2023-09-11 12:27:38
Technological overdose enemy of the report card. Intensive and early use of smartphones – before the age of 12 – does not promote children’s learning, and can actually reduce the school performance of those who have been more exposed to television and video game screens since childhood. This is suggested by a study by the University of Milan-Bicocca and Supsi (University of Applied Sciences of Italian Switzerland), conducted by analyzing Invalsi data (National Institute for Evaluation of the Education System) and published in ‘Social Science Research’.
Tiziano Gerosa, Supsi researcher, and Marco Gui, director of the Digital Wellbeing Center – Department of Sociology and Social Research of the Bicocca University, tested the main hypotheses on the role of the smartphone in learning processes: both those that hypothesize benefits and those that they expect negative impacts. The work focused on children aged 10 to 14, comparing those who receive mobile phones before the age of 12, then at 10 and 11 years old, in the transition between primary and lower secondary school, with those who only begin to use them later, i.e. at 12, 13 and 14 years old. The total sample consisted of 1,672 lower secondary school students.
“The results – they report from Bicocca – do not show benefits at the end of lower secondary school for those who acquired smartphones early, not even for the students most motivated to study. However, the participants who had intense habits of using smartphones media before owning a smartphone (more than 2 hours a day between TV and video games) experience a negative and significant impact on learning in Italian. At the time of data collection, students with intensive use of screens, and therefore subject to the possible effect negative of the smartphone, they were 23.5% of the Italian student population”. More than one in 5. “This result – comments Gui – confirms a hypothesis that is emerging in international literature: the independent use of ‘mobile media’ during childhood can harm in particular those with pre-existing fragilities, in this case a reduced ability to limit the use of screens, linked to the family context or specific psychological characteristics”.
For some time – recalls a note from the University of Milan-Bicocca – a great debate has been underway on the impact of the use of digital media on the growth of minors. The literature has already identified a negative relationship between precocity and quantity of smartphone use and scholastic results, but the lack of scientific evidence more solid than simple correlations is often lamented.
“This study – remarks Gerosa – is the first in Italy that searches for the impact of the smartphone on learning levels with more sophisticated methodologies. It is in fact a quasi-experimental study that uses longitudinal Invalsi data on children and pre-adolescents in the transition from primary to lower secondary school. This methodology allows us to approach, albeit with some assumptions, a causal interpretation of the results”.
Other research on the topic is underway by the Bicocca Digital Wellbeing Center. In particular, the Eyes Up project financed by the Cariplo Foundation will analyze the impact of a set of devices and early online experiences on the learning levels throughout the school career of students from primary to secondary school.
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