Mobile Connectivity and Adolescent Well-being. Evidence from a Randomised Control Trial on a Media Education Training Programme in High Schools

Abstract

In recent years a growing public debate has started on smartphone use by young people. Research has found adverse relationships between smartphone intensive use and well-being. However, there has been a lack of structured interventions targeting schools and families. This paper shows the results of a cluster randomised controlled trial evaluating the impact of a media education intervention focusing on time management and the conscious use of mobile devices. The impact of a teachers’ training course is assessed on their 10th-grade students, looking at their smartphone use, online content management, and subjective well-being. Treated students show a significant decrease in problematic smartphone use, with girls showing impacts also on their content-mediated digital skill and a beneficial effect on general well-being. We discuss how such evidence may contribute to the scholarly debate about the well-being consequences of problematic smartphone use and to the development of effective policies in the field.

Smartphone Use and Academic Performance: A Pervasiveness Approach Beyond Addiction

“…This 5-item scale was first administered and validated on a sample of 4,675 Italian upper secondary school students, obtaining satisfactory results both in terms of factorial validity and internal consistency. More recently, a revised version of SPS-A was developed based on the empirical evidences emerged on the consequences of consistently checking the smartphone close to sleep time and during lessons at school (Gui et al, 2018). Two further items were added to the original scale: The first item asks respondents how often they use their smartphone first thing in the morning when they wake up, while the second focuses on the frequency of use at school during class.…”

“…The project questionnaire covered students’ sociodemographic characteristics, digital competence, attitudes toward digital technologies, daily smartphone usage habits, and problematic smartphone use (Gui et al, 2018). For this last topic, the questionnaire included both the SPS-A and SAS-SV measures.…”

“…The analyses were carried out on data from the second wave of data collection of the Digital Well-being—Schools project (Gui et al, 2018). This project involved an extensive survey on all 10th-grade students in 18 high schools located in two neighboring districts of the Lombardy region, northern Italy.…”