Distracted Children? Nighttime Smartphone Use, Children’s Attentional Problems, and School Performance Over Time

Abstract

During early adolescence children are increasingly using their smartphones not only throughout the day, but also before or even during the nighttime. Prior research has revealed that children’s school performance might suffer because of late-night smartphone use. To gain a further understanding of the consequences of nighttime smartphone use on school performance, this study set out to examine whether children’s nighttime smartphone use is associated with children’s attentional problems over time and with their achieved and subjective school performance. We tested these associations using a two-wave panel study among children aged 10–14 years and one of their parents (parent-child pairs, NTime2 = 384). The findings revealed that children’s nighttime smartphone use was positively related to parent-reported perceptions of children’s attentional problems over time which were negatively related to both subjective and achieved school performance. We discuss the implications of these results for the regulation of children’s smartphone use at night.