Nearly one-quarter of teens reported using mobile food delivery services during school hours and almost half said they use them after school, according to a national survey of over 1,000 U.S. adolescents.
Among respondents who used such services, almost 60% reported ordering fast foods such as pizza and burgers, and over one-third ordered sodas or other sugar-sweetened beverages. The findings raise concerns about the ability to maintain safe learning environments and support healthy nutrition for students, according to researchers.
Federal and state school nutrition policies are designed to support access to healthy foods and beverages in school cafeterias and vending machines, but technology has outpaced policy. Today, a smartphone instantly brings a food outlet many miles away right to the school gate, fundamentally changing how our children access foods and beverages at school. We can no longer look at school nutrition without looking at the smartphone in a student's pocket."
Mika Matsuzaki, PhD, MS, MPH, lead study author, assistant professor in the Human Nutrition group, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Matsuzaki will present the findings at NUTRITION 2026, the flagship annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, held July 25–28 in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.
Researchers conducted the survey online during the summer of 2025, garnering responses from 1,027 adolescents aged 13-17 years. In addition to the overall national trends, the results revealed some regional variation. Students living in the western United States were more likely to attend schools that allow mobile food delivery during school hours; however, teens in this region were also more likely to say they avoid using mobile food delivery due to the perceived high costs.
Nearly half of respondents said they support allowing mobile food delivery during school, although many-regardless of their support or opposition-expressed concerns about its implications for the learning environment and factors such as equity and bullying.
"Interestingly, students themselves are divided on whether this should be allowed. Even those who support it openly worry about campus safety and classroom distractions," said Matsuzaki. "It's rare to see teenagers raise flags about their own digital habits, which signals to us that they recognize these platforms are a double-edged sword."
Researchers said schools can be an important venue to teach teens how to navigate digital food environments responsibly rather than impulsively. School administrators and policy makers could use the survey data as they consider campus safety and phone-use policies as well as potential guardrails to limit the influx of unhealthy food during school hours. It may also be possible to collaborate with food-delivery platforms to encourage users to make healthy choices. For parents and teens, researchers said the data could spur more conversations about nutrition and budgets.
"For many school administrators and parents, this study will be a wake-up call as they may not be aware of this relatively new phenomenon. We hope these findings will bring proactive conversations," said Matsuzaki.
Researchers noted that self-reported surveys have inherent limitations and future studies could help to further confirm the findings.
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