| Abstract [eng] |
In a modern society, the use of the internet is becoming part of everyday life, it is used by both - adults and children. Researchers note that primary school students are one of the largest groups of children using the internet. The increasing use of the Internet among children of this age is reflected in various areas of their lives. One of the most important areas of life for children of this age is school. Although there is a growing debate about how the use of the internet relates to children's academic success, research tends to focus on older children and young adults, other shortcomings, often conflicting results, a lack of long-term analysis and specificity of impact is noticeable, when analyzing how various activities on the Internet relate to a child's success in school, not all areas of learning is taken into account, and it is usually chosen to analyze objectively measurable academic success. That is why the main goal of this work is to analyze the use of the internet by children from primary school and to investigate its significance for their parents' subjectively assessed children's academic success. The study is based mainly on the data of 221 third and fourth graders, 114 girls and 107 boys studying in four Vilnius state schools. All data used in the study were collected using questionnaires developed by the main researchers of the project “School – aged children‘s internet use in relation to socioemotional development and parenting practices in Latvia, Lithuania and Taiwan: a longitudinal study“. Depending on the purpose of the study, a correlation strategy was chosen, but the available data on children's, parents' subjectively assessed, academic success and children's use of the internet a year ago provided an opportunity to analyze the significance in a long term. The results of the study showed that, according to the parents' assessment, the child's general academic success or individual academic success of learning mathematics, cognition of the world and Lithuanian can be (or at least potentially) predicted by how much time the child spent on the internet on weekdays a year ago. Those children who spent more time on the internet on working days a year ago are less successful in learning these subjects (according to parents). The research also discusses the links between specific activities performed on the internet and children's academic success, other results, limitations, and provides practical recommendations. |
