The impacts of gadgets on development and knowledge of primary school students in urban area of Negeri Sembilan

Abstract

In this era of technology, gadgets have become a necessity for primary school students due to the fact that they have been overly exposed to them ever since they were little. In addition, attaching too much to gadgets may affect their development and knowledge. This causal research was conducted to investigate the impacts of gadgets on development and knowledge of primary school students. This study was conducted on 464 primary school students through multistage sampling method that consists of cluster sampling and stratified sampling. The self-administered questionnaire is distributed to the primary school students with guidance and the data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Amos. The result was analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) method and the finding can be used as parents’ guidelines to educate them about the effect of gadgets toward students’ development. The result shows that gadgets usage significantly affects primary school students’ development which are psychosocial development and socio emotional development. Other than that, this research found that the primary school students’ development which were psychosocial development, socio emotional development and responsibility mediate the impacts of gadgets on primary school students’ knowledge. Besides that, gadgets usage also directly affect the students’ knowledge. In conclusion, parents or guardians play an important role in controlling gadgets usage on primary school students to ensure that they gain benefits from using gadgets.