The Relationship Between Internet Use, Achievement, and Persistence in Digital Tasks

Area of Science:

• Educational Technology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Digital Literacy

Background:

• Growing reliance on digital tasks necessitates strong cognitive abilities.
• Concerns exist regarding the impact of high connected device usage on young people's sustained focus and accuracy in complex online tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between the frequency of internet use and 15-year-old students' accuracy in cognitively challenging digital tasks.
• To assess if internet use affects the maintenance of accuracy during prolonged cognitive assessments.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 153,603 students across 27 countries in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
• Analyzed the correlation between students' self-reported internet usage frequency and their performance accuracy in reading, mathematics, and science assessments.
• Examined accuracy decline over a 2-hour assessment period in relation to internet use patterns.

Main Results:

• Students with very high or very low internet use exhibited lower baseline accuracy across all assessed domains compared to moderate users.
• Internet usage frequency did not correlate with the decline in accuracy for mathematics and science tasks during the assessment.
• High internet users showed less decline in accuracy for reading tasks over time, contrasting with moderate and low users.

Conclusions:

• The study suggests that fears of internet use diminishing young people's persistence on cognitive tasks are not supported by the data.
• High levels of internet engagement are associated with lower initial accuracy in digital cognitive tasks, but not necessarily with reduced sustained performance.