Over 80% of rural children can use a smartphone but social media is the main attraction, finds the 2024 Annual Status of Education Report. Using it for studies is a distant second. Academic experts need to find ways to use the smartphone to improve learning outcomes, explains Banasree Purkayastha.
l Smartphone access and ownership trends
ACCESS, OWNERSHIP AND usage of smartphones among the 14-16 years age group, as well as one-on-one assessment of some basic digital skills, were tracked for the first time in the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). At an all-India level, almost 90% of both girls and boys report having a smartphone at home, though it is a shared device for most as only 31.4% had their own smartphone. In 2018, nearly 90% of rural households had simple mobile phones and 36% had smartphones. In 2022, over 74% of the households had smartphones.
Over 82% of these children can use a smartphone. In Bihar, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh, the proportion of those with a smartphone at home and those who can use a smartphone are lower as compared to other states. Southern states – Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – predictably scored high in access to smartphones. In Andhra Pradesh, close to 47% had a phone of their own in contrast to Assam where it is around 14%. Surprisingly, the percentage of children in Karnataka with their own phone was only 26%.
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l Social media tops priority list for rural students
WITH ONLINE EDUCATION here to stay, is technology delivering on its promise of closing the education gaps? Though more than 80% of children in the age group of 14-16 across the country know how to use a smartphone, only 57% of them use it for educational purposes — watching online videos related to studies, solving doubts related to current studies using the internet, or exchanging notes/clearing doubts with teachers or friends using platforms like WhatsApp/Telegram. However, 76% said that they had used it for social media during the same period, indicating that the apprehension that the youth of India spend their time and data plans making reels could be quite true. Kerala stands out in this respect, with over 80% children reporting that they used the smartphone for educational activity and over 90% using it for social media.
l Digital literacy needs no teachers
ON THE DAY of the survey, nearly 66% of these children were able to bring a smartphone (their own, a family member’s, or a neighbour’s) to do the digital tasks. These children were asked to do three tasks using the smartphone: set an alarm (77% were successful), browse for a specific piece of information (79%), and locate a YouTube video (87%). If they were able to locate the video, they were asked to share it with someone else via any messaging platform. More than three-quarters of children to whom these tasks were given were able to perform them successfully. Among those who could locate the video on YouTube, over 90% were able to share it, found the study conducted by NGO Pratham.
The children were also quite aware of the dangers lurking in cyberspace and had basic knowledge of how to safeguard themselves. “Among the surveyed children who used social media, 62% said they knew how to block and report a profile, 55.2% knew how to make a profile private and 57.7% knew how to change a password,” the report stated.
l Gender divide in the digital world
WHETHER IT IS access to physical classes or a digital device, the gender disparity remains a big problem. While 70.2% of boys brought a smartphone to do digital tasks set by the ASER surveyor, only 62.2% could do likewise. When it comes to ownership also, boys had an edge — 36.2% owned a smartphone while for girls this figure was 26.9%. This gender gap is seen across all states.
However, when it came to the choice of activity on the smartphone, there was not much of a difference in the inclination. While 57.2% of boys used the smartphone for educational activity, 56.8% of girls took the help of the smartphone for their studies. When it came to using social media, the gap was a little more: 79% of boys against 73% of girls. Boys’ awareness of safety features in digital devices was much higher than that of girls across a majority of states. Gender gaps were observed in performance on every task, with the largest gap in the girls’ ability to set an alarm on the smartphone. In Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, girls either outperform boys or are at the same level as them.
l Improvement in learning outcomes
AMONG OTHER THINGS, the survey found that the proportion of 15-16-year-olds not enrolled in school stayed about the same at 7.9% in 2024 at the all-India level against 7.5% in 2022. The proportion of girls not enrolled has increased slightly from 7.9% in 2022 to 8.1% in 2024. It also revealed improvements in basic reading and arithmetic among students of classes 3 and 5 in rural areas reverting back from the post-pandemic damage. “We have not seen improvements of this magnitude in the last 20 years since ASER has been presenting data on foundational reading and arithmetic. Everything seems to point towards NEP 2020 and its focus on foundational skills,” said Wilima Wadhwa, director of ASER Centre. The 2024 study covers 649,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts in India.
