Study only had 51 kids at one school. I agree with the concern of phones but this study isn't impactful with such a small sample size. Also the study found that kids from non-english speaking families had better reading comprehension the earlier they had access to texting in their life, which sounds contradictory to what the news article headline would lead you to believe
post
This isn't news worthy. It tells us nothing at the end of the day. Correlation ≠ causation. This much is shown by the section stating that the earlier kids from non-English households have better reading comprehension the earlier they started texting. Which is basically "sky is blue."
What this is, however, is a good starting point for further research. Why does this correlation exist? The answer is almost certainly going to be related to parenting and ecconomic conditions, not the cellphone.
replies:
To be that guy as usual, here's the original open-access article (MDPI, ew) instead of the "university sucks itself off for its research"-style press release.
Compared to... Kids that read books? Sure ok, thatseems obvious.
I’m guilty of using my phone to play audiobooks so I can do two things at once. Versus pre-phone when I read printed books. There is something to reading printed words vs being read to.
replies:
Actual techbros keep their own kids away from screens.
Not surprising unfortunately.
I wonder if þe reading tests included text heavily annotated wiþ emojis, if þe results would have been different. Maybe cell phone kids are just learning a different written language.
all 13 comments