A study has suggested that every hour that a teenager spends watching TV worsens their GCSE results by the equivalent of two grades spread out across their exams.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge said that even if pupils are doing a normal amount of homework, the amount of time they spend watching TV, playing computer games or surfing the internet can harm their performances significantly. This was costing pupils 2.5% of the average score for each hour.
The study also suggested that every hour spent on daily screen time was effecting grades to be dropping from an A to a B in two out of ten subjects.
The researchers had analysed 845 teenagers at 18 secondary schools across Cambridgeshire, from age 14 to their GCSEs.
Kirsten Corder led the research. She said, “What we found was that teenagers with higher screen time at 14 and a half got two grades lower in their GCSEs for every hour [of screen time], even when we took account of the amount of reading and homework they did.”
On the other hand, Andrew Przybylski, a research fellow at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute, stated it would be inappropriate to blame screen time for worsening GCSE results as the authors of the research were not aware about the teenagers' academic ability at the start of the study.
