The 10-Minute Break Is Not a TikTok Break: Rethinking Phones and Learning

Over the summer, we have had many students attending classes with a very clear objective: to close academic gaps, revisit subjects they struggled with, clear backlogs and prepare themselves for the next academic year.

These are students between the ages of 12 and 19 who have made the decision—or whose parents have made the decision—to use part of their holiday to strengthen their academic foundations.

Yet we have noticed something increasingly concerning.

The biggest distraction for many students is not the difficulty of the work.

It is the phone in their pocket.

What happens during a 10-minute break?

A student is released for a 10-minute break.

Ideally, this should be a moment to:

• Drink some water.

• Have a snack.

• Use the washroom.

• Take a short walk.

• Stretch.

• Get some fresh air.

• Reset mentally before the next lesson.

Instead, for many students, the first instinct is to reach into a pocket and open Instagram or TikTok.

Ten minutes quickly becomes a concentrated dose of social media immediately before returning to another 80-minute learning session.

The problem becomes even more obvious when students keep their phones in their pockets during lessons.

A student may ask to go to the washroom halfway through a lesson. What should take a few minutes can turn into an opportunity to walk through the corridors, check notifications, watch videos and catch up on what they missed online.

They then return to class having missed part of the lesson and having reinforced the habit of checking their phone whenever they experience even a small amount of discomfort or boredom.

This is not simply a technology problem.

It is a discipline problem.

We cannot expect academic progress without attention

Learning difficult material requires sustained attention.

A student who is trying to rebuild their understanding of algebra, chemistry, literature, physics, economics or any other subject cannot afford to repeatedly interrupt that process for short bursts of social media.

The brain needs time to concentrate, process information, make mistakes, receive feedback and try again.

If every moment of boredom or difficulty is immediately followed by a phone check, students never develop the ability to sit with a difficult problem.

And that ability matters.

Academic resilience is partly the ability to remain engaged when the work is difficult.

Parents have an important role to play

We also need parents to recognise that this cannot be solved entirely by teachers.

If a student is attending an academic programme specifically to address learning gaps, sending them to the centre with unrestricted access to Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms creates an unnecessary conflict.

We therefore strongly encourage parents to leave phones at home whenever they are not genuinely required.

This is not about punishing students.

It is about creating an environment where the purpose of coming to the centre can actually be achieved.

Students also need to take responsibility

At 12, 15, 17 or 19, students are old enough to begin understanding that discipline is not about doing what is convenient.

Sometimes discipline means deliberately removing the thing that makes concentration difficult.

You do not need to prove that you can resist your phone while it sits in your pocket.

You demonstrate discipline by recognising that you don’t need the distraction in the first place.

Your summer programme is an investment in your future self.

The student who spends the break fixing a mathematical foundation, improving their writing, understanding chemistry or becoming a more confident reader will benefit long after the summer is over.

The student who spends every available break scrolling will simply have consumed another summer.

At Raena Learning, we want students to learn how to learn

Our responsibility is not merely to deliver lessons.

We want students to develop the habits required to succeed beyond the classroom: concentration, accountability, resilience, independence and the ability to do difficult things without constantly seeking stimulation.

That includes learning when to put the phone away.

The goal of a break is to return refreshed—not to return digitally exhausted.

If we genuinely want our children to close academic gaps and enter the next academic year stronger than they were before, then parents, students and educators have to work together.

Sometimes the most effective learning intervention is not another worksheet.

Sometimes it is simply putting the phone away.