There has been a lot of concern about student mental health lately, particularly as it is related to cell phone use. The majority of information about this topic, however, is correlational or based on small samples of students in specific settings.
Here at OEP, we are always interested in what actual DATA say sand are pleased to have partnered with Governor Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Education to conduct the evaluation of phone-free learning environments in Arkansas. We recently released findings from our phone-free focus groups, and today released the results of the initial survey of student mental health. Overall, it seems like kids in Arkansas are doing alright!
In fall 2024, 44 Arkansas public school districts and public charter systems administered the short survey. Districts were not required to administer the survey, and chose which school(s) would administer. Students were not required to complete the survey but were required to have parental consent to participate in the survey. Nearly 12,000 Arkansas students completed the survey. The majority of the districts that administered the survey were participating in a phone-free learning environment pilot, but a small number were not participating and were included as a control.
The survey, conducted by the Office for Education Policy in partnership with Governor Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Education, included screeners for self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and social media use disorder. You can see the questions and the scoring requirements from each screener in the links above, and our target population was students in middle-school or above. These instruments are widely used but are not intended to be used as a clinical diagnosis tool. The survey is part of an ongoing evaluation of phone-free learning environments in Arkansas and will be administered to students again in May.
To aid in the interpretation of the results, we have color-coded them so that green reflects students answering the screener in a way that reflects positive mental health, while red indicates students answering the screener in a way that indicates areas of concern.
- Self-esteem levels: High, Normal, Low
- Depression levels: Minimal, Mild, Moderate, Moderately Severe, Severe
- Anxiety levels: Minimal, Mild, Moderate, Severe
- Social Media Use Disorder levels: Low, Risky, Problematic
Among statewide responses to the survey (N= 11,697), most students reported high (15%) or normal (59%) levels of self-esteem, while 22% of students reported low self-esteem. The remaining 4% of students did not complete all questions in the screener and are therefor represented by the missing percentage. Minimal or mild levels of depression were reported by 55% of students, with 22% indicating moderate levels of depression, 11% reporting that their level of depression was moderately severe, and 6% reporting severe levels of depression. Reported anxiety levels were minimal for 48% of respondents, and mild for 24%. Moderate anxiety levels were reported by 10% of students, and severe anxiety was reported by 10% of survey completers. Over half of students reported low levels of Social Media Disorder (60%), while 30% were in the risky category, and 4% of student scores indicated problematic levels of Social Media Disorder. Fewer than 0.5% of statewide respondents were in the “Red” on all screeners.
We did a little more digging to see if any of the outcomes from the survey were related to district enrollment or the percentage of students in the district that are eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch (FRL, often used as a proxy for students facing economic disadvantages outside of school). As you can see in the table below, there were no strong correlations between these district characteristics and their students’ metal health reports.
| Correlations | District Enrollment | District % FRL |
| Low Self Esteem | -0.49 | 0.30 |
| Severe Depression | -0.35 | 0.23 |
| Severe Anxiety | -0.07 | 0.09 |
| Problematic Social Media Disorder | 0.24 | 0.41 |
One of the big issues that we face with this study is that there was no random assignment of districts or students to the phone-free pilot. The sample is one of the willing, and there might be difference between those who volunteered for the pilot program and those who did not. We compared the survey results between the districts participating in the phone-free learning environment pilot to those that were not participating and act as a control. As you can see in the figure below, the students’ responses from participating districts (T) were very similar to those of students in districts that were not participating in the phone-free learning pilot (C).
This is great news for us as researchers, because it appears there are not systematic differences between the fall (baseline) mental health of students in the two groups of schools. When we re-administer the survey in the spring, we will analyze the results to see if there were greater improvements or declines in student mental health over the year that could be associated with a phone-free learning environment.
All the districts that administered the survey in the fall received a customized report about how their students’ mental health compared with that of other students around the state.
The survey will be re-administered during the month of May, and we would love to have your district participate and get a baseline for your school prior to the statewide implementation of “Bell to Bell. No cell” next year.
Just send us an email at oep@uark.edu indicating you would like to participate in this important step of data collection, and we will reach out with more information!