Children who begin using social media at the start of middle school perform worse on tests than those who wait. Researchers believe that the constant checking of updates serves as a significant distraction for many students.
Students who created their first social media account at the age of 11-12 years scored lower in mathematics and reading compared to those who delayed their accounts for a few years. The study found that by the age of 16 years, the score difference between the two groups was equivalent to approximately six months of learning.
While the study does not establish a causal link between social media use and lower academic achievement, scientists accounted for various factors that could have influenced the results, including students’ academic performance prior to using social media, family structure, and parents’ educational levels.
“I think we now know that there is a problem, and it is a complex problem related to how these platforms are built,” said Dr. Marco Gui, the study’s lead author from the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy. “Our study shows that at least in pre-adolescence, these social networks are problematic.”
Impact on Performance and Possible Mechanisms
Gui and his colleagues analyzed surveys regarding social media usage habits among over 5,000 Italian schoolchildren and their results on standardized tests in mathematics, Italian, and English. During testing at the age of 13-14 years, those who opened their first social media account at 11 or 12 years scored lower than those who waited until at least 14 years.
The score gap at the age of 15-16 years remained unchanged for the Italian language and increased for mathematics. Researchers reported in the journal Nature Human Behaviour that the score difference is approximately equivalent to early users lagging behind by six months of learning. The advantage for those who delayed social media use was about half the effect of intensive and costly tutoring.
While the achievement gap was evident in mathematics and Italian, no such effect was observed for English, which students learn as a foreign language. Researchers suggest this may be due to a significant amount of content on social media in English providing “incidental exposure and practice.”
One of the strongest indicators of the achievement gap was how frequently children checked their phones during the day and night. This suggests that constant social media checking may have contributed to the gap. Dr. Marco Gui posits that one mechanism is “a state of constant alertness that the use of social media on a smartphone creates in the lives of minors.”
“The constant need to check messages to see if something is happening in the online world while you are busy with something in the physical world around you,” explained Gui. “This means being less present in the physical space of the family or home. From a cognitive perspective, it can lead to less engagement in activities that require prolonged concentration, such as doing homework.”
Policy and Recommendations
The study comes as Great Britain prepares to introduce a ban on social media use for individuals under 16 years of age, following Australia, which implemented similar restrictions last year.
While Gui supports age restrictions for social media, he described such a ban as “an extreme policy” and emphasized the need to make the platforms themselves safer and less addictive. “For pre-adolescents, we must work on reducing the social significance of these environments,” he said.
Dennis Ougrin, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Queen Mary University of London, noted that this research adds to the growing evidence that the age at which young people first start using social media can impact their educational development. “The message for parents, educators, and policymakers is not necessarily to ban social media, but to support young people in forming healthy habits of interacting with them,” he said.
Source: The Guardian
