Interview: Michigan State study shows screen time can boost academic achievement
A couple weeks back I (Gabriel Hales) did a LIVE interview with Local 4 Detroit News about a paper myself and Dr. Keith Hampton published in Information, Communication & Society in June (2025) about adolescent screen time, academic achievement, and digital skills (find the full-text here or, for a brief overview, see my blog post here).
It ended up being a wonderful opportunity to share my ongoing work with the public. I’ve decided to post the transcript below for any who are interested, alongside the interview itself. See below.
MSU study finds screen time boosts academic achievement [Transcript]
Local10 Anchor: Can all of that time that kids spend on their phones, iPads, and computers actually help them in school? You're looking live at the campus of Michigan State University where a new study is looking into the impact screen time has on education. Researchers found time spent on social media, playing video games, and more had a positive impact on academic achievement. I know a lot of kids are happy about that. They measured it through the SAT scores of more than 2,500 students, but there is a gender gap. The study finds a much larger benefit for boys.
Local10 Anchor: So, let's get into the details of the study with one of the researchers. We're joined now by Gabriel Hales, a media and information doctoral candidate at Michigan State University. Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Hales: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Okay, why don't we first start with this gender gap? So, do boys actually benefit more? That's what you're seeing?
Dr. Hales: Yes. What we found is that the screen time that adolescents spend on activities such as social media, video games, and other online browsing, they develop these digital skills. And so what we found is that boys as compared to girls actually developed stronger digital skills and digital skills that benefited them across more academic domains. So for example, the reading, writing, and math SAT.
So I've got so many questions here, but why don't I first start with why aren't we seeing those same sort of gains for girls? I, you know, we've done tons of stories about how social media — there's bullying online. It can lead to body dysmorphia. Why aren't girls — why aren't you seeing those same kind of trends for girls?
Dr. Hales: Of course. So what we found is that girls do gain — they still gain on math, reading and writing. But, there is a traditional gender gap in reading and writing test scores. What was interesting in our findings, though, is that boys actually benefited more so, and appeared to have narrowed that gender gap a bit on reading and writing standardized exams, whereas in math, for girls, they do show a benefit, it's just marginal compared to the benefit that boys experience.
So how did you go about doing this study? Because, you know, you talk about using those SAT scores, but I've been reading reports that reading has reached some of their lowest levels since the early 90s. So, how do you explain that?
Dr. Hales: We looked at adolescents in rural Michigan — their connectivity, their media use, and then their test scores, and we linked their actual SAT performance to these other variables. I have nothing to add in terms of like the long-term declines. We have actually been looking — it's called longitudinal analysis — so we have two waves now of these adolescents. And so our future research is actually looking at that, and what we have found is that there has been a significant, statistically significant decline since before the pandemic. However, the intriguing part is that adolescents who had reliable connectivity as well as who spent more time on the internet and developed more of these digital skills were kind of insulated from that decline in some way. They were able to keep higher test scores than their otherwise disconnected classmates.
And certainly the pandemic highlighted some of those systemic issues — why some children don't have that kind of reliable internet access like other kids do. You know, when it comes to their emotional health, was that something that you guys looked at?
Dr. Hales: Of course. So not within this specific study, but interestingly we actually have a paper that is in progress right now looking at what we called well-being and self-esteem. And so, again contrary to kind of the dominant narrative, we found that adolescents use social media — especially girls in this case — use social media for socializing, and this unstructured social time that has kind of been in decline since the '90s. And so adolescents who spend more time on social media and other social activities are able to kind of keep their self-esteem higher than those who are not connected. They use it as a sort of communication mechanism that is not readily available for in-person now as it was in the past.
I mean I'm just going to push back a little bit because when I talk to young girls — and I mean of course you guys have done this study — but when I talk to young girls that is not the message that I'm getting, that it's helping their self-esteem. In fact, I mean, when I was a kid, you would go to a grocery store, you could see magazines, and that was the extent of sort of that sort of media influence. Now, it's 24/7 in the palm of your hand. How do you explain some of that — that, you know, when you're talking to somebody individually, they might be struggling, but from your study, you are seeing some gains?
Dr. Hales: Of course. So, in general, what I like to say is moderation is key. If you're using social media all the time and not for socializing with your, for example, in-person classmates, there may be other effects. What we are looking at is that general socializing online aspect. So chatting with friends, chatting with either people you know in person or people online, and kind of this online interaction with offline communication. And so this ability to kind of keep up to date with your friends, to talk with them, to gain that social support that you get from that in-person communication that maybe especially during the pandemic was not as common. And another thing that's really important that we found is that in-person socializing actually had a very similar relationship, a negative relationship to SAT scores, as social media does. Yes. So they're very similar activities in terms of the aspects that they develop for adolescents and what adolescents gain from them. But the important thing there is that even though there is a similar negative relationship from in-person socializing, it is only online socializing and social media use that develops these digital skills which of course we found to benefit SAT scores.
What would you say to folks who are surprised by the findings of this study?
Dr. Hales: I would say always keep an open mind. There are technologies throughout the decades that have always had these kind of scares associated with them. Something new is always scary, especially something new that is used and adopted so widely as social media on the internet has been for adolescents. So of course there's a lot of studies finding a lot of different things, and so I think the most important thing right now is just to keep an open mind, be adaptive I guess with the use of these technologies, and understand that of course there are some negatives inherent to anything — especially something that you could potentially spend a lot of your time on — but there are also some benefits that we are seeing in studies like this.
Okay. And just real quick, was this peer reviewed?
Dr. Hales: It was. Yeah. Yes.
Okay. So then you're seeing other studies are also kind of confirming what you guys found in your study.
Dr. Hales: Yes. So we are a small and relatively quiet segment of these studies of social media right now, but it is growing. And other studies are finding the same as us.
That is really interesting. So if a kid wants more screen time they should talk about you, Gabriel — be like, well I heard him live, he says I should be on.
Dr. Hales: That's exactly what my mom said.
Perfect. All right. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. Great information there.
Dr. Hales: Thank you for having me, it was my pleasure.
Local10 Detroit Interview [Video]
A study at Michigan State University has investigated the effects of screen time on students' academic performance, specifically analyzing SAT scores from over 2,500 students. The research discovered that screen time, including social media use and video gaming, positively impacts academic achievement, with boys experiencing more significant benefits than girls. Gabriel Hales, a media and information doctoral candidate at the university, is discussing the study's findings.
