Kids who start social media earlier may do worse at school
Students who open a personal social media account earlier in adolescence appear to perform worse on later standardized tests, according to a study in Nature Human Behaviour based on 5,227 Italian students. The authors speculate that these differences may be attributable to excessive social media engagement and disruptions to students' attention.
A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour suggests that students who begin using social media at a younger age may experience poorer academic performance. Researchers analyzed data from 5,227 Italian students and found that those who created their first social media account between the ages of 11 and 12 scored, on average, 0.22 standard deviations lower in Italian and 0.18 standard deviations lower in mathematics by the age of 13-14 compared to those who started using social media in grades 9 or later.
By the age of 15-16, the gap widened to 0.22 standard deviations in Italian and 0.27 standard deviations in mathematics. The findings indicate that the earlier a student starts using social media, the more significant the impact on their test scores. However, the study's authors caution that these results should be interpreted with caution due to the observational nature of the research.
The negative association was particularly pronounced for Italian and mathematics scores, with no significant differences observed in English.
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