Not so fast! As usual, this is a biased study as it does not ask what do young users of social media learn more compared to other students.
The study is limited to Northern Italy and focuses only on early childhood!
"Children who start using social media at a younger age may be putting their future academic performance at risk, according to a new study that tracked more than 5,000 students in Italy.
Researchers found that adolescents who opened their first personal social media account at ages 11 to 12 went on to score significantly lower in standardized tests than peers who waited until age 14 or 15. ..."
From the abstract:
"This study uses difference-in-differences models to evaluate the impact of early social media use on academic performance among children aged 7–16 years. A dataset comprising 5,227 students from northern Italy was constructed by merging data from a questionnaire on lifetime digital media habits with longitudinal standardized test scores in Italian, English and mathematics. Participants who created a personal social media account in 6th, 7th or 8th grade were separately matched with late adopters who initiated their first social media account in the 9th grade or later. The findings provide compelling evidence that early engagement with social media adversely affects learning outcomes. Additional findings on the effects of early social media use on other academic outcomes for which we do not have longitudinal data are in line with our main findings. We also find supporting evidence that a substantial part of this negative effect is mediated by students’ smartphone pervasiveness in key moments of the day."
Longitudinal effect of early social media use on standardized learning outcomes during school career (open access)
Fig. 1: Exposure to technology during primary, lower- and upper-secondary school, box plot.
Fig. 2: Effect of early use of social media on competences in grades 8 (Italian, mathematics and English) and 10 (Italian and mathematics).
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