School nutrition policies were built around cafeterias, vending machines and food sold on campus. But a smartphone can now bring pizza, burgers and sugary drinks directly to the school gate.
In a national survey of 1,027 adolescents ages 13 to 17, nearly 1 in 4 reported using mobile food delivery services during school hours. Nearly half said they used the services after school.
The preliminary findings were presented at NUTRITION 2026, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, and have not yet undergone the full peer review required for publication in a scientific journal.
The survey documents how teens use food delivery apps and what they think about school-hour delivery. It does not show that delivery apps caused poorer diets, weight gain, classroom disruption or other health and academic outcomes.
Researchers conducted the online survey in July and August 2025 using the AmeriSpeak Teen Omnibus platform administered by NORC at the University of Chicago. Responses were weighted to estimate national patterns.
Among adolescents who used delivery services, 58.8% reported ordering fast food, including pizza and burgers. About 34.1% ordered soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages.
Grain bowls, fruit, nonfried vegetables and unsweetened drinks were less popular choices, according to the abstract.
The results suggest that digital food access is becoming part of the school food environment, even though the apps themselves are outside the traditional systems schools regulate.
“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,” said Mika Matsuzaki, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “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.”
The survey does not clarify how often students ordered food during school hours or whether the reported use happened regularly, occasionally or only once.
It also does not fully explain what “during school hours” meant to participants. Some may have ordered while physically on campus, while others may have placed orders for pickup after leaving school.
That makes the headline number useful as a sign of a new behavior, but not as evidence that 1 in 4 teens routinely have meals delivered to school.
Nearly half of respondents said they supported allowing mobile food delivery during school hours. At the same time, students on both sides of the issue raised concerns about distraction, safety, fairness and bullying.
“Interestingly, students themselves are divided on whether this should be allowed,” Matsuzaki said. “Even those who support it openly worry about campus safety and classroom distractions.”
The study did not independently verify those concerns. It did not measure how often deliveries interrupted class, whether drivers entered school grounds or whether app use contributed to conflict among students.
The findings were based on self-report, so students may have misremembered their use or interpreted survey questions differently. The research also did not confirm orders through delivery records, receipts or school data.
Regional differences appeared in the survey as well.
About 34% of teens in the western U.S. reported attending schools that allowed mobile food delivery during school hours, a higher share than in other regions. But students in the West were also more likely to say they avoided delivery because of cost.
Those findings appear to reflect students’ understanding of school rules rather than verified district policies. A school may formally ban deliveries but enforce the rule inconsistently, or students may be unsure what the policy allows.
The study also did not report enough detail to determine whether mobile delivery use differed meaningfully by household income, race or ethnicity. Although the researchers examined demographic patterns, the abstract does not provide the full subgroup results.
That limits how much can be said about equity.
Cost could create obvious differences between students who can order food and those who cannot. Delivery fees, tips and menu prices may make the service unavailable to some students, while visible orders could contribute to social pressure or exclusion.
At the same time, food delivery may serve different purposes for different teens. Some may use it as a treat, while others may order because they dislike cafeteria options, miss lunch, have dietary restrictions or remain at school for sports and activities.
The survey did not ask enough questions to distinguish among those possibilities.
It also did not compare delivered food with what students would otherwise have eaten. A burger delivered to school might replace a cafeteria lunch, a packed meal, a skipped meal or another restaurant order later in the day.
Without that comparison, the study cannot show that delivery necessarily worsened overall diet quality.
Still, the food choices reported in the survey matter because they show how app-based ordering may bring more fast food and sugary drinks into an environment where schools have spent years trying to improve nutrition.
The findings point to a gap in school policy. Rules can govern what appears in cafeterias and vending machines, but they may not address food ordered from outside businesses through a student’s phone.
Researchers suggested that schools consider delivery apps when reviewing nutrition, phone-use and campus-safety policies.
That could include clearer rules about whether drivers may enter school property, where orders can be collected and whether deliveries are allowed during class or lunch periods.
Schools could also use the issue as an opportunity to teach students how delivery apps influence food choices, spending and impulse decisions.
The study was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.