apps],” she said. “It’s problematic at really high uses, but it’s also problematic at even in small doses.”

Why educators are watching

“This is a really exciting study,” said psychologist Mitch Prinstein at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the research. “It confirms a lot of what we have been hearing about from schools all across the country, which is that kids are just having a really hard time focusing on being able to learn as well as they used to, because of the ways in which social media has changed their ability to process information, perhaps.”

Nagata said it is “critical to understand how social media use during school hours specifically affects learning, especially as so many schools are considering phone bans right now.” While the study did not test specific school policies, the results may prompt Barrington teachers and administrators to revisit how phones and apps intersect with instructional time and homework.

Prinstein emphasized that adolescence is a sensitive period for brain development. “After the first year of life, the adolescent period is the time where we see the most growth and the biggest reorganization of the brain in our lifetimes,” he said. His recent work suggests heavy social media engagement can tune the brain to “rapid, constant feedback.” “What we’re finding is that kids become hypersensitive to the kinds of likes, comments, feedback and rewards they might get from peers,” he said. “It makes perfect sense that if their brain is growing to be optimized for social media activities, it might not be optimized for other things they need to do, like we saw in the [new] study.”

How it might be affecting reading and memory

The study cannot prove why the associations exist, but the materials outline several plausible pathways that matter for families and schools:

  • Time displacement, where minutes on apps crowd out reading or homework.
  • Attention fragmentation from rapid, bite-sized content, making deep reading harder.
  • Sleep disruption, especially with evening or overnight use, which can impair memory.

Those mechanisms are hypotheses, not conclusions, but they align with the observed dose–response pattern and with concerns educators raise about focus in class.

A widening gap — and rising use

Prinstein cautioned that small early differences can compound. Kids are “a moving target,” he said. “Even a slight change in what they look like after a short period of time means that they’re kind of now pointed on a trajectory that is different from others. That means that two, three, five years from now, we might be talking about some very significant gaps between kids who might have been heavy users or not as heavy users.”

Nagata noted that social media time tends to climb later in adolescence. “We would expect that when they hit age 15, 16, 17, their use will be much higher,” he said, which “might lead to even larger gaps in cognition and learning in later years.”

Earlier analyses from Nagata’s team using the same ABCD dataset found many children start young and show what the researchers described as addiction-like symptoms with smartphones. “Half the kids who had smartphones said that they lose track of how much time they’re using their phone,” Nagata said. “A quarter who are using social media say they use social media to forget about their problems. And 11% say that social media use has negatively affected their schoolwork.”

Policy ideas are in play

Madigan said the study “gives us good-enough evidence that we really need to create some policies that are really specific around creating age limits, for example, on social media apps.” She pointed to international moves: Denmark announced it plans to enforce a social media ban for users under age 15. Australia is requiring social media companies to “take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account” starting December 2025. Those developments won’t dictate Barrington policy, but they show how quickly the debate is shifting.

At the school level, experts say local leaders may consider practical steps that reduce distraction during learning and promote healthy habits — for example, firm device-free windows during class, clearer norms around phone storage, and digital literacy lessons that help students manage their time online. Families may find it useful to set device-free periods around homework and the hour before bedtime, and to keep a closer eye on how social media spills into sleep and study time.

Important caveats for parents and schools

The JAMA paper reports an association, not causation. The summary does not include full methodological details such as the scoring scales for the tests, the exact statistical adjustments, or whether social media time was measured by self-report or devices. Those gaps matter when interpreting how big a one- or five-point difference is in the real world, and whether other factors — like prior reading ability, sleep, or family circumstances — explain part of the pattern.

That uncertainty argues for proportionate responses in Barrington: low-cost, low-risk measures that support attention and sleep, paired with careful evaluation of any new school rules. As more evidence accumulates, policies can be refined.

What this means for Barrington households

For parents and caregivers, the takeaway is not panic but attention. The dose–response pattern suggests that even modest use by age 13 was linked with lower scores, and heavier use with larger gaps. Setting predictable, age-appropriate limits and carving out device-free routines during homework and before bed could help protect reading and memory — the very skills students rely on in local classrooms.

For educators, the study adds weight to conversations already happening about phones in school and the role of social media in the school day. It also invites pilots and partnerships with families to test what improves focus and learning without unintended consequences.

As Barrington’s children move through the grades, the question is not just how much time they spend online, but when and where — and how that time competes with sleep, reading and the quiet concentration that learning demands. The new findings don’t settle the debate, but they give the community a clearer map of the trade-offs to consider now, before small differences become larger divides.