“As Long as You Have Your Smartphone,You’re Connected with Friends”: Lower Secondary Students’ Perceptions of Smartphones’ Role in Social Relationships at School

Introduction

Today’s adolescents are the first generation to grow up with smartphones shaping their media ecology from an early age (e.g., Navarro & Tudge, 2022). Smartphone use has become central to practices of communication, social coordination, and self-expression, and it is habitual, and often constant among teenagers (Anderson et al., 2024; Smahel et al., 2020; Valkenburg & Peter, 2011). Smartphones are deeply embedded in adolescents’ peer relationships and everyday social interaction, including within school settings, where schools play a central role in supporting social development and participation in peer groups (Wentzel, 2017). At the same time, smartphone use in schools has become increasingly contested, with approximately 40% of countries recently implementing restrictions or bans on smartphone use in educational settings (UNESCO, 2023). While such policies are often justified by concerns about distraction, learning, and wellbeing (Böttger & Zierer, 2024; UNESCO, 2023), students themselves have emphasized the importance of smartphones for peer connection, support, and everyday safety (Gath et al., 2024; Rose et al., 2022).

Existing research suggests that smartphone use in classrooms can contribute to distraction and reduced learning, while evidence regarding restrictions and bans shows mixed effects on academic, social, and wellbeing outcomes (Campbell et al., 2024). Some studies have reported improvements in social wellbeing following bans, including increased collaboration and reduced bullying (Böttger & Zierer, 2024). However, findings also suggest that stricter restrictions do not necessarily produce more positive outcomes, as they may reduce students’ sense of school belonging and social connectedness with teachers (Vanluydt et al., 2026). Overall, current evidence highlights the complex role of smartphones in adolescents’ social experiences at school rather than indicating uniformly positive or negative effects.

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by heightened sensitivity to peer relationships, social status, and identity construction through interaction with others (Ragelienė, 2016). Understanding how students themselves perceive smartphones’ role in peer relationships and social interaction is therefore particularly important. However, students’ perspectives remain underrepresented in both research and educational decision-making. Against this background, we investigate Finnish students’ perspectives on smartphones’ role in peer relationships and social interactions at school.

Transforming Media Ecologies of Youth Sociality

We draw on a theoretical framing that treats mobile media as part of a transforming ecology rather than as a single device with uniform “effects.” Media ecology scholarship emphasizes that dominant communication technologies function as environments that reorganize attention, interaction, institutional routines, and cultural values. In the classic tradition (e.g., McLuhan, 1964; Postman, 1985), the crucial point is not merely what media communicate but how they reshape everyday conduct and the norms that guide it. This lens is useful for studying phones in school because it focuses on how communication environments reorganize participation and social order.

However, contemporary youth media environments differ substantially from the broadcast and print ecologies that shaped early media ecology arguments (Logan, 2010). Today’s mobile media are interactive, networked, and continuously accessible (Boyd, 2014; Navarro & Tudge, 2022). Social interaction is increasingly mediated by platform infrastructures (Nieborg & Poell, 2018; Van Dijk et al., 2018), with a specific interface logic, including messaging systems, visibility metrics, and algorithmic curation. The relevant “environment” is therefore not simply the smartphone as a medium, but a shifting configuration of devices, platforms, data practices, and social norms—an ecology that changes rapidly and is co-shaped by students’ practices and school-level governance. These developments have reshaped the ways in which young people interact and maintain social ties. By reducing the significance of physical distance, mobile devices enable students to extend networks beyond schools and neighborhoods, sustain constant contact, and be present in multiple spaces simultaneously (Boyd, 2014; Navarro & Tudge, 2022). Furthermore, online spaces afford greater control over self-presentation, which allows individuals to shape how they express themselves, negotiate peer belonging, and manage social comparisons (Navarro & Tudge, 2022; Valkenburg & Peter, 2011).

Building on these changes in social interaction, recent scholarship on youth and digital media extends the media ecology by emphasizing practice, participation, and learning across different contexts (Barron, 2006; Ito et al., 2010; Jenkins et al., 2009). Work on learning ecologies and connected learning conceptualizes young people’s engagement as pathways linking personal interests, peer culture, and institutional settings. This perspective highlights how participation becomes educationally meaningful when it is supported by relationships, opportunities to create and share, and recognition across various contexts. Participatory culture perspectives foreground young people’s roles as contributors and coordinators in networked publics (Boyd, 2014; Jenkins et al., 2009), while also drawing attention to tensions between youth participation and institutional control. Taken together, these perspectives shift the focus from general claims about media effects to lived participation in socio-technical environments.

