ZOOM

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89356778990

Meeting ID: 893 5677 8990
Passcode: 814421

Abstract

Against the backdrop of dwindling attention spans amongst teenagers, previous research has linked excessive recreational screen time to lower academic outcomes. The debate surrounding adolescents’ digital technology use has largely moved beyond simple accounts of “screen time” towards more nuanced understandings of how students engage with technology. However, too little is still known about how teenagers’ engagement with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)—namely, how frequently and for what purposes they use digital devices— relates to socio-emotional traits such as perseverance. This study uses data from the PISA 2022 ICT questionnaire (N = 126,649 students across 25 countries) and employs a multi-stage methodological approach to examine the relationship between digital engagement and adolescents’ perseverance. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), we identify five profiles of ICT engagement among teenagers in OECD countries: the Digitally Disconnected, Recreational Users, Average Users, Academic Users, and the All-Rounders. Our analyses reveal that recreational users show the lowest levels of perseverance, followed closely by the digitally disconnected. In contrast, using ICT for academic purposes shows a positive relationship with perseverance, even after controlling for gender, age, family, school’s socio-economic status and country fixed effects. Overall, our study broadly aligns with previous research indicating an inverted U-shaped relationship between ICT use and perseverance. It thus warns against either heavy digital engagement or full disengagement while highlighting benefits of purposeful employment of digital tools for learning.