At last, it is widely accepted in Spain that the PISA results are very poor, now the worst in history. However, opponents of screens are seizing the opportunity to claim in the media, on social media, and within institutions that global factors such as screen use are to blame, and that this is why scores have declined in almost every country.
Not only are they making education worse, but they’re also ignoring the scientific evidence on the matter and the statistical data itself. Spain’s scores have dropped, for example, by 23 points in Reading, which is equivalent to more than one school year, or 14 months. It is true that Taiwan has also seen a decline, but by 7 points, equivalent to 4 months. Could it be that teenagers in Taiwan use screens less than those in Spain? The data suggest otherwise. In Taiwan, they use screens an average of 1.8 hours a day for learning at school and 1.1 hours for leisure; in Spain, the figures are 1.4 and 0.7. Is Taiwan an isolated case? The data suggest otherwise: the OECD average is 1.7 and 1.1, also higher than in Spain.
When the wise points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger. “The problem is not screen time, but what students do with the screens”. There is already a growing body of scientific literature and data from schools within each country that have achieved the greatest improvements, which point to the key being the actions that science has proven to be successful. What matters is changing what students do with screens and everything else, and ensuring that teachers and families do the same. And to bring about improvement, change doesn’t mean shifting toward something interesting or whatever comes to mind; it means replacing failure actions (such as that anti-screen rhetoric) with successful actions.
1st with the most total citations of all categories, among those authors including in Google Scholar "Social Impact" as one of them.
Ph.D. in education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which ranks first in education according to U.S. News & World Report