Why does my teen’s homework take 3 hours instead of one?
A phone within reach keeps breaking a teen's sustained attention, and every restart on boring schoolwork adds time to the evening.
Quick facts
Sustained attention is the ability to do boring work while staying focused and following through to the end.
By the end of a school day, a teen's sustained attention has already been spent on classes, friends and everything else going on.
A phone does not have to be picked up to pull attention away; a teen waiting for the next notification is already partly distracted.
"Cell phone" here means any screen: phones, video games, computers and a TV running in the background.
Families who follow Colleen Yanez's conversation-and-plan approach have seen homework go from three painful hours to one easy hour.
Let's talk about everybody's favorite subject: teenagers and cell phones!
Specifically, I want to talk about homework time, when a teen or tween sits down to work and the phone is sitting right there beside them.
I've been working with teens and tweens for about 27 years, and over that time I've watched attention spans drop off. So I started asking myself why. Why is homework taking three hours instead of one? Why can't a middle schooler read a few pages of a book each night?
What I've found is that the answer very often comes back to the cell phone.
Do video games and TV count, or just phones?
They all count. When I say cell phone, I mean the whole world of screens: phones, video games, computers, and a TV going in the background. Any screen running nearby pulls attention away from homework.
What is sustained attention?
In the world of executive functioning, the skill at the center of all this is sustained attention.
Very basically, sustained attention is a teen's ability (really, anybody's ability) to do the boring stuff while staying focused and following through to the end. Homework is mostly boring stuff, which is why sustained attention matters so much in the evening.
And here's the part most parents don't realize: sustained attention gets used up over the course of a day. By the time a teen sits down to do homework, school, friends and everything else going on have already zapped most of it.
What happens when a teen does homework with a phone nearby?
Picture it.
Your teen sits down to do their homework. Their sustained attention is already running low. The phone is right next to them. There's a TV on in the background, and a little brother or sister is running around.
They start reading a passage. And then, bam, a notification goes off.
All right, now it's time for math. Bam. Another notification. (And it might just be from a store!)
Here's the thing, though. The notification itself is only part of it. A teen with a phone nearby is constantly waiting for the next hit: Who's going to text me back? Who's going to Snap me? A phone nearby keeps part of a teen's brain on call the entire time, waiting for the buzz.
What is the Genius Zone?
That's exactly why I created the Genius Zone, a homework routine built around protecting sustained attention.
The Genius Zone means one spot for homework every night, with phones, pets, TVs and younger siblings out of the room. Homework runs on a 20 to 30 minute timer, followed by a 5 to 10 minute break, and then the cycle repeats. Give the Genius Zone a week or two before deciding whether it's working.
Should I just take my teen's phone away during homework?
Not on its own. The families who see real results are the ones who talk it through first, rather than simply announcing that the phone is gone.
My recommendation is to have a conversation with your teen. Talk about what is happening in their brain, and why homework that really shouldn't take longer than an hour is stretching to three.
Then work on a plan together. A cell phone contract can be a great tool for this. The goal of the plan is simple: during homework time, no phone and no other screens nearby.
It might take a minute to get used to. But let me tell you, the families who follow through, who have had that real conversation and not just a "hey, I'm taking your phone" moment, have seen crazy results. Homework that used to take three painful hours becomes one easy hour!
When does my teen get the phone back?
Once homework is finished, the phone comes back, and they can doom scroll all they want! The difference is that the homework is done, and they're not staying up until 1:00 in the morning to finish it.
(Phones in bedrooms is a whole separate conversation, and I'll get to it another day. For now, the focus is making homework time more efficient.)
Where should I start?
Start by giving your teen or tween the space to do their homework without a phone or any other screen nearby. Have the conversation first, build the plan together, and let the phone come back when the work is done.
If homework battles in your house look a lot like laziness, they usually aren't. I wrote more about that here: It's Not Laziness, It's Executive Functioning
Wondering what else you can do to support your teen or tween? My free quiz is built for middle school parents, but anybody can take it. It walks you through which executive functioning area may be your teen's most challenged area, and gives you strategies that can help.
I'm Colleen Yanez, founder of Key Coaching. I'm a National Board Certified Teacher and executive functioning coach, and I've spent 27 years working with teens, tweens and their families. I work with families in Parker, Colorado and virtually nationwide.
