Teens Without Internet Access Miss Out on Education, Social Opportunities

A recent study revealed that the risks of internet and mobility could be outweighed in case of the UK’s teenage education.

The UK’s Oxford University conducted a large-scale study that found that the educational benefits of the internet and mobility could overcome the risks associated with them.

The study team randomly picked up more than 1000 UK households apart from interviewing more than 200 teenagers with their families during the period between 2008 and 2011. They found that parents remained anxious about the internet and deemed social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as potential distractions to their children.

In fact, the parents are justified with their concerns, as children can be addictive to these sites especially while having instant access on a tablet or smartphone. However, the team from the Department of Education in Oxford University concluded that both kinds of technology could offer educational advantages.

The study found that without internet connection at home, teenagers felt like socially isolated as well as educationally disadvantaged. Teenage students said that most of their projects required them to look for resources online. So, they could not be able to complete or work on their projects or research if they did not have internet connection.

During the time when the study had been conducted, almost 10% UK teenagers were found without internet connection at home. However, the Office of National Statistics’ recent figures suggested that the percentage had dropped from 10 to 5 last year.

The researchers said that there were approximately 300,000 UK teenagers who were deprived of internet facility at home. According to them, these disconnected youths were missing out both socially and educationally.

The study also showed contradictory findings from other studies that concluded smartphones and social networking as distractions to the teenagers. However, these researchers considered internet to be a medium offering more learning opportunities to students.

Image Courtesy: www.themactrack.com