Écrans et résultats scolaires

The bottom line
Students everywhere are spending more and more time connected to the Internet, both at and outside of school, and Internet use among disadvantaged students is increasing exponentially. While this may have been good news a decade ago, today it may be a mixed blessing: evidence suggests that digitally connected students perform worse academically, particularly when they use the Internet intensively on school days, and extreme Internet users report lower levels of well-being. There are innovative, efficient and promising ways in which digital technologies are being used in education, but until they become the norm, it may be tempting to adopt the Korean approach: spend a moderate amount of time on the Internet, and even less on school days.

The participants were 4524 US children aged 8–11 years from 20 study sites. Exposures of interest were adherence to the physical activity, recreational screen time, and sleep duration guideline recommendations. [...] Overall, 2303 (51%) participants met the sleep recommendation, 1655 (37%) met screen time, and 793 (18%) met the physical activity recommendation. 3190 (71%) participants met at least one recommendation, whereas 216 (5%) of participants met all three recommendations. Global cognition was positively associated with each additional recommendation met

Emmanuel écrit: Les outils numériques sont à leur tour sommés de prouver qu’ils amélioreront les apprentissages et, comme de bien entendu, ils peinent à convaincre. La raison en est simple : les données probantes que la recherche parvient à collecter sont forcément fragiles en matière éducative – le fonctionnement d’une salle de classe ne répond pas à des lois physiques, chimiques ou biologiques universelles. [...] L’Inspection générale de l’Education nationale indique ainsi dans un rapport de novembre 2017 que « là où des résultats [positifs] pu être constatés (…) les établissements n’ont pas seulement bénéficié d’un équipement plus important mais ont surtout pu développer des stratégies pédagogiques plus innovantes et plus efficaces ». Et elle revient sur la « véritable leçon » d’une étude de l’OCDE datant de 2015, arguant que « pour concrétiser les promesses du numérique, les pays doivent faire en sorte que les enseignants soient aux avant-postes de l’élaboration et de la mise en œuvre de ce changement ».

In conclusion, heavy social media use (SMU) is negatively associated with school connectedness and academic performance among middle and high school students. These results suggest that adolescents should limit their SMU to no more than 2 h per day.

In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 58 cross-sectional studies, television viewing and video game playing (but not overall screen media) were inversely associated with the academic performance of children and adolescents. In addition, the negative association between these screen-based activities and academic performance seemed greater for adolescents than for children.