How does technology affect a teenager's grades?

  • Do social media, video games, television, etc. affect a teenager's grades?


  • "The average kid from ages 8-18 can end up spending 10 hours a day on the internet."
  • “American children and teens spend about four hours a week on homework and attend school for about 32.5 hours a week, according to a U-M study that provides a detailed snapshot of the way school-age children spend their time.” “For example, today's children and teens spend more than 14 hours a week watching television-almost as much time as children did 20 years ago."
  • “The results are consistent with surveys on adolescents who play video games in the United States. In one representative sample of American adolescents, aged 10 to 19, kids who played video games spent 30% less time reading and 34% less time doing homework
  • “A new study says that college students who are on Facebook while studying or doing homework wind up getting 20 percent lower grades than students who don't have the social networking site in visual range, or even running in the background on their computers or mobile phones.”

But why?

  • Teens can spend their time playing video games or watching TV instead of studying
  • On the other hand, teens could use internet to help them study and learn
  • They could read false information which would just set their learning back
  • They could post about what they know and share real info with the world

How does this compare to the books we've read?

The Unidentified: The teens in the Game spent so much time on their tablets texting each other and updating their status that it seemed like the school wasn't even a school. It seemed like a place where people socialized, then went home, when they were supposed to be learning. The arcade and being sponsored distracted them from learning actual things.

Fahrenheit 451: In this book there was so much technology to distract people from books it seemed like it could distract kids from learning, too. When getting home from school, why go and do homework when you can talk to the walls? Or take a nap with your Seashell? The technology seemed to run the world and drown out any real thinking.

  • The message I'm getting from both books:

Technology is completely overdone. It is preventing out real thoughts. It is holding back learning because it is a distraction.

Doesn't that seem similar to today's society?

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