ACT Research Links Smartphone Distractions and Math Anxiety to Lower Math Performance

A student can know the formula, recognize the type of problem and still struggle to finish it.

Sometimes the problem is a gap in mathematical knowledge. But performance can also be affected by what happens around the student — and by what is happening in the student’s own mind while they are trying to solve the problem.

Research published by ACT examined two factors that are often discussed separately from mathematics instruction: smartphone distractions in the classroom and mathematics anxiety. The March 2025 study looked at how students’ reported experiences in math classes were related to their subsequent ACT Math performance.

The results showed a consistent pattern. Students who reported more frequent smartphone distractions tended to earn lower Math scores, while students reporting higher levels of mathematics anxiety also performed worse on average.

The study does not show that phones or anxiety alone cause lower mathematics achievement. ACT researchers controlled for several student background variables, including gender, race and ethnicity, high school GPA, and the number of high school mathematics courses taken, but the research remains correlational.

Even with that limitation, the findings add useful context to a familiar question in schools: why do some students struggle to perform in mathematics even when they have had access to the instruction and content they are expected to know?

Smartphone Distractions Were Linked to Lower ACT Math Scores

Smartphones are now a routine part of teenage life, and in many classrooms they are physically close to students even when they are not being used for instruction.

That matters in mathematics because solving an unfamiliar problem often requires students to keep several pieces of information in mind at once. They may need to remember a condition from the question, apply a formula, track an intermediate result and decide what to do next. A brief interruption does not necessarily erase that knowledge, but it can break the chain of reasoning needed to use it.

ACT found a measurable difference between students who rarely felt distracted by their own phones and those who experienced that distraction frequently.

Students who said they were never or almost never distracted by their own smartphones in math class earned an average ACT Math score of 22.8. Among students who said they were almost always distracted, the average was 20.3.

Distraction did not have to come from the student’s own device. Students who reported being almost always distracted by other students’ smartphones had an average Math score of 20.5, compared with 22.8 among those who said this almost never happened.

The difference remained statistically significant after ACT researchers accounted for several student characteristics.

That does not mean taking away a phone would automatically produce a higher test score. Students who are frequently distracted may differ from other students in ways that are difficult to capture completely in a study. Classroom culture, motivation, academic habits and school policies may all play a role.

Still, the findings suggest that attention itself should be treated as part of the learning environment rather than as a separate issue.

A phone used to graph a function or check data can support a lesson. A stream of messages, social media alerts or nearby conversations triggered by other students’ devices serves a very different purpose. From a learning perspective, the question is less whether technology belongs in the classroom than whether it helps students stay engaged with the work in front of them.

Math Anxiety Showed an Even Larger Score Gap

The study also examined mathematics anxiety, an issue that can be less visible than phone use.

A student does not need to dislike mathematics to experience math anxiety. Some become tense when they have to solve a problem in front of other people. Others understand material during practice but have difficulty recalling or applying it during a test. For some students, simply encountering an unfamiliar problem can trigger the expectation that they are going to fail.

ACT distinguished between anxiety related to learning mathematics and anxiety related to being evaluated in mathematics. Both were negatively related to ACT Math performance.

The score difference associated with mathematics learning anxiety was substantial. Students with relatively low levels of learning anxiety earned an average ACT Math score of 24.6, while those with relatively high anxiety averaged 19.2.

Again, the result should not be interpreted as proof that anxiety directly caused the lower scores. Academic performance and anxiety can influence one another. A student who has struggled repeatedly may become more anxious about mathematics, while anxiety itself may make it harder to concentrate, retrieve information or persist through a difficult problem.

What the ACT findings make clear is that mathematics performance cannot always be understood by looking only at whether a student has been taught a particular concept.

Two students may have completed the same course and practiced the same material but experience the task very differently when they are asked to solve a difficult problem under pressure.

Why Attention Matters So Much in Mathematics

The relationship between distraction and math performance is especially relevant because mathematical reasoning is cumulative.

Consider a multi-step algebra or geometry problem. A student may need to identify what information matters, select an appropriate method, complete a calculation and then use that result in the next stage of the problem. Losing track of one step can affect everything that follows.

This does not make mathematics uniquely vulnerable to distraction, and ACT’s research also found relationships between smartphone distraction, anxiety and science performance. But mathematics provides a clear example of why uninterrupted thinking time can matter.

When students are repeatedly switching attention between a problem and something unrelated, they are not simply losing a few seconds. They may need to reconstruct where they were in the reasoning process before they can continue.

