Study: Smartphones stunting students’ social skills
August 27, 2014
LOS ANGELES – When you see a tween or teen on the street, in a store, outside a school building, sitting in a car, eating at a fast food restaurant…virtually anywhere…what are they likely to be doing? If your answer is staring at their Smartphone, you’d probably be right. And a new study done by the University of California Los Angeles says that can be a roadblock in a child’s ability to read emotions.
The UCLA psychology department looked at two groups of 11- to 12-year-olds. During the research, one group made significantly more progress than the other. The group deprived of all digital media, even television, performed significantly better at recognizing emotions than those allowed to keep texting and tweeting and talking on Facebook after just five days.
In an article published in Malay Mail Online, Patricia Greenfield, senior author of the study, complained, “Many people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education, and not many are looking at the costs. Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues—losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people—is one of the costs.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports that as of 2009 22 percent of teens log on to their favorite social media sites more than 10 times a day, half log on more than once a day. Seventy-five percent own cell phones. Twenty-five percent use them for social media, 54 percent for texting and 24 percent for instant messaging. No doubt those numbers have increased since that poll was published.
Researchers worked with a total of 105 sixth graders from a Southern California public school, a small but significant study. Half of those students spent five days at a nature and science camp where digital technology was strictly taboo. It seems participants were forced to interact with each other face-to-face instead of screen-to-screen.
All were tested before and after the five days.
https://eagnews.org/study-smartphones-stunting-students-social-skills/
