Overview
- A joint Buenos Aires City and ITBA study using phone monitoring found secondary students average about 6 hours and 10 minutes of daily phone use and that roughly 40% show at least one socioemotional risk signal such as depression, anxiety or daytime sleepiness.
- Mexico’s education secretary reported that 81% of teachers consulted support formal guidelines for safe, pedagogical device use in schools, and the Arquidiócesis de México urged regulation while warning that bans alone will not solve the problem.
- Local actions are multiplying: Buenos Aires expanded a 'Compromiso Familiar' campaign with more than 107,000 family agreements, Baja California is designing school rules to limit in‑class phone use, and New York City announced grade‑based screen limits and bans on generative‑AI chatbots for K–8.
- Researchers stressed the findings are correlational, not proof of causation, and said patterns of problematic use — difficulty disconnecting, dependency or multitasking — show stronger links to poor well‑being than raw hours of screen time.
- The policy shift shifts responsibility from families alone to a mix of school rules, parental agreements and platform design changes, raising the prospect of further regulation, legal pressure on tech companies and more school‑based digital education.