How to stop getting distracted by your phone while studying

Why your phone distracts you even when you don’t check it

You don’t have to pick it up for it to pull you out of your notes. In a 2015 experiment published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, 166 college students did an attention task while researchers called or texted their phones without warning. Even when they didn’t answer, students who got a notification made more mistakes than those who didn’t. The authors put it down to the alert triggering off-task thoughts: “who’s that?”

Then there’s simply having it in front of you. In 2017, a team at the University of Texas at Austin asked nearly 800 people to take memory and attention tests with their phone on silent, face down on the desk, in a pocket or bag, or in another room. People whose phones were in another room did significantly better than those with phones on the desk, and slightly better than those carrying them. According to the authors, it made no difference whether the phone was on or off.

That “brain drain” effect isn’t settled. A University of Augsburg meta-analysis of 22 studies (Behavioral Sciences, 2023) confirmed it, especially for memory and attention tasks. But a replication with 302 participants in Consciousness and Cognition found no effect on short-term memory. In practice the takeaway is the same: moving your phone away while you study costs nothing and, at worst, gets the notifications off your back. For the rest of the day, you can turn off the iPhone notifications you don’t need and batch the others.

7 ways to study without your phone pulling you away

1. Put it in another room (really)

It’s the simplest change and the one the research points to most: out of sight and out of reach. In a small apartment, the hallway, the kitchen or a drawer in another room will do. What matters is that grabbing your phone means getting up; that walk is the pause the automatic reach never has. If you’re worried about missing something urgent, tell your family you’re studying until a set time, so they know to call the landline or come and get you.

2. Set up a Focus just for studying

If you need your iPhone nearby (for a flashcard app, a dictionary or your school’s two-factor login), make studying with it as boring as possible. iOS Focus modes silence calls and notifications except the ones you allow:

1. Open Settings › Focus and tap + in the top-right corner.
2. Choose Custom and name it “Study”.
3. Under People, allow only those who might really need you (your family, say).
4. Under Apps, allow only the ones you study with. Social media, games and email stay out.
5. In the screen options, hide notification badges and choose a Home Screen page with only your study apps. That way, even if you unlock your phone, you don’t see the scrolling apps.
6. Add a schedule for your study hours so it turns on by itself, or switch it on when you start from Control Center › Focus.

Note: a Focus silences alerts, but it doesn’t stop you opening apps. That’s what the next step is for.

3. Lock your scrolling apps while you study

In Settings › Screen Time you can put a schedule or a daily limit on social media and games so that, when it kicks in, the app is blocked instead of showing a warning you dismiss with one tap. If you tend to skip it, set a passcode you don’t know (have someone else type it). It’s all step by step, including the iOS 27 changes, in how to set app limits on iPhone.

4. Study in blocks with an end in sight

The Pomodoro Technique, which Francesco Cirillo came up with in the late 1980s, is the best known: 25 minutes of work, about 5 minutes’ break, and a longer 20 to 30 minute break every four blocks. It isn’t magic, but it helps with your phone for one specific reason: knowing you can check it in 25 minutes makes it much easier not to check it now. If 25 minutes feels too short or too long, adjust it; what matters is that the block has a clear end. Use a kitchen timer or your computer’s, not your phone’s.

5. Take breaks that actually end

The break is the weak spot: you open social media “just for five minutes” and the feed has no bottom. So the break doesn’t eat the next block, make it something that ends on its own: stand up, drink some water, stretch, look out of the window, play one song. If you want to check messages, do it in the long break with a clear idea of why you’re going in. If scrolling gets away from you outside study time too, how to stop doomscrolling has eight concrete changes.

6. Set up your space before you start

Your phone often sneaks in through a small need: looking up a word, checking the exam date, asking the group chat for notes. Before you start, have everything for the block ready (notes, book, water, that question already sent) and jot down anything that pops into your head on paper to check later. That way there’s no reason to unlock.

7. Don’t fix it at the cost of sleep

Studying late and then spending half an hour on your phone in bed is the combination you pay for most the next day. Set a cut-off time for your phone too, and let a night schedule lock your apps at that time. There are steps for iPhone and Android in how to stop using your phone before bed.

Exact menu names can vary slightly by iOS version and region. If you can’t find an option, type it into the search bar at the top of Settings.

A sample study afternoon

To see it in practice, a two-hour afternoon could look like this:

• 5:00 pm. Set up your desk, send the question you had to the group, and leave your phone charging in the kitchen. Your “Study” Focus turns on by schedule.
• 5:05 to 5:30. First block. Anything that comes to mind (“check if grades are up”) goes on the paper.
• 5:30. Five minutes on your feet: water and a stretch. The phone stays in the kitchen.
• 5:35 to 6:50. Three more blocks with their short breaks.
• 6:50. Long break. Now you check messages and answer what matters, with a 15-minute timer so it doesn’t drag on.

It doesn’t have to go perfectly on day one. If you get up for your phone mid-block, that’s fine: put it back and restart the block.