Earlier social media use linked to lower language and math scores, study finds
An Italian long-term study found students who started smartphones and social media at ages 11 or 12 tended to post weaker language and math results later in school.
Students who began using smartphones and social media at an earlier age tended to receive lower scores in school, according to a long-term study conducted in Italy. Researchers suggested that the distraction of frequent smartphone checking may partly explain the association.
The findings were published Monday in the international journal Nature Human Behaviour by a research team led by Marco Gui, a professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy.
The researchers tracked the school performance of 5,227 students from 28 schools in northern Italy over several years.
Students who began using social media in sixth grade, at ages 11 or 12, consistently scored lower in Italian and mathematics than those who started later.
"We followed the long-term effects of early social media use on academic performance throughout students' school years," Prof. Gui said. "The negative association was most evident among those who began using social media at ages 11 and 12."
The findings come as children are gaining access to smartphones and social media at increasingly younger ages, fueling debate over how early the use of digital devices affects learning and development.
While numerous studies have examined links between social media use and health or quality of life, previous findings have been mixed and have not clearly established causality. Few studies have tracked whether the age at which children first begin using social media is associated with later academic achievement.
A woman uses her smartphone inside the Apple store.REUTERS/YONHAP
The researchers combined data on students' digital device habits with standardized national assessment scores in Italian, English and mathematics. Academic performance was tracked at four points: second grade (ages 7-8), fifth grade (ages 10-11), eighth grade (ages 13-14) and 10th grade (ages 15-16).
To estimate the association between the age students began using social media and later academic performance, the researchers compared students with similar characteristics, including gender, parental education, family background and prior academic achievement.
About half of the students obtained a smartphone and created a social media account in sixth grade. Only 16.3 percent waited until age 14 or older, when Italian law allows teenagers to use social media without parental consent.
Students who created a social media account in sixth grade scored 0.22 standard deviations lower in Italian and 0.18 standard deviations lower in mathematics in eighth grade than those who did not open an account until ninth grade or later.
By 10th grade, the gap in Italian remained at 0.22 standard deviations, while the difference in mathematics widened to 0.27 standard deviations.
Students use a smartphone while leaving a middle school in Seoul.YONHAP
The researchers noted that, in education research, a difference of 0.2 standard deviations or more is generally considered a relatively large effect, roughly equivalent to a six-month gap in learning.
The achievement gap narrowed as students delayed starting social media. Those who began in seventh grade scored 0.17 standard deviations lower in Italian and 0.22 standard deviations lower in mathematics by 10th grade, while those who started in eighth grade scored 0.11 standard deviations lower in both subjects.
No statistically significant association was found between the age students began using social media and their English scores. The researchers suggested that natural exposure to English-language online content may have led to a studying effect.
Frequent smartphone checking accounted for an estimated 15 to 47 percent of the association between early social media use and lower academic performance.
The researchers said the finding supports the possibility that distraction caused by smartphones or excessive engagement with social media may contribute to weaker academic outcomes.
"The results suggest that delaying children's access to social media until they are cognitively mature enough to manage its distracting effects on their own could benefit learning," Prof. Gui said.
BY JEONG JAE-HONG [shin.woojin@joongang.co.kr]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