To integrate these perspectives into a coherent framework for school-based phone use, Bronfenbrenner’s (1976, 1994) ecological systems theory, which has been extended to incorporate the digital world by Navarro and Tudge (2022), provides a useful organizing structure. Students’ mobile practices unfold within the microsystem of classroom interaction and peer relations: how students coordinate their presence, respond to one another, manage inclusion and exclusion, and signal their availability. Yet these practices are shaped by mesosystem connections among school, home, and peer networks that span online and offline settings—for example, how expectations by parents and peer groups intersect with school norms, or how group chat dynamics spill over into face-to-face interactions during breaks and lessons. Exosystem forces include platform governance, content moderation, school-level policies, and municipal or national regulations that shape what is possible and what is sanctioned. Finally, the macrosystem includes broader cultural narratives about childhood, risk, learning, rights, and responsibility that influence whether phone use is interpreted as harmful, empowering, or morally suspect. The chronosystem is particularly salient in mobile media research: rapid transformations in platform ecologies and adolescent developmental transitions mean that the “media environment” is historically situated and continuously changing (Hakkarainen et al., 2015). Policy initiatives restricting phone use in schools (UNESCO, 2023) can be understood, within this framework, as part of the ecology itself—new constraints that reshape everyday practices, meanings, and conflicts rather than neutral external “conditions.”

Linking transforming media ecology to ecological psychology (Damşa et al., 2019; Gibson, 1979; Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014) clarifies how these environments matter in the moment-to-moment life of schools. From an affordance perspective, action possibilities are relational: what a phone affords in a classroom depends on students’ skills and intentions, peer norms, and institutional constraints. In school settings, phones can afford social coordination, emotional regulation, identity work, and creative production while also enabling students to avoid uncomfortable interactions, withdraw from classroom participation, or engage in intensified social comparison (Damşa et al., 2019; Gath et al., 2024). Importantly, constraints are not merely obstacles; they shape the affordance landscape (Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014) by moving practices into hidden micro-moments, redefining what counts as “acceptable” use, and changing the social meaning of being reachable.

Understanding Phones in Peer Relations and Interactions at School

Empirical research suggests that smartphone use can strengthen interpersonal relationships by facilitating relationship formation, expanding access to social networks, and enabling support, thereby potentially increasing social capital and reducing isolation (e.g., Cho, 2015). Research on students’ experiences supports these findings: students purposely use specific applications and social media to maintain and improve their connections (Boyd, 2014; Varadi, 2025), and they report that these platforms can facilitate more open communication (Sjolie et al., 2023). Smartphones may provide students with a sense of support and safety, particularly in emergencies (Gath et al., 2024; Rose et al., 2022).

At the same time, research highlights tensions between the convenience of online communication and the richness of in-person engagement. The mere presence of phones can reduce the perceived quality of interactions and feelings of connectedness (Capilla Garrido et al., 2021; Rotondi et al., 2017). Adolescents may also experience constant connectivity as an ongoing responsibility to remain available to peers (Wikström et al., 2022), while exposure to social media can intensify social comparison and status anxiety, particularly among girls (Scully et al., 2020). In school contexts, students have reported that phone use reduces face-to-face interaction, facilitates cyberbullying and enables the recording and sharing of inappropriate content (Gath et al., 2024). In addition, higher levels of smartphone use have been associated with poorer social skills and weaker peer relationships (Zhou et al., 2017). These dynamics are also visible in the Finnish context, where teachers have reported that the use of digital tools can limit face-to-face communication (OECD, 2025).

Within schools, smartphone use is further shaped by institutional cultures, norms, and regulatory practices that structure both learning opportunities and students’ social connections. Although smartphones can support learning through access to information, self-regulated learning, and interactive engagement, they also introduce interruptions, lead to multitasking, and increase cognitive load, which may undermine sustained attention and deeper learning (e.g., Kuş, 2025). In line with these tensions, according to an OECD TALIS survey (2025), more than two-thirds of Finnish teachers perceive digital tools as negatively influencing teaching and students’ well-being, while also recognizing their potential to enhance students’ interest in learning.

The Current Study

Research examining smartphone use in schools has largely relied on adult interpretations (teachers, parents, policymakers), often overlooking how students themselves experience peer dynamics and interactional consequences in school. While smartphones’ role in student learning has been more extensively studied (e.g., Campbell et al., 2024; Kuş, 2025), there is limited research examining how students feel smartphones shape the interactional climate in schools. Student voice research (e.g., Cook-Sather, 2006) argues that it is essential to listen to young people’s accounts when schools redesign practices that affect everyday participation, inclusion, and safety, particularly in areas where adult concerns and students’ lived realities may diverge. Therefore, the present study foregrounds students’ perspectives and meaning-making by asking:

Methods

Findings

The findings are presented in accordance with the three research questions. First, we describe how students perceived smartphone use to influence maintaining and forming relationships. Second, we describe the perceived role of smartphones in face-to-face social interaction. Third, we present how phone use shaped students’ experiences of social support, safety, and insecurity. The categories derived from the content analysis are presented in Table 1. Supplemental Material S2 provides frequencies, descriptions, and illustrative examples of the codes. The findings extended to students’ everyday media ecologies, both during and beyond the school day.

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Table 1.

Summary of Findings Organized Into Main Categories and Subcategories.