That distinction is important when schools debate smartphone rules. Much of the public conversation focuses on obvious classroom management issues: whether students are texting, recording videos or browsing social media during lessons. The ACT study points to a quieter concern as well — the effect that repeated interruptions may have on tasks that require sustained concentration.

Anxiety Can Change How Students Approach Difficult Problems

Math anxiety matters for a different reason.

Students inevitably encounter questions they cannot solve immediately. In those moments, one student may try a different strategy, return to an earlier step or spend more time examining the problem. Another may interpret the same difficulty as evidence that they are “bad at math” and disengage.

Over time, those responses can produce very different learning experiences.

A student who avoids challenging questions because they expect to fail gets fewer opportunities to practice reasoning through uncertainty. That can reinforce the original anxiety, particularly as mathematics becomes more complex in middle and high school.

This is one reason simply assigning more practice may not address every student’s difficulty. Practice is essential for developing mathematical fluency, but its effect depends partly on how students engage with it.

If a student rushes through familiar exercises while avoiding anything that feels difficult, the number of completed questions may increase without a comparable increase in flexible problem-solving ability.

For teachers and families, that makes the student’s process worth paying attention to. A wrong answer can come from a missing concept, a calculation error, a misunderstanding of the question, a lapse in attention or a student abandoning the problem too quickly. Those problems require different responses.

The Findings Do Not Support a Simple “Phones Are Bad” Conclusion

It would be easy to reduce the ACT findings to an argument for banning smartphones from schools, but the study itself does not establish that conclusion.

The researchers measured students’ reported levels of distraction and compared them with later ACT performance. They did not randomly assign some classrooms to allow phones and others to prohibit them, so the study cannot determine how much a particular phone policy would change scores.

That distinction matters at a time when schools and state governments are reconsidering student phone use.

What the research does provide is evidence that students who experience frequent smartphone distraction in mathematics classes tend to perform worse on the ACT Math test, even after several background characteristics are taken into account.

For schools, that may strengthen the case for creating periods of genuinely uninterrupted instructional time. The specific policy — a full ban, restricted use during lessons, phone storage systems or teacher-level rules — is a separate question that requires additional evidence.

The same caution applies to mathematics anxiety. Schools cannot assume that improving students’ confidence will automatically raise test scores by a predictable amount. But ignoring anxiety because it is not part of the formal curriculum would also overlook a factor that is consistently associated with performance.

What This Means for Math Instruction

The ACT study does not offer a new mathematics curriculum, nor does it suggest that attention and confidence matter more than content knowledge.

Students still need strong instruction, repeated practice and a firm understanding of mathematical concepts. A student cannot reason through algebra without learning algebra.

The findings instead suggest that academic knowledge works within a broader learning environment. Students need enough sustained attention to use what they know, and they need to remain engaged long enough to work through problems that do not yield an immediate answer.

That has practical implications for classrooms.

Reducing unnecessary digital interruptions is one part of the picture. Another is creating conditions in which students can make mistakes without treating each error as evidence that they lack mathematical ability.

That does not require making work easier. In fact, productive mathematics learning often involves difficulty. The difference is whether students learn to interpret difficulty as a normal part of solving unfamiliar problems or as a signal to stop.

ACT’s findings also suggest that educators should be cautious about using a test score as a complete explanation of a student’s mathematical ability. Scores reflect what a student was able to demonstrate under particular conditions. They do not reveal, by themselves, whether a lower result came from weak conceptual knowledge, limited preparation, anxiety, distraction or some combination of factors.

Math Performance Is About More Than Content Coverage

Recent debates about mathematics achievement often focus on curriculum, tutoring, testing standards and the amount of material students are expected to learn. Those questions matter, but the ACT research points to another part of the problem.

Students have to be able to use what they know.

For some, that may mean having enough uninterrupted time to stay with a difficult problem. For others, it may mean learning how to respond when they do not immediately know what to do.

The ACT study cannot determine how much of the broader decline in mathematics performance is explained by smartphones or anxiety. It does, however, provide evidence that both are associated with measurable differences in performance.

For schools trying to improve mathematics outcomes, the implication is not that content matters less. It is that content is only useful when students have the attention, confidence and persistence needed to work with it.

Simon Holmes | Contributing Education Reporter

Simon Holmes is an education reporter who contributes to WuKong Education, covering K–12 education, education technology and issues affecting students and families around the world.

With a background in education and experience as a teacher, Simon brings firsthand insight into classroom learning, student development, and the challenges educators face.

For WuKong Education, he reports on education research, emerging learning trends, policy developments, technology in the classroom, and issues relevant to parents, teachers, and students.