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You’re probably reading this on your smartphone. We cannot live without them; nor can our students.

But what part do they play in the learning environment? My attention was caught by a raft of news stories in 2023 and 2024 concerning the use of phones in classrooms at schools. In July 2023, for example, the , a move supported by findings from the United Nations’ education, science and culture agency, Unesco. In July 2024 the by teachers about students’ education being distracted by social media via their smartphones.

I reflected on my own experiences, in seminars and lectures. I feel the need to display notices in slides, and verbally, requesting students not to be distracted by social media (TikTok, YouTube, and so on), and to stop playing video games during classes. As a result, students appear to be less distracted in the smaller seminars and lectures with engagement with the learning material and interaction improving.

It was in the first semester (October 2024), a student kept checking their phone on several occasions, over a few seminars. In a jovial manner I mentioned that they may have a problem – ‘are you addicted to your phone?’. Their reply was interesting: ‘I think I am, I can’t help it.’ I paused in concern. From a pedagogical perspective such sentiments alarmed me, and can manifest in the following ways:

• Stress: they attend all the classes, but do not remember much, as they have not engaged or interacted effectively. They have not been fully ‘present’ and have low-level productivity.
• Tension: from stress, anxiety builds up and consequent feelings of restlessness, and that can result in a lack of sleep.

From one or both of these emotional responses, one is likely to feel restless, irritable, discontented, and so on. And students can then be overwhelmed by feelings of being powerless, as they become obsessed with the messages and smartphone content they could be missing out on – a condition called ‘nomophobia’. As a result, social skills, meeting friends and family, as well as mental health and wellbeing suffer, and students can face a sense of loneliness and isolation (Ren et al., 2025, pp. 214–15), including in their degree course.

‘The purpose of this blog post is to begin work on a collaborative study and provide a springboard for reflection and discussion between colleagues about what I regard as the elephant in the room in higher education.’

The purpose of this blog post is to begin work on a collaborative study and provide a springboard for reflection and discussion between colleagues about what I regard as the elephant in the room in higher education: We know that having phones in the classroom is a cause for concern; but this is not merely at pre-degree level. So what can we do about it?

Ultimately, I aim to conduct two surveys to gauge the perceptions from our undergraduate Business School students and academics of their experiences of phones in the learning environment. A study by Baker et al. (2012) of US Business School educators and students concluded that respondents had concerns about mobile phones causing a distraction to learning; albeit some believe that devices themselves can benefit learning. They found that male students were more accepting of mobile phones in the classroom. However, since 2012, accessibility to phones has increased and we have seen apps such as TikTok and Snapchat boom in popularity. So a fresh study is required, and my aim is to focus on UK Business Schools’ academics and students, as recommended by Henderson and Chapman (2012). Ren et al.’s (2025) study unveils a plethora of studies that exist from a psychological lens (Luqman et al., 2021) and is acknowledged here. However, a study – be it a survey or interviews comparing Business School students’ perceptions and experiences to those of academics in the UK – is missing. This could be remedied by a deep dive into the diverse, multinational cohort of students and academics in the UK’s higher education environment.

In September 2025, Sky News reported on a campaign to . The Esther Ghey Phone Free Education highlights disturbing issues concerning phones in schools. Yet little is known about the part phones play in the university environment in the UK. So, I call upon my colleagues to help me gather data.

References

Baker, W., Lusk, E. & Neuhauser, K. (2012). On the use of cell phones and other electronic devices in the classroom: Evidence from a survey of faculty and students. Journal of Education for Business, 87(5), 275–289.

Henderson, R. G., & Chapman, B. F. (2012). Business educators’ perceptions concerning mobile learning (M-Learning). Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, 54(1), 16–26.

Luqman, A., Masood, A., Shahzad, F., Shahbaz, M., & Feng, Y. (2021). Untangling the adverse effects of late-night usage of smartphone-based SNS among university students. Behaviour & Information Technology, 40(15), 1671–1687.

Ren, S., He, J., Liu, T., & Zhang, D. (2025). Exploring the relationship between college students’ adaptability and nomophobia. Behaviour & Information Technology, 44(2), 214–230.