Research question	Main category	Subcategory
RQ 1 the role of smartphone use in maintaining and forming relationships	Maintaining relationships	Useful tools for communication
		Maintaining peer connectedness
		Coordinating the school day
	Forming relationships and fostering social belonging	Forming and deepening relationships
		Group chats fostering belonging
		Preference for forming relationships face-to-face
RQ 2 the role of smartphone use in face-to-face social interaction	Functions of phone use in social situations	Phone use as a recreational activity
		Phone use facilitates interaction
		Phone use motivated by boredom and peer influence
	Pitfalls of phone use in social situations	Reduced conversation
		Rejection and loneliness
		Conflicts and disturbing use
RQ 3 smartphone use in relation to experiences of support, safety, and insecurity	Experiences of support and safety	Enhanced feelings of safety
		Peer support
		Companionship
	Experiences of social insecurity	Pressure from social media
		Negative comments and online talk
		Unreliable behavior online

Discussion

Smartphones’ role in schools has been widely debated in recent years, and this study highlighted students’ voices on how smartphones shape social processes at school. Open-ended questionnaires and FGIs were employed to capture both students’ individual accounts and shared meaning-making and analyzed inductively through qualitative content analysis. First, we examined students’ perceptions of how smartphone use influences relationship maintenance and formation. Smartphones emerged as key social tools within students’ media ecologies, as their communicative and coordinative affordances supported those processes. Second, we focused on the role of smartphones in face-to-face interaction, where students expressed more ambivalence: while smartphones could facilitate interaction, their pervasive presence also reduced conversation and contributed to social tensions and loneliness. Finally, we addressed students’ experiences of support, safety, and insecurity. Smartphones afforded students social support and a sense of safety, yet they simultaneously exposed them to inappropriate content and uncertainty. Overall, students’ peer relationships were strongly mediated by smartphones, highlighting the need for schools to support face-to-face socialization, interpersonal skills, and digital citizenship, which is understood as responsible, safe, and ethical participation in online environments (Jones & Mitchell, 2016). Students’ voices showed active agencies in smartphone use, particularly in school-day coordination and collaboration, underscoring the importance of including student perspectives in educational planning.

Rather than framing smartphone use as an individual or parallel activity, this study positions smartphones within the school’s broader media ecology, where digital devices function as a core part of students’ everyday social infrastructure. Building on this perspective, Boyd (2014) highlights how online platforms serve as hybrid social spaces that are deeply intertwined with teenagers’ offline lives. The platforms do not only offer virtual connection but also function as an extension of school hallways. In line with this perspective, our results show that smartphones provide students with digital spaces for “hanging out” (Ito et al., 2010), supporting socialization and coordination across physical distance and often beyond teachers’ direct observation. These findings suggest that smartphones reshape students’ media ecology by blurring physical and digital boundaries and reshaping the visibility of interactions.

Previous research suggests that smartphone use can reduce both the quality and quantity of face-to-face interaction (Rotondi et al., 2017; Verduyn et al., 2021). In line with this, students reflected on how peers’ phone use sometimes made conversations less frequent and more superficial, creating feelings of rejection and loneliness, consistent with phubbing (Capilla Garrido et al., 2021). At the same time, students described smartphones as an easier, lower-pressure mode of communication, aligning with Turkle’s (2011) suggestion that digital interaction allows conversations to remain lighter and less demanding. Students’ experiences of loneliness were consequently complex: while others’ phone use could intensify exclusion, students themselves turned to messaging and AI chatbots to fill social gaps when interaction was unavailable. Our findings align with prior research suggesting that AI chatbots are becoming increasingly popular sources of companionship in young people’s lives, having the potential to alleviate loneliness while also raising important psychological and ethical considerations (Andoh, 2026). Taken together, our findings illustrate how smartphone use can both deepen and alleviate loneliness through alternative forms of connection, including AI-based companionship.

Students’ accounts reflected the complexities and insecurities characteristic of adolescence. Smartphones were important for fitting in, as students emphasized the need to be included in group chats and keep up with social media trends. They also afforded possibilities to signal social connectedness, for instance by messaging others to appear surrounded by friends. However, these affordances were intertwined with pressures and insecurities: social media content exposed students, especially girls, to social comparison, and heightened their insecurities, in line with previous research (Scully et al., 2020). Moreover, smartphones’ affordances of constant social visibility and connectivity created pressure to remain in contact with peers, also echoing earlier findings (Varadi, 2025; Wikström et al., 2022). These findings illustrate that smartphones are not merely communication tools but integral instruments in students’ media ecologies, through which they navigate social inclusion, manage impressions, and cope with the pressures and insecurities of adolescence.

The findings should be interpreted in light of several limitations. Collecting more detailed background information on students’ prior device ownership and usage patterns outside of school would have helped contextualize their in-school behaviors and attitudes. Smartphone policies varied across the participating schools, yet students’ accounts suggested that the rules were not always followed, which limits their explanatory value regarding student experiences. During data collection, School A had designated phone storage areas for lessons, which may have sparked stronger opinions about smartphone use. Furthermore, the first author had previously worked as a teacher at School A, and this familiarity could have influenced the responses or data interpretation. The study’s strengths lie in combining written narratives and FGIs, producing rich insights into both individual and shared experiences. Although FGIs are susceptible to peer influence, this dynamic can also illuminate how meanings around smartphone use are socially negotiated. Overall, the findings offer nuanced, contextually grounded insights into students’ experiences in school settings.

Supplemental Material