Students who use internet excessively 'more likely to skip school'

According to the latest research, excessive internet use affects students' absenteeism rate.

A group of six scientists from Finland published a new study on the relationship between sleep time, physical activity, excessive internet use and school absenteeism on April 16. The study was conducted based on data from 86,270 adolescents aged 14-16 in Finland, published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood .

The study found that 34.7% of young people surveyed slept less than 8 hours per night during school days, and 34.3% engaged in low levels of physical activity (less than 3 days per week with a minimum of 1 hour per day). In addition, all three factors, low nighttime sleep, low physical activity, and excessive internet use, were associated with unexcused or medical absences.

According to the study, girls are more likely to use the internet excessively than boys. In addition, skipping school or being absent due to illness can be overcome with good sleep and exercise habits, along with strong family relationships. In particular, teenagers who feel they can share their difficulties with their parents are 59% less likely to skip school and 39% less likely to be absent due to illness.

To assess whether students were actually using the internet excessively, the team measured five aspects: neglecting family, friends, and schoolwork; feeling anxious if not surfing the internet; not eating or sleeping because of surfing the internet. Students were asked to rate each aspect on a scale of 1 (never) to 4 (often) to provide an overall average score, the researchers added.

The results showed that the average score of more than 86,000 students was below 2, and only over 2% (1,881 students) achieved the maximum score of 4.

In many developed countries, high school dropout rates are becoming an alarming problem.

The Finnish team said that this was an observational study and that it was not possible to draw firm conclusions about causal relationships between factors. Furthermore, the survey data did not include how students used the internet. "Despite these limitations, the results of the study have important implications for improving students' health and educational attainment," the authors said.

High absenteeism rates have been a problem for many developed countries in recent times, especially in the post-Covid-19 years. In the UK, for example, absenteeism rates hit a record high in the 2022-2023 academic year, with 1 in 50 state school students missing at least half of their lessons. This is 1.5 times higher than in the 2018-2019 academic year, before Covid-19 hit, according to data from the UK Department for Education.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., an estimated 26% of public school students nationwide will be chronically absent in the 2022-2023 school year, up from 15% before the pandemic, according to data from 40 states and Washington, D.C., compiled by the American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absenteeism is typically defined as missing at least 10% of the school year, or about 18 days, for any reason.

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