Making children's mobile phones useful for learning

I’ll never forget it. I was dropping my 6th grader son off for his first overnight school trip and the teacher was explaining how the kids would be expected to walk from the hotel to the mall across the parking lot to get meals, on their own or with friends. “But what if the kids get lost or something happens?” I asked, to which the teacher responded, “Well, they can just call us on their cell.” When I said our son didn’t have a cell phone, the teacher seemed genuinely perplexed: “Really? Well, I guess he can walk with one of the other kids who does - all of them do.” My reservations about kids’ cell phone use remained, but you bet we went out the next weekend and got my son his first one. But, should we have been so worried about the negative effects of cell phones on youth? Are there possible benefits?

Breitwieser and colleagues (2023) did indeed find one way that mobile phones and apps can benefit students: by helping them distribute their learning. They found (via a pre-registered study with open materials - hooray!) that a mobile app designed to help students develop a study plan (i.e., implementation intentions) and then prompt them to follow it led to more frequent and distributed studying. Effects on learning were a bit muddled due to a wonky outcome measure, but I found the app promising, overall. It’s well-designed, based in the theory, and focused on a tangible outcome: more frequent and distributed learning. Maybe, as with most technologies, it’s not so much whether a child uses it but rather how they use it.