Achi news desk-
Young people who spend too much time online are more likely to miss school due to illness or truancy, according to a study.
Teenage girls appear to be more likely than teenage boys to score high on excessive internet use, according to the findings. But it seems that lots of sleep and exercise and a trusting relationship with their parents go some way to reducing the effects of extreme internet use on classroom absences.
The findings of the research, led by a team in Finland, were published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.
In order to try to measure what effect excessive internet use could have on school attendance and what mitigating factors, if any, there might be, the team used data from the Health Promotion in Schools study, a survey carried out in the Finland and managed by the country’s Institute of Health. and Welfare.
They focused on 86,270 year 8 and 9 pupils aged 14 to 16. The young people were specifically asked about their relationship with their parents in terms of how often they shared concerns with them, as well as how long they slept each night, and how many days of the week they had been wandering for at least an hour.
Excessive internet use was assessed by measuring five lifestyle factors that indicate compulsion: neglecting family, friends and studying; anxiety if not online; and not being able to eat or sleep because of being online.
Respondents were asked to estimate how often they experienced each of these, scoring them from one (never) to four (very often) to give an overall average. They also provided information on how many times during the most recent school year they had played truant or been absent due to illness.
The average score on the scale was just under two, and just over 2% (1,881) of the participants scored a maximum of four. Girls were more likely to use the internet excessively than boys, the researchers found.
Spending too much time online was associated with an increased risk of truancy (38% increased risk) and medically explained school absences (24% increased risk).
But good relationships with parents, longer sleep during the week and physical activity emerged as significantly protective, with more of each factor associated with a gradually decreasing risk of truancy and school absences due to illness.
Being able to talk about concerns with parents was most strongly associated with the lowest risk of absence from school of both types. Young people who often felt they could share troubling problems with their parents were 59% less likely to play truant and 39% less likely to be absent from school due to illness.
This is an observational study and no definite conclusions could be drawn about causal factors. The researchers acknowledged that the School Health Promotion data did not include information about the type of internet use that teenagers engage in.
“Despite the limitations, our results have important implications for health promotion and educational attainment,” the researchers said. “Our results are relevant to professionals who organize and work in school health and wellbeing services, particularly when professionals meet students whose absence from school is a concern.”
