In a webinar, Julie Cullen of Sensible Screen Use shared insights from a recently published review which examined the impacts of digital technologies on the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents. Below are summarised the key insights from the webinar.
New Zealand children have higher screen time than most other countries, at home and in the classroom. Statistics from 2018 showed that teenagers in Aotearoa New Zealand had 42 hours of screen time on average each week, compared to an international average of 35 hours. Other New Zealand data suggests that averages of screen time for infants and toddlers under 2 years old are between 1 and 1.5 hours, and that 60 % of children aged 2 to 4 years of age and 80% of children aged 5 to 9 years have more than 2 hours of screen time per day. While more research is needed,the majority of harm associated with extended screen time was found to occur with between 2 and 6 hours of daily screen use for children over 5 years old, 1 hour for children aged 2 to 5 years old, and for children under 2 years old, the risk of harm suggests that no screen time should be advised.
New recommendations from The Paediatric Society in New Zealand aim to provide pragmatic guidance about the use of digital technologies in educational settings, based on extensive reviews of research and consultation with the sector. The recommendations include evidence-based advice across different ages and stages of development, allowing students to benefit from the opportunities that digital technologies can offer to learning, while limiting risks to health and wellbeing. This includes interventions such as eye breaks, blinking exercises, and safer ways to use ear buds, among others. To create these guidelines, two comprehensive research reviews were conducted: one examining how digital technology affects children and young people’s health and wellbeing, and the other looking at its impact on educational outcomes.
Some device use can support health, although frequent use of digital devices is associated with a risk of harm across numerous areas of health and wellbeing. Extended screen time was found to be associated with damage to eye health (including digital eye strain, myopia, and dry eye disease), as well as hearing loss, headaches, back and neck pain, and repetitive strain injuries, regardless of how digital devices were used and aspects such as the quality of content. Conversely, in other areas of health such as mental health, wellbeing, and cognition, the quality and content of screen media (along with other factors like age, gender and context of device use) may be more important than screen time. Cognition, which is particularly relevant to education, is an area where the benefits and risks were more age dependant, with greater risks to younger children. The kinds of digital device use found to support health, particularly for adolescents, include looking up health information and making social connections, as well as the provision of supports for children with disabilities.
Some screen use can support learning, but frequent screen use is associated with poorer learning outcomes. In international and New Zealand research and reports, moderate use of digital devices to learn has been linked to improved learning outcomes for students, including gaining digital skills; but more frequent use has been associated with reduced educational outcomes (including digital skills). A recent study (using PISA data from Finland, Estonia, and Spain) found a causal, rather than correlational association between ‘very intense device use’ (ranging from ‘once or twice a week’, to ‘almost everyday’ use) and reduced learning outcomes. These countries were chosen because of their advanced integration of digital technologies for educational purposes and teacher training, such as Finland and Estonia, which may suggest that while effective pedagogy is important, the impact of time spent using devices to learn cannot be offset by effective pedagogies.
Digital technologies can support student’s learning outcomes. Examples include teachers’ use of devices to teach and to improve their own learning, along with teachers using digital devices with students. Teaching children digital skills is important, and skills like computational thinking can begin early and do not require a device. Digital technologies can allow students to collaborate across distances, to access information, or even to view live stream footage of the international space station! Simple free resources like Khan Academy can reinforce learning concepts. Some students may benefit more than others from digital technologies for learning, including students with specific learning needs. Searching for information on the internet is one independent use of digital technology that is found to lead to improvements in learning outcomes. A number of independent student learning tasks commonly used in New Zealand, however, are associated with reduced learning outcomes. This includes tasks such as using learning apps, online homework, e-textbooks, and numerous others.
In early childhood education, recommendations emphasise the holistic nature of learning and recognise that most young children exceed screen time guidelines before entering the early childhood setting. For this reason, recommendations are carefully worded to ensure that digital device use is not encouraged in ECE. If used, digital device use should be active, supervised, and evidence-based, with teachers modelling appropriate use and promoting play in safe digital decision-making.
Some schools and communities may find that student engagement improves as a result of digital technologies in the classroom, but increased engagement does not necessarily translate into improved learning outcomes. Technology use still needs to be aligned with effective pedagogy, and the amount of time spent learning on devices seems to matter as well. Alongside engagement, teachers should also consider the impact of digital distraction, which is beginning to be explored in research. While analysis of the most recent PISA data (2022) found that intentional, focused use of digital devices to learn was associated with improvements in maths, with most gains made in up to one hour of use per day, the students who reported being distracted by digital devices in some, most, or every class had significantly lower test scores. In New Zealand, over 80% of students report feeling distracted by digital devices in some, most, or every class. Filters are very important, but it is also important to be aware that none are totally effective, and younger students require supervision online. Most students at school are reporting digital distraction despite use of filters in class.
There is increasing evidence supporting the effectiveness of writing by hand and reading from print as powerful learning tools for developing core skills in literacy and mathematics. Children who learn to read in print become better online readers and enjoy reading more. Because of differences in the way we read online and in print, research indicates that students remember and understand more from printed text. Writing by hand gives children more time to process information and more cues with which to connect their learning. Under an MRI scanner, the brains of students who are writing and reading offline light up in many different areas, as opposed to mostly the visual area related to online work. In Sweden and Denmark, the world’s highest users of digital technologies in education, there is now a shift to encourage the use of analogue tools for core subjects at primary school age.
These findings suggest that it is important that teachers look to peer-reviewed evidence of effectiveness of a digital technology before implementing its use. Most principals and teachers, when asked why they use learning apps, tend to repeat marketing information. While some learning apps may be useful to some students, the majority of research on learning apps (which may appear to present positive results) is of low quality, funded by app manufacturers, and not peer-reviewed. Many apps commonly used in New Zealand schools have little evidence available for their effectiveness. For example, some apps have some evidence of improvement in short-term retention of information, but there is also some evidence that gamified learning apps may undermine deeper learning and retention of information. While there may be some students who will benefit more than others, and targeted use may be appropriate, general research on learning apps finds they are associated with reduced learning outcomes. UNESCO have advised teachers that it is important to be aware of the profit-driven nature of this industry, and often those involved in the ed tech industry are also involved in teacher professional development.
A key take-away is that some digital technologies can support some learning, some of the time. The balanced, age-appropriate, and evidence-based use of digital technologies in the classroom can help children and young people to learn and gain digital skills, while reducing risks to student’s health and wellbeing associated with frequent screen time.
Further reading and resources
Find the recommendations from The Paediatric Society of New Zealand here.
The new requirements for policies and practices to manage health and safety risks for students using digital devices to learn are available here.
Explore Khan Academy here.
Read UNESCO’s GEM Computers in Education report.
Listen to this short podcast on the science of reading in a digital age with Maryanne Wolf (UCLA Professor-in-Residence of Education and Direction of the Centre for Dyslexia).
Cullen, J., Marsh, S., Simmonds, L., & Duncan, S. (2024). The impact of digital technologies on children and adolescents in Aotearoa New Zealand: A case for the development of best-practice recommendations for schools. Waikato Journal of Education. Advance online publication.
Cullen, J., Muntz, A., Marsh, S., Simmonds, L., Mayes, J., O’Neill, K., & Duncan, S. (2024). Impact of digital screen use on health and wellbeing of children and adolescents: A narrative review. (2024). New Zealand Journal of Physiotherapy, 52(1), 62–77.
