Swapping children’s time from digital media to enrichment activities improves academic skills

CHE RESEARCH BITES

By Nicole Black, Danusha Jayawardana and Gawain Heckley

23 September, 2024

Children from disadvantaged families experience worse academic and mental health outcomes - but the key to improving these odds could lie in their after-school routine.

A lack of family resources can reduce the affordability of stimulating extra-curricular activities, and make it challenging for parents to spend time actively engaged with their children, let alone keeping track of all their children’s activities outside school hours.

Our research shows that despite significant public investment, children aged 4 to 14 from socioeconomically disadvantaged families consistently fall behind more privileged peers in numeracy and literacy skills, as well as mental health.

After examining how children from a range of backgrounds spent their time across all activities over 24 hours, we found that, on average, disadvantaged children spend 38 minutes more per day on digital media, such as TV, compared to more economically advantaged children.

This extra screen time is at the expense of enrichment activities like doing homework, playing a musical instrument, reading, or playing board games.

These differences over time contribute to the relatively lower academic achievement of children from disadvantaged families and are more pronounced for boys and older children.

Interventions aimed at changing how children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families spend their out-of-school time – by increasing their time spent on enrichment activities, whether organised or recreational, instead of digital media – are likely to reduce inequalities in children’s outcomes.

Find the original academic paper here: Black, N., Jayawardana, D., & Heckley, G. (2024). Children’s time allocation and the socioeconomic gap in human capital. European Economic Review, 104821. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104821

Find out more about the Disadvantage and health research theme.

CHE Research Bites are short, easy-to-understand summaries of our recent academic papers highlighting new evidence and insights on topical issues in the health and healthcare sectors.

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