Abstract
<p>The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between internet usage behavior and academic achievement among elementary school students from grade 4-6 in Bangkok. The researcher employed Multi-stage Sampling to recruit 297 samples. The data was gathered via the following tests: 1) Intelligence tests, namely Colored Progressive Matrices (CPM) for students aged 5-11 year old or Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) for 12 year old and above, and 2) Academic achievement test, namely Wide Range Achievement Test Thai Edition: WRAT-Thai. The findings revealed that time spent on the internet is negatively correlated to student’s reading achievement (r = -.24, p &lt; .001), spelling achievement (r = -.26, p &lt; .001), and math achievement (r = -.20, p = .001). More surprisingly, academic related internet usage was also found to be negatively correlated to math achievement (r = -.20, p &lt; 0.05). Meanwhile, internet usage for social media has a correlation with academic achievement in math and reading, (r = -.20, p = .001) and (r = -.13, p &lt; .05), respectively. Moreover, internet usage for entertainment was found to have a negative correlation with academic achievement in reading, spelling and math, (r = -.25, p &lt; .001), (r = -.27, p &lt; .001) and (r = -.21, p &lt; .001), respectively. Internet usage for online business, however, yielded no correlation to academic achievement. The study concluded that daily internet usage does have an effect on academic achievement in math. Moreover, when used for entertainment and social media, internet usage can pose a negative effect on academic achievement in reading and writing.</p>
Highlights
In the modern days, computers and internet play a major role in our daily lives; this has brought about both the positive and the negative effect upon people, upon children and youth
The top three most popular information and communication technology devices owned by the samples in this study were traditional mobile phones without internet connectivity feature (75%), followed by mobiles phones that do allow internet connection such as smartphones or iPhones (71%), and tablets (50.8%)
This particular finding is consistent to the report from the survey of household acquisition and usage of information and communication technology among population aged 6 year old and above from 2009 to 2015 which affirmed the rising number of mobile phone users from 66.4% to 79.3% as well as internet users from 23.7% to 39.3%
Summary
Computers and internet play a major role in our daily lives; this has brought about both the positive and the negative effect upon people, upon children and youth. According to the survey of household acquisition and usage of information and communication technology, from 2011 to 2015, the numbers of computer users among the population, aged 6 and above, have increased from 32% to 34.9% (National Statistics Office—Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, 2015). When speculated according to age groups, the group of 15-24 year old was found to have the highest number of internet users, being 76.8% from 51.9%. As a matter of fact, social media was reported as the number one online activity (88.6%) ahead of watching movies, listening to music and playing games (87.4%) as well as uploading information and pictures and sharing of photographs and videos (75%) (National Statistics Office—Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, 2015). The survey of internet usage behaviour in Thailand conducted by the Ministry of Information and Technology in 2014 found internet usage duration to have increased from 4.6 hours per day or 32.3 hours per week in 2014 to 7.2 hours per day or 50.4 hours per week in the www.ccsenet.org/jedp
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