Dive Brief:
- Just over three-quarters of high school students report misusing technology during school hours — including about 1 in 5 students who use artificial intelligence without teacher permission, according to survey results released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute this fall.
- Students using AI are doing so to "bypass" learning and "cheat," according to the report, with 48% saying they use the tech to solve math problems, 36% to summarize books or avoid reading them, 29% to write first drafts of essays or reports, and 26% to help during quizzes or tests.
- Some 62% of surveyed students said they spent more than half of in-class time on school-issued devices — which would amount to 900 minutes a week, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
The findings from Fordham come as the nation's largest school districts this fall announced restrictions around AI use.
In September, Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's largest school district, announced it would restrict access to AI platforms for all students during the 2026-27 school year. The restrictions will be in place as the district reviews instructional use and safeguards for the technology, according to the district's announcement.
New York City Public Schools also announced in September it would pause AI use for elementary and middle school students.
“Though we might quibble about the details, we at Fordham agree with the impulse,” wrote Brian Fitzpatrick, national research manager at Fordham and the report’s author.
"Taken together, our results suggest that American high school students are caught up in — and often contribute to — a disturbing and interconnected set of problems: rampant distraction, widespread AI misuse, heavy dependence on screens, and grading practices that make it easier to earn high marks without mastering the material," said Fitzpatrick in the analysis.
The report was based on a nationally representative survey of over 2,000 current students and recent graduates, fielded between February and March 2026.
It found that over 50% of students use technology during the school day for social media, and just under that percentage use it to message friends. A third of students said they used it for both recreational games and YouTube viewing unrelated to assignments.
"A key reason that illicit tech use is so pervasive is that school-issued devices provide direct access to the platforms driving it," the report said. For example, two-thirds of respondents said YouTube is accessible on school-issued devices.
The report also found students were least likely to use social media when phones were fully banned, such as keeping them in a locked pouch or at the central office. Students were more likely to use social media if they were allowed access to their phones in hallways and at lunch time or if their phones were only restricted during class times.
That finding echoes another report published by the Brookings Institution in September, which found that cellphone ban enforcement tends to wane over the course of the school year as teacher enforcement wanes overtime. Bell-to-bell bans, the report found, may be more effective and durable overtime.
However, some have pushed back against all-day cellphone bans due to safety concerns for students, who cite school shootings and other emergencies as reasons to keep phones closer.
The Fordham report suggests schools should:
- Reduce students' time spent on devices.
- Place greater emphasis on supervised, in-class, paper-and-pencil and oral exams.
- Enforce stricter consequences for late work and rethink exam retakes.
- Ensure there are firewalls on school-issued devices and put guardrails in place to prevent off-task technology use.
- Embrace stricter bans on cellphones and other personal devices.
