For many families, a child's first smartphone has become almost a modern rite of passage. It offers an easy way to stay connected, access school resources and communicate with friends. But as children receive their own devices at increasingly younger ages, researchers are examining whether early access carries consequences that may not become obvious until years later. Recent international research suggests that earlier smartphone and social-media exposure can be associated with poorer learning outcomes, while experimental evidence indicates that even having a phone nearby can interfere with memory. Scientists, however, caution against interpreting the evidence as proof that simply owning a smartphone causes poorer grades.Study of 5,227 students finds an academic linkOne of the strongest recent findings comes from research published in Nature Human Behaviour in August 2026. Researchers analysed 5,227 students aged seven to 16 in northern Italy, combining questionnaires about their digital habits with longitudinal standardised test scores in mathematics, Italian and English. They compared children who opened social-media accounts in grades six, seven or eight with students who waited until grade nine or later. Researchers found evidence that earlier social-media adoption negatively affected learning outcomes. Importantly, part of that effect appeared to be connected to the pervasive presence of smartphones during important parts of children's daily routines.Earlier smartphone access has also raised concernsA separate study published in Youth & Society examined 3,247 Italian tenth-grade students. Researchers found that earlier smartphone access was negatively associated with several measures of adolescent functioning. Delaying access was also associated with a smaller gender gap in areas including language proficiency, digital skills and life satisfaction.Research using the Seoul Educational Longitudinal Study has produced similar concerns. A 2022 study published in Technology in Society found that the age at which students first began using smartphones was linked to subsequent daily usage and smartphone addiction. Smartphone use and addiction were, in turn, connected with self-directed learning and achievement in Korean, mathematics and English.What about memory?Another intriguing piece of evidence suggests smartphones do not necessarily have to be actively used to become distracting. A peer-reviewed experiment published in PLOS ONE involved 119 university students completing a memory task. Participants who did not have their smartphones with them achieved higher recall accuracy than those whose phones were present. Researchers also found that the more participants consciously thought about their phones, the poorer their memory recall tended to be. This study involved university students rather than children, so its findings should not be directly applied to younger age groups. Still, it provides experimental evidence for one mechanism through which phones may compete for attention during learning.A review of 34 studies finds a broader patternA 2025 systematic review published in Acta Psychologica examined 34 studies involving children and adolescents aged seven to 18. It found that problematic smartphone and social-media use was almost consistently associated with poorer academic achievement, while intensive social-media use was more frequently linked to poorer outcomes than smartphone-use intensity alone.But the researchers stressed an important limitation: 30 of the 34 studies were cross-sectional, and only four were cohort studies. Because most evidence was observational, it cannot establish which came first. Poorer-performing students might use phones differently, for example, rather than phones necessarily causing their academic difficulties.Smartphones themselves aren't necessarily the enemyResearch also shows why blanket conclusions should be avoided. Smartphones can provide educational resources, communication tools and access to learning. A 2025 classroom experiment found that unguided smartphone use reduced students' performance gains compared with banning phones, highlighting that how devices are used can matter as much as their presence.For parents, the emerging research therefore offers a more nuanced message than simply "phones are bad". Giving a child a smartphone early does not automatically condemn them to weaker memory or lower grades. But evidence increasingly suggests that early, pervasive and poorly controlled use particularly involving social media and off-task activity deserves attention. The question for families may consequently be shifting from when should my child get a smartphone? to something more important: what will happen once they have one?